Ill Met by Gaslight: Five Edinburgh Murders (3 page)

Civis Edinesis took up the story in a letter to The Scotsman:

`A spectacle now presented itself which equalled in horror anything ever witnessed in Paris during the Revolution. The unhappy Johnstone, half-alive, stript of part of his clothes, and his shirt turned up, so that the whole of his naked back and upper part of his body was exhibited, lay extended on the ground in the middle of the street, in front of the police office. At last after some considerable interval, some of the police officers laying hold of the unhappy man, dragged him trailing along the ground, for about twenty paces into their den, which is also in the Old Cathedral…’

His ordeal had hardly run half its course. A surgeon bled him - to ascertain of course whether the wretch was still sufficiently alive to be hanged again. Reassured on this point, they prepared to resume. Meanwhile a magistrate had made his way to the Castle and called out the troops - the 88th Foot or Connaught Rangers under Major Grahame. When these had surrounded the scaffold and stood there with loaded muskets, it was considered safe to return to the hanging.

The half-naked Johnstone was led out. `While a number of men were about him,’ wrote Civis Edinesis, `holding him on the table and fastening the rope about his neck, his clothes fell down in such a manner that decency would have been shocked had it been a spectacle of entertainment instead of an execution.’

Nor was this all. Johnstone next worked his hand free and tugged at the noose …

`The butchery continued until twenty-three minutes past four o’clock, long after the street lamps were lighted for the night, and the moon and stars distinctly visible…’

O Athens of the North.

Naturally there was criticism of the magistrates. It was splendidly said that they had shown `contempt for the arbitrium popularis aurae.’ Fortunately that noble body of men remained undisturbed in their complacency. They issued a statement superb in its bland self-exculpation:

`The magistrates’, said the magistrates, `not only employed a skilful tradesman to prepare the gibbet, but gave orders to the superintendent of Public Works to inspect it. Mr Bonnar did examine it, and reported to them that it was fit and suitable for the purpose intended. The charge that the Magistrates ought to have called out the city constables is ridiculous. Though there could be no anticipation of any attempt to interfere with the execution of the sentence of the law, no fewer than one hundred police officers were put upon actual duty and one hundred and thirty were in reserve. Thus every step that human prudence could devise was taken and the sentence of the law would have been executed in the usual manner, if a lawless mob had not stepped forward to prevent it, under pretence, as is now said, of showing humanity towards the criminal. The state of the fact is that notwithstanding the pains that had been taken to have the apparatus perfect, the rope was found to be too long, a fault alone imputable to the executioner, who had since been dismissed on that account.’

(It is interesting to observe that the simple action of checking the length of a rope evidently exceeds the limits of human prudence.)

`Hence, upon the criminal being thrown off, his toes touched slightly the drop below. This however was capable of being remedied in a few seconds; and the carpenters in attendance were immediately put upon that duty; and while in the act of removing the drop, the mob threw in a shower of stones and wounded several of them. The criminal also was wounded by one of the stones, to the effusion of his blood. The police officers endeavoured to preserve order, but after-several of them had been severely wounded, they were driven in upon the magistrates by the pressure of the very great and unusual multitude that had assembled; and the whole party was then forced into the adjoining church. Meantime part of the mob continued to throw stones and destroyed nearly two hundred panes of glass of the churches, while another party carried off the body of the criminal. The police officers in reserve, having now come forward, cleared the streets and got possession of the body, which was carried into the Police Office, where a surgeon, without any order from a magistrate, opened a vein … By this time one of the magistrates had gone to the castle, and had brought down a party of the military, and, the apparatus having been put up, it became the duty of the magistrates to carry the sentence into effect, and accordingly, within the period mentioned in the sentence, the criminal was again suspended, and hung till he was dead. Had the mob remained quiet, instead of offering a most daring outrage to the laws of their country, the criminal would have been dead in a few minutes after he was turned off. If therefore he has suffered more pain than the law intended, or if decency was in any way shocked by the appearance of the criminal when carried to and from the gibbet (and none can regret it more than the magistrates of the city) the blame alone rests with those who offered violence to the magistrates and their attendants.’

