Ill Met by Gaslight: Five Edinburgh Murders (6 page)

Even so, there were good moments, an exploit at Glamis Fair for example, which reads like a comic opera dry run for one of the most celebrated incidents in Stevenson’s `Weir of Hermiston.’

`Towards evening I spied a farmer plank a run lay of screaves in his keek cloy and I determined to have them if possible. I soon after saw him mount his prad, and watching the way he went, I immediately got my prad and followed him, accompanied by Edgy mounted behind me and a snib, named Smith, on foot. On getting up with the farmer, we found that other two had joined him. Smith objected to make an attack, Edgy joined him…. Having parted with these cowards, I followed up my prey, and I soon observed my man stop to water his horse at a small burn; I got alongside of him, and very unceremoniously plunged into his keek cloy and brought the blunt up with me, and before he had time to challenge me, I hit him a very smart blow over the head with the butt end of my whip, which set him off at full gallop and I at no less…’

Action could still drive out anxiety, but the course could not last. A new departure was necessary, and a trip to Glasgow suggested the answer: he might give Ireland a go.

The crossing was not entirely without incident. He was a little disturbed to find himself being regarded with suspicion by one of the passengers, who turned out to be Provost Fergus of Kirkcaldy. The Provost had almost certainly seen the posters and it is a little surprising that he contented himself with staring. Possibly he had urgent business and knew how any attempt to assist the police could cause delay. At any rate he did nothing and Davy had another temporary reprieve.

Ireland restored his spirits at once. In those days, long before the great famine of the eighteen-forties, it seemed a bustling go-ahead place, with, significantly, more to offer a lad of his profession than Scotland had. `Paddyland’, he says, `is the land for pickpockets, lots of money, oceans of drink’ (it is of course so much easier to rob a man well in liquor than one soberly vigilant and knocking-down pell-mell - then is the time to work away at the business. England is too much hunted, and there is no money in Scotland’.

He embarked therefore on a wild fling of crime and revelry that took him on a mad gallop through the country. Yet all the time he was in Ireland the hunt was catching up on him, for the worthy Provost Fergus had indeed had second thoughts, and had written to Dumfries reporting his suspicions, a method of procedure that had the advantage for him of disrupting his own activities not at all. David could only reflect later that it had been a fortunate means of proceeding for the Provost. `It was well for me that I did not know his suspicions at the time, for he went on shore in black night, and I could easily have put him under the wave.’ Well for the Provost too. Still the information thus laid took time to catch up, and Davy was able to enjoy his revelry in his fools’ paradise.

He robbed pig drovers and gamblers, losing on one occasion a hundred pounds because he was too careless to search a bundle of letters properly. He survived information laid against him by one Robert Platt, formerly an inmate of Dumfries. He was posted in the Dublin paper Hue and Cry, spent £190 on a month’s trip with a couple of girls by jaunting-car through Fermanagh, Cavan and Derry, moved between Dublin and Belfast following the fairs and racemeetings, was arrested and released, beat up a police spy and was himself attacked by a pig drover brandishing a shillelagh - he showed great energy in exacting an apology from this man. All in all he lived a violent, crowded, helter-skelter life; there could be no doubt that the pace was hotter in Ireland, where the drink flowed even more freely than in Scotland and where every man was quick to pull a shillelagh to avenge a fancied insult.

Still, David resolved to move on, first to France, then perhaps to America. However, when on the point of taking his passage, he heard of a fair to be held the next day at Clough. Inevitably, he `resolved to attend and practise my profession for the last time in the British dominions.’ An ill-fated resolve; he was arrested on a charge of picking a pocket, and confined in Downpatrick jail.

At first this was not too bad. There was soon a prison riot. They broke through to the women’s quarters and barricaded themselves in, indulging for three days in an orgy that in retrospect shocked even David. At last the authorities restored order and David was brought to trial. It gave him a poor opinion of Irish justice. `I have been twice tried for my life in Scotland’, he wrote. `The first time I got more than justice, for I was acquitted. The second time I got justice, for I was convicted. But in Ireland I got no justice at all; for at Downpatrick there was none to speak for me but the Judge, and he spoke against me.’

