Classic Scottish Murder Stories (45 page)

It appeared that Patrick Higgins suffered, or had suffered, from epilepsy. There was more to his mental profile than drunkenness and problems of personality. It was put, or, more importantly, proved, that epilepsy had been the reason for his discharge from the army. He had, in fact, served six or seven years with the Scottish Rifles in India, so that the affliction could not have been with him as a very young man, and there
was some vague talk of injury to the brain.

A general practitioner from Broxburn, Dr Kelso, was brought to say that Higgins' mother had consulted him shortly after Patrick had left the army. She had asked the doctor to see if her son was ‘right in the head' because she had woken in the middle of the night to find Patrick standing in the middle of the room, waving a poker in a threatening manner. I suppose that we must take this as true, since the doctor is speaking, and not a mother trying to save her son's life. The mother had witnessed Patrick's ‘shaking fits' and seen him fall out of bed, more than once, but his symptoms were complicated by alcohol. A quarryman had several times seen him in the throes of a fit, foaming at the mouth. A former police constable had twice seen him in convulsions in the streets of Winchburgh. An Edinburgh doctor who had examined Higgins while awaiting trial in Calton Jail had found marks of wounds on his head that could well have been incurred during the violent movements of fits. Dr Keay, of Bangour Asylum, could find no evidence of epilepsy and quaintly observed that Higgins was of average intelligence ‘for a man of his class'.

It was futile to deny that he was an epileptic, diagnosed and discharged as such from the military service. He apparently took no medication and had not sought the help of Dr Kelso, who would have said if he had been treating him. Drink may have triggered his fits. He himself had instructed his lawyers that he had been free from epilepsy since India, unless he had been drinking. The fact that medical observers saw no sign of epilepsy when they confronted him in his cell in 1913 was neither here nor there. There was, however, no evidence as to frank insanity to support the mother's lurid experience. Doctor after doctor found no symptoms of derangement. All remarked on his cold indifference, but, as the Lord Advocate said ‘callousness, coldbloodedness and deliberate cruelty were not insanity.' Against him, there was the element of premeditation. Why else, except with the intention of harming them, would he have led his
children late and in driving rain along a track to nowhere?

The jury returned a unanimous verdict of Guilty, although not until they had asked the judge a series of questions, and they were scrupulous in adding a recommendation to mercy, based on the long gap between the crime and the trial, and also on the lack of expert evidence as to Higgins' mental state at the time of the murders. Patrick Higgins stood to attention as Lord Johnston condemned him to death. He had no chance of a reprieve and on October 1st, 1913, he was hanged and his body buried in a plain black coffin in the prison grounds. The murderer was a lapsed Roman Catholic and Canon Stuart, of St Mary's Cathedral, said prayers beside him to the end. He went very bravely. His last words were – ‘The Lord Jesus receive The Canon let it be known that Higgins had confessed to him the justice of his sentence, but if he had been favoured with a full account of his actions at the quarry, he did not say so. ‘Drink and, through drink, neglect of religion have brought me down,' he had said, but words of contrition relating to his lost boys are somehow missing.

After the hangman, John Ellis, had done his job and the black flag had been hoisted, in the world outside, the crowds who had stood on the top of Calton Hill were moving off for a day at Musselburgh Races. Others scrambled down from the monumental canons. It was said that a blind fiddler played ‘The Lost Chord'.

Sir Sidney Smith recorded a piece of doggerel that appeared in a university magazine:

Times and manners change, but the final episode of the Hopetoun Quarry tragedy would now be regarded as
unacceptable practice by professional men. In 1913, a spot of latter-day ‘body-snatching' was a jolly jape, all, of course, in the best interests of science. During the autopsy in the Linlithgow mortuary, Dr Smith was taken with the idea of keeping specimens of the perfect adipocere formation for teaching purposes. Professor Harvey Littlejohn, approving the idea, actually co-operated by asking the two police officers present to go outside with him. Surreptitiously, Smith then packed up the two heads, a leg and an arm from each, and all the internal organs, and the two doctors travelled back to Edinburgh by train with the parcels on the luggage-rack, an embarrassing and dubious procedure in itself. The specimens were displayed in the Forensic Medicine Museum at the University. No parent was left alive to grieve and make protest.

