Ill Met by Gaslight: Five Edinburgh Murders (5 page)

There were always good friends in Perth. Towards the end of his career, when his luck seemed to be running out, he could still find safety there. Approached in his lodgings once, he was able to fob off the police by adopting a high tone, which his landlord was happy to support. `What’s your name?’ `That’s a very rude question to ask of any gentleman.’ If he is to be believed - and it must be confessed that this is one story where Reason prompts agreement with Cockburn’s scepticism -.this was sufficient to check the police; David’s landlord then assured them that he was a respectable gentleman who always paid his bills in time (as of course prudent criminals do, at least in the right quarters), and the atmosphere became sufficiently relaxed to allow him to slip out of the back door to `one of the most profligate houses in town’, where naturally he was perfectly safe, and remained till it was time to resume business at Glamis Fair.

He had his odd moments of repentance, generally when in poor health. Then he would promise his parents to remain with them and resume trade. The promises were made in faith and sincerity. Only somehow, when the fear of death receded, his naturally blithe spirit re-asserted itself; the contrast between drab respectability and the pleasures and excitement of the sporting life was too marked. `When I recovered, all thoughts of repentance soon left my mind.’ Still, for a time at least, it was useful to have parents who could provide a base for convalescence and a respectable alibi also. This is something professional criminals are usually swift to learn: the value of safe houses.

David however was too full of levity to set a proper value on this, just as he soon neglected the old rule that the fox does not rob in his own backyard. Instead he worked harder and faster in Edinburgh and Leith than anywhere else. In February 1820 for example he committed ten crimes in eight days in Leith; no wonder that he should have decided that the town was `a pretty good place for a few adventures’. His speciality there was housebreaking. `I generally entered the houses in Leith by forcing in the small window above the outer doors. This was an invention of my own, but it is now so common that I mention it to put families on their guard.’

His rate of criminal activity was so great that his luck was bound to run out. Captain Ross of the Leith Police had his eye on him. No doubt there was somebody ready to inform. In those days, before the arrival of scientific aids to detection, the police were even more dependent on informers than they are now. Captain Brown of the Edinburgh Police made this quite clear, defending his establishment of a secret fund to buy information. Few criminals indeed would have been convicted only those caught red-handed or with the proceeds of their robbery on them - but for the existence of this useful and despised body of men.

Ross and his constables apprehended Haggart in his lodgings in Johnston Street, North Leith. He put up a struggle, and is kind enough in his Memoirs to commend the ‘humanity’ displayed by Sergeant Thorn in the course of the arrest. Haggart’s career shows clearly enough how police and criminals had, and still have, much in common. It wasn’t only in fiction that thief-catchers and thieves talked the same language, a language that often excluded those not immediately concerned with criminal activity. And Haggart kept meeting the same policemen - Captain Brown and Ross as well as the persistent John Richardson. Clearly they had also numerous acquaintance in common who were ready enough to tip either side the wink, as seemed most expedient.

This time however David broke out of Leith jail and immediately `went upon the hoys and got about twelve yards of superfine blue cloth’. This wasn’t the foolish or incorrigible act it might first appear. David had resolved prudently to get out of Edinburgh for a time; the journey had to be financed, and there was no other means of doing so. He was off to the Borders again, heading for Dumfries by way of a cattle show at Kelso. In Dumfries he was delighted to come upon Barney again, but his time the joy was short-lived, Barney being snatched by the ubiquitous and tireless Richardson. His luck was finally exhausted. He got, `a free passage to Botany Bay for a fourteen stretch. He was a choice spirit and a good friend to me. We spent many a joyous merry hour together, for I had no thought and no sorrow till I lost Barney.’ The elegaic note is irresistible.