Be that as it may, he was remanded to Kilmainham jail, where his opinion of Irish justice did not improve. There were two beautiful girls there, murderesses, and, when with innocent and sunny good nature. David attempted to speak some words of comfort to them, he found himself clapped in an iron helmet, so constructed that he could not move his tongue and was therefore constrained in silence. It was not what he was accustomed to, not this life of waiting, with nothing to do but contemplate the antics of an insane prisoner, condemned for having skinned a horse alive.

At last the purpose of the delay was made clear. Looking out of his cell window he saw John Richardson cross the yard. The information laid by Provost Fergus had done its work. David’s number was up. Obstinately he refused at first to face the facts, maintaining his Irish identity and denying that he had ever been in Scotland. It was all in vain. Richardson knew him too well to be deceived, and was determined that this time his prey should not escape. Elaborate precautions were taken to guard against this possibility on the return journey.

`An iron belt was fixed round my waist, with my wrists pinioned to each side of it; a chain passed from the front of the belt and joined the centre of a chain, each end of which was padlocked round my ankle, and a chain passed from each wrist to each ankle.’ Trussed like this, he admitted the truth. He found himself `fed like a sucking turkey in bedlam and treated like a helpless infant.’ Richardson and the Law had won. All the same he was still prepared to-make things difficult if he could. `They could not get what they call a declaration out of me, for I knew that would be used against me, so I thought it as well to keep my tongue within my teeth, and this I would advise every man who is accused of crime to do, whether he is innocent or guilty.’

All the same this was strictly a matter of self-respect, nothing more. From the moment of his arrest and return from Ireland his fate was certain. There was nothing he could hope for. All that was left him was to put on a good show. He had to live up to the image he held of himself, which he wished others to retain. That desire was by no means ignoble; reputation was a matter of pride, and he had nothing else to leave.

`During the trial’, reported the Caledonian Mercury, `he preserved the greatest composure, while his Lordship addressed him, he leaned back on the seat in a careless attitude, at the same time eating confections; but when called upon to attend to the sentence, he stood erect and heard it unmoved.’

Idly eating confections - that showed the dandy touch, Brummell in the bow window of White’s; also the ability to regard events even of this importance with admirable detachment. The composure with which he received the sentence demonstrated imperturbability, the capacity to take it, which the eighteenth century called `bottom’, and admired greatly.

It wasn’t, as such imperturbability might easily be, evidence of insensibility. Haggart was no dumb animal, nor one inarticulate in suffering. On the contrary it was the result of a highly conscious exercise of self-control. `They say I looked careless, but they could not see within me’, he noted.

Now all that remained was to set himself right with this world and prepare for death. He worked at his autobiography, his apologia pro vita sua; it was all he had to offer the world, for his estimated profit of £912 on his four years’ trading was quite dissipated. The purpose of the autobiography was then usual enough, whether one accepts Cockburn’s strictures or not. He wanted to leave some record of himself that would establish his life as having had a certain sort of significance; it was intolerable to think that he could simply evaporate.

It had been a life consumed in activity, a hectic pell-mell of succession of incidents that all served no purpose beyond the gratification of the moment. The autobiography may be read as an attempt, slight, desperate, but in its way gallant, to extract some meaning-from it all; probably this explanation is at least as accurate as Cockburn’s. There is in the end not so great a difference in certain important respects between the criminal and his advocate as the latter would have us believe. Both feel their evanescence; both experience a need to impose some order on their existence; both turn to the autobiographical mode.

For the same reason David endured the phrenologist, George Combe, a man, like many enthusiasts, of little humour and no wit. His visits did not only serve to pass the time in the condemned cell, a place, one must assume, where any unoccupied time possesses a frightening duality: it hangs heavy and is yet filled with a horrid apprehension of its brevity. Combe’s enquiry however promised David something more: either the chance to understand himself more fully, or at least a reinforcement of what he already believed. Nobody now accepts phrenology as a science, but it was so considered by many at the time: the reflection may serve as a warning for those enamoured of contemporary modes of pseudo-science.