As a timely reminder that the dissection of human corpses has not always proceeded smoothly since the days of Burke and Hare, we might care to contemplate the bad riot of 1831, when a crowd demolished the Anatomical School in Aberdeen, a building recently erected by Dr Andrew Moir in St Andrew's Street, at the back of Gordon's Hospital. The people called the brave new edifice the ‘Anatomical Theatre' and they feared what went on inside its walls.

A dog it was that lit the tinder when it scented something interesting in the loose soil at the back of the school and began to dig. Some boys playing nearby raised the alarm and soon there was a sizeable crowd as recognisable fragments of a human body were excavated. There was a howl of execration and several medical students were seen making a hasty exit. Dr Moir stayed inside until the door was forced. He escaped, but was followed to his lodgings and even there had to jump out of a back window.

Meanwhile, at the Anatomical School, three dead bodies were revealed, stretched, stripped and striated on boards. All the equipment of the place was now destroyed or carried
away. Officers were called and they directed the bodies to be taken out. When the mangled remnants were brought into the open air and laid on the ground, there were yells and cries for vengeance. A few rags of clothing were pulled on to the bodies and they were removed.

‘Burn the house!' they cried. ‘Down with the Burking shop!' A fierce fire was kindled within, stoked by shavings, fir, and tar barrel staves. Outside, a crowd was undermining the back wall of the building with two large planks, one used as a battering-ram, the other as a lever. The entire wall collapsed with a tremendous crash. The front wall came under attack. The heat from the blaze was intense. The Provost and magistrates came to the inferno, with a brigade of special constables, and a party of the 79th Regiment was marched out of barracks and held in reserve in Gordon's Hospital. There were cheers as the gables collapsed, along with the roof. Thousands of people were said to be present, not all riff-raff, by any means, which indicates the strength of public opinion. Three rioters were put to their trial, during which the Advocate-Depute allowed that carelessness by the medical gentlemen had led to the disturbance.

T
he unexpected visitor with a smile on his face and a packet of arsenic in his pocket was stoutly-named George Thom, a guest who stayed to dinner and left as soon as he possibly could. His hosts, a family of four, symmetrically divided into two brothers and two sisters, were living in peace and harmony in deep countryside at Burnside, in Keig, Aberdeenshire. Although a rare caller, George was no stranger, being related by marriage. Once the Mitchells had been six, but two members had broken away from the constellation: Jean had gone to marry George Thom, and one brother had died, leaving a considerable legacy, which was apportioned among the five survivors.

There had been a former Mrs Thom, but she had died years previously, leaving issue. George had married Jean a decent time after she had come into her share of the inheritance, and borne her away to his farm at Harthill, Newmills. All rejoiced. If, at the age of 61, he were a little long in the tooth, and perhaps Jeanie was too, he was well respected, a good man who had worked his farm for donkey's years.

However, something went wrong in his mind in 1821, when he began to ruminate about the four parts of the legacy which were held by the unmarried Mitchells. From the seed of the envy, the need grew to an acorn like a diseased pineal gland lodged deep in the brain, and then it swelled and branched and took over all parts of his mind until he was eaten away by
a plan of outrageous simplicity. In one act of mass murder he would eliminate the entire Mitchell clan for ever and Jeanie would inherit the fruit of his cleverness. Poison would be the means, and after some initial difficulty he acquired a stock of arsenic sufficient to kill a bullock or two.

Thus equipped, he turned up at Burnside, on his own, one Saturday evening in August, and made himself amiable, although he had not visited since his marriage. The Mitchells were surprised, but pleased, and made him welcome. He gave no reason for his arrival: one would have expected some kind of excuse, but he was too preoccupied with sending them all to kingdom come. Their hospitality and attentions were a nuisance to him. It was arranged that he was to stay the night, after supper, as he had frequently done in the past (presumably when he was courting Jean) always sharing William's bed. This time, he was very anxious to sleep in the kitchen, but William insisted on the old arrangement, which was not the way that Thom had planned it. He said that he would have to get up early, and would not, absolutely not, be persuaded to stay to breakfast, because he was expected for that meal at the farm, Mains of Cluny, on his way home.