So, in tones that were to be familiar to succeeding generations of the Edinburgh citizenry, the magistrates recorded their entire satisfaction with their own performance; conscious virtue granted them a complete protection against any obloquy they might have attracted. And to cap it all, they offered a reward of fifty guineas for the apprehension of the young man who had cut down the body, though young Mr Macbean found it, `difficult to say what crime he could be guilty of’; and they paid the Chief of Police, Captain Brown £100, `for his great exertions at the execution’, though Civis Edinesis denied that he had performed any such, alleging instead that he stayed `sitting in his own room, in his own office, and though he had a reserve of between eighty and ninety of the best policemen in reserve in the Court Room, he remained inactive for between twenty and twenty five minutes, and never ventured to show his face till he was certain the military were on the ground….’

The question of course, as always in such cases, suggests itself was the riot in fact unpremeditated? The quantity of stones found ready to hand makes one wonder. At any rate, a city where the authorities were so unpopular and so supine could hardly be unhealthy or infertile for the criminal; as young David Haggart was to discover with delight.

Our main source of information about Haggart is inevitably suspect, for it is the autobiography he composed while under sentence of death in the Calton Jail. The sceptical Cockburn said that `the confessions and the whole book were a tissue of absolute lies - and they had all one object - to make him appear a greater villain than he was’. Perhaps so; Cockburn had some direct knowledge of Haggart and rather more indirect knowledge of the world he had frequented. Perhaps, on the other hand, not; the Augustan contempt may here be a little too sweeping. Certainly Haggart’s confession, though probably exaggerated in places and undoubtedly arranged to his advantage (but then whose autobiography isn’t - even Cockburn’s own Memorials?) yet paints a picture of the underworld that corresponds well enough with what we know from other sources. Haggart’s own exploits may be exaggerated, but his world rings true enough. If he wasn’t an honest autobiographer, then he was at least a novelist with something of the documentary authority of Defoe; and it would be in effect more remarkable to find this little book a work of the imagination than if it is what it purports to be, a memoir; albeit dressed up and improved in the telling.

The book deserves another comment too, before we pass to an account of Haggart’s career, an account that will perforce continue to draw heavily on the autobiography, accepting it as by and large authentic. It is addressed to his solicitor and its purpose is plain enough; but there is no suggestion that he, or any other educated man, had a hand in the writing of it. Not even Cockburn seems to doubt Haggart’s authorship, or find it surprising Yet surely it is strange enough. Haggart had no real schooling after the age of twelve or thirteen, and while he boasts that in his schooldays he was always dux in his class, one might expect that it was an achievement for one of his background to struggle into literacy. At the least one would expect his style to be clumsy and shapeless, but it is in fact admirably clear, direct, and sometimes even elegant. For example, his reflections on the effect of prison on young offenders are not only still to the point, but excellently expressed:

`A prison is the blackest and wickedest place in the world. Many a poor boy is brought to the gallows at last because his first offence is punished by imprisonment. This teaches him evil ways, whereas if he had been well flogged and sent home to his parents, he might have turned out a good man. I cannot say my bad habits were learned in jail, but I am sure they were confirmed there.’

There is an antithetical force in the last sentence of which Cockburn himself might not have been ashamed. If style is the man, it is not surprising that Haggart appears regularly to have made an engaging impression; that is how he writes also.