David was indignant and quick to correct Combe when he made mistakes. For instance Combe found that the indications of sexuality were low. Naturally David was ready with denial. On the contrary his enthusiasm for the girls was, `one of the causes of my downfall’. Perhaps so; on the other hand, like many men of action, he never formed a lasting connection, indication perhaps of the inability to experience any deep passion. There were touches of Don Juan about David, and the classical Don Juan is a Narcissist who uses women partly as decoration, partly to feed his sense of power. He can never make the surrender of self which the true capacity to love demands; so, even in company, he is essentially alone, imprisoned in his excessive egoism. Of course David never attained maturity; not many young men, even those of more settled occupation, do form lasting connections between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one. One must remember that his exploits were those of a young blade, whose character was unformed. Certainly his only deep recorded attachment was to Barney MacGuire, and that clearly partook of heroworship, an adolescent emotion. Barney was his mentor, as well as his fidus Achates. No one replaced him. After Barney’s disappearance David was on his own.

Combe found that David’s greatest errors had, `arisen from a great self-esteem, a large combativeness, a prodigious firmness, a great secretiveness’. No doubt there is something in all this, though one’s confidence in Combe’s judgement, already perhaps impaired by doubts as to his method, is reduced by his subsequent observation that Haggart’s cunning appears, not only in his crimes, his escapes, and his deceptions, but in his refusing to emit a declaration before trial. To equate common sense with cunning is to exhibit a naive inclination for melodrama and hyperbole.

In fact Haggart’s course, which Combe describes as his `errors’, is easily enough accounted for. There were only two means by which he might rise from his position in society: industry and crime. And he was averse to work. A young man of ambition but no fortune has a limited choice. If his tastes run to excitement and high living, his course is likely to be set; the sporting life is there to beckon invitingly. David Haggart was by no means remarkable; plenty of young sparks followed the same sort of career, even though they lacked his intelligence, charm and verve.

Combe went on to compare him to other murders, such as Bellingham who assassinated the Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval in 1812. The comparison was more or less pointless. Haggart was in no way deranged like Bellingham, and he was not even, in one very real sense, a murderer. No one has ever suggested that he intended to kill the unfortunate turnkey. He merely hit out at someone who happened to stand in his way, and we may even believe him when he expresses his distress. He cannot be compared with the other murderer’s temperament, which can well exist, as in William Bennison and more celebrated examples such as Major Armstrong, among those who are otherwise law-abiding and even see themselves as virtuous members of society. David Haggart belongs to a different, perhaps more numerous, category; that of the professional criminal who kills in a moment of desperation or carelessness. It is true of course that any distinction between murderers and other criminals is far from clear, and can easily be pushed too far. Often it may be no more than an expression of degree. All criminals, after all, have an excessive idea of their own importance, of their individuality; they are not prepared to adjust themselves to social norms which interfere with their self-expression. Murder may be interpreted as the extreme statement of the ego, expressing a willingness to obliterate anyone whose existence constitutes an obstacle to the ego’s gratification. The murderer reduces all life to a point where it must submit to his will.

Popular opinion has always been accustomed to make a distinction between murder and other crimes. Difference of degree comes to represent difference in kind, if it is pushed far enough. To take another man’s. property is seen to be one thing; offensive certainly to the laws of man. To take his life is quite another thing, a crime which has entered a different dimension, an offence against the laws of God.

It was to these that David, condemned by the laws of Man, had now to prepare to submit himself. Those condemned to death had not only the gallows to confront; from the moment sentence was pronounced they were besieged by the clergy. The ministers were doing nothing but their duty; they had souls to save. It would be impertinent to question their sincerity. To face a man doomed to die in a few days must always arouse feelings of awe. It is not however cynical to observe that it also offers an unrivalled opportunity. As Dr. Johnson remarked, `when a man knows he is to die in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully’. In these circumstances the ministers went to work with a will.