The pace could not last. David himself was soon captured again, and had no longer the advantage of anonymity. Instead he had risen to the status of a wanted man. This time he could not hope for a mere brief spell of imprisonment such as an earlier one when Captain Brown had sent him to The Planting for four months. (He had been put in charge of the young prisoners there - `I had a rope for punishing them and I never spared the use of it’, he records, a note which does credit to his honesty (or lack of imagination) rather than his humanity). This time they were determined to make an end of him; deal with him once and for all. He had become a well-known nuisance. He was committed to the Calton jail, and indicted to stand trial at the High Court of justiciary for one act of housebreaking, eleven acts of theft and one act of prison breaking. He admitted his guilt, having no hope of acquittal, but with some optimism: the admission might mitigate his sentence. However, as it happened, there were still more charges to answer and he was indicted to stand trial at the next Dumfries Circuit, for the business in which he had been concerned there. The bills were coming in.

He tried to escape on the way, but was foiled. Not despairing however, he determined to break jail. He did not anticipate difficulty. He made his plans, and had everything in hand for an escape on his own, when other prisoners, with similar ideas in mind, involved him in their plan. As he grandly remarks, `having thus, as I thought, secured my own liberty, by getting everything ready for a start, in a way which none could prevent. I was too easily engaged in another scheme with Dunbar. As I considered myself safe, I did not much care whether we succeeded or not; but I thought it would be a fine thing to make a clean sweep of the quoad (jail)’.

This was either conceit or sheer good-nature, either way, it was a fatal decision. His associates’ plan was simple in the extreme. They would get hold of a stone, tie it up in a cloth, and strike the turnkey on the head. They would then find it easy to remove the keys and release all the prisoners. No plan could more completely expose the rudimentary security system of Regency jails. It was of course preposterous; nothing so elementary could possibly work; there must, one would think, have been some other precautions. One would be wrong; there weren’t and it did.

It was an ill success for David. He had deplored the plan, originally saying that, if he should get his liberty, he would never strike the sergeant or turnkey for it. Nevertheless it was David who held the bag with the stone, David who struck the turnkey (the sergeant had gone to the Races), David who rifled the key, David in short who led the escape. Vanity and conceit forbade him to take second place, even in a plan, not of his devising, which was supplanting a far safer one of his own. One can only conclude that to some extent he willed his own destruction.

For such it was to be, By ill luck, almost certainly not by design, the turnkey was killed. With one blow David had advanced his status from petty thief and pickpocket to killer. The tenacious Richardson, in whose territory the crime had been committed, resolved to hunt him down.

A note of panic enters David’s account. For the first time, it seems, he felt the danger and isolation of his position. Henceforth, he is no longer in charge of his life; he is a marked man; as much the hunted as the hunter. It was not of course the consciousness of guilt that made the change. True, he affects a pity for the wretched turnkey, and a regret for the deed, that contrast strongly with the nonchalance with which he described the possible killing of a policeman in the Durham escape. Yet the real pity is not directed outwards, but at himself. He is shocked by the realisation that a moment’s unthinking and quite avoidable action should have brought him to this pitch. He was learning what the criminal mind would always prefer to ignore: that actions have consequences.

He was on the run now, twisting and turning like a hare, knowing that every man, even members of the fraternity, was ready to turn him in. (Perhaps the qualification should be withdrawn; murderers are always regarded as bad news in criminal circles, if only because they stimulate police activity.) Dumfries, Carlisle, Newcastle, he twisted his way along the Border. He determined to return to Scotland, `as I knew they would never suspect me of going there, where I was so well known’, he says, displaying the same fallacious cleversilly reasoning that Poe exhibited in The Purloined Letter. It is rarely as intelligent to do the obvious in the expectation that the obvious will not be anticipated as ingenious criminals may imagine. The police, stolid rather than inspired, will competently cover the obvious. A criminal’s bolt-holes will not escape investigation because of some fanciful theory that they are too well known for him to use. Something of this may have occurred to David, for, uncertain of his logic, he hesitated a week in Berwick, during which time he watched the arrival of the Edinburgh coaches, his eye wary for police officers. Finding none arrive, he resolved to return to Edinburgh itself. It was after all home, the burrow towards which the instinct of the hunted animal directed him.