Apart from his boast of being dux, he says little about his schooldays, though he claims that he always satisfied his teachers. He probably knew how to do so; it is clear that he had charm enough, that most insidious of qualities which sets out, consciously or unconsciously, to disarm the moral judgement. He passes quickly to his first criminal exploits: the theft of a bantam hen from an old widow in Stockbridge, some shoplifting in the same district, and the rustling of a pony from a farmer in Currie to carry him and a friend home from a tiring country walk. None of these thefts was serious; none of them beyond the ordinary run of childish misdemeanour. They show little more than an adventurous spirit. Actually Haggart was not acquisitive. While under sentence of death, he was examined by a phrenologist, George Combe, who published his report and also, bound with it, the record of an interview with Haggart in which his findings were discussed. Its purpose was, in Combe’s words, `not to indulge in idle curiosity, but to throw light upon the natural dispositions which particularly lead a young man into a sporting kind of life’. Combe remarks defensively that, `it has been conceived to be an anomaly in phrenology that Haggart should be addicted to stealing when the organ of acquisitiveness is only moderate in size’. He need not have felt the need for apology. The true thief- the thief of Haggart’s stamp at least - is not greedy for possessions; he does not desire the object as an object, as a miser may desire gold, but rather as a means. It is what enables him to be true to the picture he has of himself.

David’s childish pranks seem to have been easily forgiven. All that he has to say of his parents suggests that they were decent, loving people, always ready to forgive their errant son. No doubt he relied on that. All the same, domesticity was boring. Accordingly he enlisted as a drummer-boy in the Norfolk Militia, who were then (1813) stationed in Leith. The uniform attracted him and the promise of a varied life. Discipline however proved distasteful and he was happy to be discharged the following year, and to return to his father’s home. Then followed a respectable interlude. He was apprenticed to Cockburn and Blair, millwrights and engineers, with whom he, worked until the firm went bankrupt in 1817. He claims to have done well with them, to have enjoyed trust and responsibility: for instance he was allowed to carry money to and from the bank. Though one cannot resist the speculation of how his life might have developed if the firm had remained solvent, it is hard to imagine him content with dull respectability. The attractions of the sporting life, his image of himself as a fine fellow, would probably have proved too strong. At any rate, Cockburn and Blair’s Bankruptcy threw him out of work in a year, when there were 1,600 unemployed workmen registered, and engaged by the Council in making the roads round the Calton Hill and the Salisbury Crags; impossible to imagine Davy Haggart as one of such a work-gang. In his own words, `to work and be a slave to mankind. I could never think of’.

So, now that he was unemployed, he records that, `in less than three months I found myself plunged in such a state of vice and wickedness that my mind could not suffer reflection’. Perhaps so; more likely he thoroughly enjoyed it. His headlong gallop of a career had begun, as bitter-sweet- as John Gay’s Newgate Pastoral.

David Haggart had entered a world, `where stealing was an activity so common as to be nothing less than banal’. The opportunities were legion, the pickings considerable and the chances of detection at least sufficiently long for the practitioner to discount them. David took to the streets, to casual shop-lifting and pickpocketing first. Probably nothing indicates the prevalence of theft so clearly as the extent of the thieves’ cant in which they conversed. Whole paragraphs of Haggart’s autobiography are completely incomprehensible without the aid of a glossary. `Picking a suck’ for instance, `is a kittle job’; on the other hand `the keek cloy is easily picked’, and `if blunt gets shy’ you can always take to the `boys and coreing’. A `prig’ should keep an eye open for `a coneish cove’ and if he is `well-budged’, the job’s easy. If you see a `cove’ with a ‘lil’ in his `fam’, then it should be yours, unless the `topers’ are to hand. Even readers steeped in the romances of Georgette Heyer will be baffled by the rich argot.

There was then a criminal underworld into which it was easy to sink. There were boozing-kens where a prig could lie up or houses of ill-fame where he would be hailed, Macheathlike, as a hero; and as for fencing the stuff, why Haggart sometimes found the choice embarrassing. He notes on one occasion that he couldn’t recall where he had fenced some stolen goods, being drunk at the time. It must have seemed sometimes as if almost everything invited the young man to take up the sporting life. It was in those terms that he thought of it. Combe reports that, `when we alluded to his crimes in common language, he became sullen and ceased to converse. He, however, used the phrase “the sporting line of life” himself; and we found that, on our employing it, he again became communicative.’ It offered easy money, excitement and good living; `the love of dress and company was my motive’, he said. When the alternative was a choice between long laborious toil and starvation, it is not difficult to understand how a bright young spark like Davy Haggart should adopt the sporting line of life.