James Mitchell, whose bed was in the recess in the kitchen, woke in the early hours when he heard footsteps near the press, but could not see who it was, because his bed-shutters were closed. The furtive figure was, of course, George Thom in the execution of his blunt device to wipe out the Mitchells, tipping the contents of his little packet into the saltcellar and stirring frantically.

Helen Mitchell found him alone in the kitchen later, about to take his departure, and he was shaking some crumbs of bread and cheese on the table with something white about them. She asked him what it was, but, not being gifted at improvisation, he made no reply. William gave him a piece of loaf-bread (wheaten loaf) which he wrapped up in his napkin, but did not put in his pocket. The import here is that the
arsenic had leaked from its wrapping in his pocket and contaminated remnants of old ploughman's lunches. As usual, he was looking after Number One. Perhaps the crumbs were swept up and thrown on the fire, since there were no reports of ailing wee beasties.

Then George Thom left Burnside and ate a hearty breakfast at the Cluny farm. On his way back to Harthill, mightily refreshed, he met an acquaintance and told him that he had been very unwell and must have eaten something that morning, or at supper the night before, which had upset him. If he had not used a crow's feather to make himself vomit, he said, he would have surely died. This was a palpable falsehood which seemed like a good idea at the time, but was to return to haunt him. He was much more successful as a solid man of few words.

Their guest gone, Mary Mitchell, the other sister, made pottage (porridge) prepared with milk, not water, and the obligatory pinch of salt. The whole family had some. William, Helen and Mary noticed nothing unusual. William ate a lot; it was Sacrament Sunday and dinner would be rather late. James, however, was obviously sensitive to arsenic. He had intended to tuck in, but he did not enjoy the pottage that morning, objecting to its ‘sweetish, sickening taste'. Most people can detect no taste, as has been noted repeatedly in criminal cases. If noticed at all, it is likely to be sensed as acrid or bitter, although that old authority, Professor Christison, did say that it was insipid or sweetish.

James was already feeling sick. He dressed and felt worse, but forced himself to walk to church. On the way, he felt so ill that he wondered about going home. When he was in his pew, a strange blackness suddenly clouded around his field of vision and he seemed to be going blind. After he had sat at the Lord's Table, he swayed out into the graveyard, where he came upon his brother, William, who said that he was very sick. William went back into church, but James crawled home,
vomiting all the way. When he reached the house, wilKall his insides burning, he found that both his sisters had been sick, too. William came in with the worse symptoms, complaining of great pain, with a swelling in his chest, reaching up to his throat.

Somehow, they all survived the night. Next day, Helen had numb feet, a burning pain by her heart, great thirst, and anguish in her left eyelid. Mary had lost all sensation in her legs, from the knees downward. On the Tuesday, James lost the use of one arm and both feet. These three afflicted gradually recovered, but not William, who lingered for one week, until the following Lord's Day. By then, he had lost all use of his arms and was nearly blind, his eyes blood-red. James, who shared his bed in that simple household, tearfully described his last moments: ‘He rose to look for a drink, returned to his bed and lay down, stretched himself, and gave a terrible groan, then lay quiet. He was in a cold, deep sweat.' James went to his sisters and told them that William was ‘gaen to wear awa' out amo' them'.

The Mitchells did, as it turned out, suspect that George had poisoned them, but they wanted to keep the scandal secret. They were quiet people and they did not want a fuss. Jeanie was married to the man. The day before William's funeral, George and Jean arrived at Burnside without being asked, and were ill-received. James told them to go, as they had already done enough mischief in the house. Apparently, some neighbours, acutely suspicious, had said that they would not attend the funeral if Thom and Jean were allowed to stay.