He travelled thither with Mr Wipers whom he met at Dunbar. Mr Wipers, a stranger to the city and with no acquaintance there, took a fancy to Davy and importuned him with requests for his company. He pressed him with invitations for walks, for the theatre, for tavern evenings; but, `I always pretended to be unwell’. Mr Wipers persisted. Eventually Davy gave way - possibly Mr Wipers was asking awkward questions, possibly David was bored. He continued however to exercise unwonted prudence and selected Mrs Mackinnon’s on South Bridge as their rendezvous, notorious as the livelist of the city’s numerous houses of ill-fame. Mrs Mackinnon herself was to follow Davy to the scaffold within a few years for stabbing an officer whose custom had proved unsatisfactory. It was therefore a house where Davy could feel safe among friends, even in his unprecedentedly nervous condition.

It passed off smoothly, without incident. Mr Wipers left the city, but David continued to lie low, quitting his lodgings only by night, and even then, in the additional security of female disguise. On one such expedition he encountered his poor father who failed to recognize his son dressed in `blones’ twigs’. No doubt that was just as well; there was enough to distress him already.

Still such caution becomes wearisome. David was soon able to convince himself that the chase was cooling. It was after all inconvenient and boring to live like this. It was surely safe to resume the normal course. Such self-deception, allowing `what would be’ to represent `what is’, is common enough of course; it is though a habit of thought to which the criminal mind, with its inherent tendency to solipsism, is peculiarly given.

David however was soon disillusioned.

He made a visit - a business visit of course, for a criminal must steal to live - to his old haunts in Leith. There he was unlucky enough - yet it was of course the sort of luck that might, in the circumstances have been anticipated - to come face to face with old adversary, Captain Ross. They were no more than ten yards apart. `Mustering up my pluck, I plunged my fam into my suck’ (my hand into my pocket), as if for a pop (a gun). The cautious Captain, who knew me too well to engage me while alone, took to his heels.’

It would be interesting to have Captain Ross’s version; yet Davy’s, Walter Mittyish though it certainly is, could be true enough. At any rate this encounter, or some similar alarm, was enough to persuade him it was time to get out again. Now, that he was positively known to be back in Edinburgh, nowhere in the city was safe. It is doubtful if the wretched boy had anyone he could rely on; it was too late to go back to his parents. Those days, when their home could afford sanctuary, were over. He had advanced beyond being a suspicious character whom the law would like to keep an eye on; instead he was well and-truly on the run.

He made for Fife at once, taking a passage in a fishing-boat from Fisherrow and landing at Siller-Dykes (the modern Cellardyke, a village which adjoins Anstruther.) His movements were agitated and apparently random. He headed for Dundee, where he robbed a jeweller and picked a pocket in a crowd, thence to Cupar, Kinghorn, Burntisland and back to Newhaven and Edinburgh. He lacked a base, could only keep moving and moved without purpose. There was nowhere as dangerous as Edinburgh; yet `I could not keep myself away’. Even the autobiography can hardly hide his agitation. What was he to do?

The first thing he saw on return was a bill posted, which offered a reward of seventy guineas for his apprehension. Once he might have been flattered. Now the thought uppermost in his mind was the realisation that none of his many acquaintances in the city could be trusted not to shop him for that price. Safe houses were a thing of the past.

Leith - Kinghorn - Dundee - Perth - the journeyings were resumed. There was at least safety of mind in movement; anything was better than waiting. And of course there was work to be done. He found Perth illuminated for the Queen’s acquittal; that offered good pickings, and there is an appropriate irony in Davy, this characteristic figure of the Regency underworld, feeding off a crowd which had assembled to proclaim their detestation of the Regent who was now George IV.

For a few weeks he resumed his old style of life, though fear was ever with him and the old blitheness was never quite recaptured. There were no more periods of idleness and fine living. Dunkeld - Perth - Dundee - Kenmore Fair - Cupar Fair - Arbroath Fair and back to Perth again. A little bit of business here, a little bit there. Now came the moment already referred to when he only just escaped capture in his Perth lodgings. The change in his style of life, the acceleration of his movements, suggests what one might surmise without any evidence: that, as a wanted man, he was having to pay more for his lodgings, to buy even the most temporary and short-lived security.