OUR MURDEROUS PAST

 


''Gentlemen, the charge against the prisoner is murder, and the punishment for murder is death, and that simple statement is sufficient to suggest to you the awful nature of the occasion which brings you and me face to face.''

This was the famous opening sentence often used by defence advocates in their address to the jury when capital punishment was the ultimate penalty in our courts.
During the nineteenth century the period largely covered here, more than 240 men and women kept a date with the hangman in Scotland.
The offences for which they had been found guilty ranged through murder, rape, housebreaking, fire-raising, treason, piracy, hámesucken (violence against a householder on his own property), to opening other peoples letters, theft of money from letters, sheep stealing and horse stealing.
Until 1868 executions were great public spectacles with towns like Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Ayr, Cupar, Dundee, Dumfries and Stirling, taking on a carnival atmosphere on such occasions.
Drama and excitement were always present; justice frequently poetic, in the literal sense, as the.following street ballad illustrates. It described the farewell of a convicted murderer at Edinburgh:-
Great was the throng to see him hung
For crimes that were so vile.
To Edinburgh upon that day
They tramped for many a mile.
They led him out all clad in black
Black coat and vest so white
A mocking smile was on his lips,
He wore a nosegay bright.
In Glasgow two lovers convicted of murder married on the scaffold before the hangman despatched them.
On another occasion 750 constables were drafted in to maintain order at the execution of a doctor who had murdered his wife and mother-in-law.
This was the citys last public hanging.
A newspaper reporter present wrote: After the bolt was drawn he shrugged his shoulders more than half a dozen times, his head shook, and the whole body trembled.
In Edinburgh there was a riot when a man showed signs of life after the execution. Order was restored and the process repeated an hour later.
For years the Rob Roy tartan was shunned by women the length and breadth of Scotland after a city woman appeared on thescaffold clad in a Rob Roy shawl.
There were many other aspects to these occasions which would strike us today as singularly bizarre.
The condemned man or woman was often brought to the scaffold in an open cart sitting atop their own coffin.
The hangman had to wear a disguise for fear of reprisals from the crowd who could often turn violent especially if it was felt that a miscarriage of justice was taking place.
After the event bodies were usually transported to Edinburgh Medical School for dissection and study by students.
AS often as not when petitions were launched to try and have the death sentence set aside it was the jurors who were first to sign?
Every detail of the convicted persons last hours was eagerly gleaned from the newspapers.
Joseph Bell who murdered a bakers vanman in Perthshire asked the minister to deliver books to his death cell. He then composed poems to his nearest and dearest on the morning of his execution and wrote them on the inside title pages.
The message received by his parents read:-
Dear Father and Mother, its the 12th of May;
I wrote these lines for you today;
Sad news they will have to tell,
About our parting, Joseph Bell.
In remembrance of me pray keep this book,
With earnest eyes do on it look,
For this day we must take farewell.
Your loving son, Joseph Bell.
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