18
Crimes of the Heart
With an avalanche of broken glass, the man burst out of the window and hurtled down the thirty-three feet to the stone-slabbed courtyard below. He landed with the sickening crack of breaking bones and a spatter of blood. Seconds later, a face appeared at the shattered window. Somebody screamed. Then a policeman walked quickly into the court, to be joined by a young man who had hurried down the stairs. The policeman looked up. ‘He’s dead,’ he said. It was the early morning of 10 January 1880.
It had started a few days before, when Joseph Miller had moved in to the O’Neils’ house as a paying sub-tenant. Miller was a respectable elderly man, a labourer and an ex-soldier. O’Neil was a cooper by trade, but since he had lost his sight he had become a hawker. Their house had one room and a kitchen, three stories up in an attic flat in Moodie’s Court, off Argyle Street. As well as Miller and O’Neil, Mrs O’Neil and four sons shared the house in a happy congestion of bodies and noise. The fifth and eldest, Andrew, was a foundry worker who lived in Muirhead Street but spent that night with the rest of the family.
Until recently, Miller had lived with O’Neil’s mother, but at the turn of the year he moved in with the body of the family. He was a generous man, quite happy to share his whisky with anybody, but particularly with Mrs O’Neil, which partially may have contributed to O’Neil’s death. On the night before the tumble from the window, 9 January 1880, the O’Neil brothers, Andrew, James and Thomas, came home around nine o’clock, and Miller arrived about ten minutes later. Miller gave Mrs O’Neil a few shillings, and she went out for a mutchkin of whisky, which they knocked back within forty-five minutes, whereupon Mrs O’Neil and Miller went to a pawnshop, presumably to find some money. When they returned, O’Neil promptly ordered Miller out of his house.
There seemed no reason. There was no apparent disagreement, but Miller simply rose and left without any argument. Mrs O’Neil followed him, and after a while her husband began to cry. Miller and Mrs O’Neil came back about nine, singing their way up the stairs, and quite drunk.
O’Neil dried his eyes and looked up, ‘Away out of this with your fancy man!’ he said. Mrs O’Neil denied that Miller was her fancy man and tried to smooth things by dancing and singing with her husband. O’Neil seemed to have no objections, so the kitchen rattled to the sounds of drunken singing and unregulated dancing.
The McGees, next door neighbours, joined in, singing ‘ The Rocky Road to Dublin’ as they danced, but after an hour or so they left. The younger O’Neils retired to bed, either in the kitchen or the other room as their parents and Miller smoked companionably together in the kitchen. The peace did not last long,
‘I wish I was dead,’ said O’Neil.
‘You’ll be dead soon enough,’ Mrs O’Neil replied.
O’Neil raised his voice again. ‘Away out of this, fancy man,’ he said, but Miller denied he was a fancy man. There was a scuffle; O’Neil stood up and swung a punch, but Miller backed off into the adjoining room, only returning when O’Neil seemed to have calmed down. The O’Neils stood up and walked into the room Miller had just left. Mrs O’Neil was soon asleep. The sons looked at each other but – perhaps wisely – decided not to interfere. They knew that their father was a gentle man when sober, but when he was in drink he changed; he ground his teeth and sometimes grabbed his razor and threatened to cut his own wrists. He was not known to be violent toward anybody else.
Miller sat by the fire, brooding. Next door, O’Neil grabbed his wife’s throat. She woke up with a start and screamed, ‘What are you doing?’
O’Neil said, ‘Nothing. Get out of here.’
Mrs O’Neil scrambled up and got quickly dressed. She ran through to the kitchen, crying, ‘I’m being killed!’ She turned to Miller. ‘Go and calm him down, Joe,’ she said.
Miller tried. He told O’Neil that if he was not going to sleep himself, at least he could keep quiet and let the boys sleep. Mrs O’Neil was distraught; two of the sons tried to calm her down, but she said she was going to find a constable and get her husband put in the police office until he sobered up. She fled outside the house but got no further than the stair head, where she stood until she composed herself. When she returned, she joined Miller beside the fire.
There was silence, broken only by O’Neil singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ in a low, mournful tone. When he repeated the song again and again, Miller told him to be quiet or he would ‘chuck him over the window’. O’Neil threatened to thump Miller for going out with his wife, and then returned to his song. Miller walked through to the other room. Nobody spoke. Miller returned. The singing began again. Miller went back through.
In the absence of a witness, nobody knows exactly what happened next. Miller gave his version of events, and the evidence of the sons in the kitchen added to that, but all that is certain was there was some sort of a scuffle and O’Neil was heard to say, ‘ Who’s there?’ One of the sons thought he heard O’Neil say, ‘Let go my throat’, but they were all aware of the crash of breaking glass. Miller came out of the room immediately afterward, shutting the door behind him. Mrs O’Neil shouted out,‘ There’s your father killed. He’s out the window!’ and as she yelled, Miller leaned on the mantelpiece, looking flustered, and then said quietly that O’Neil was over the window.
Andrew O’Neil was first to react. He ran downstairs and found his father lying senseless in a pool of his own blood and a policeman at his side. He returned to the house and told his mother. Bridget Mulroney, one of the neighbours, also saw O’Neil’s body lying on the slabs. She met Miller at the door of O’Neil’s house, and he told her to get back home, adding,‘ You hear nothing and you see nothing.’ It seemed clear that there had been a struggle, with the affections of Mrs O’Neil the underlying reason, although as so often, drink may have been the actual cause.
When the case came to court, Miller pleaded not guilty to murder. In his version of events, he claimed he had been in the kitchen when one of the boys told him their father had killed himself by jumping through the window. The jury, however, did not agree, and found Miller guilty of culpable homicide. He was sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude.
All fraud is cruel, but some can verge on the sadistic. Such was the case on 10 February 1876, when young Flora McLeod sailed from her home in South Uist for Glasgow. Flora must have been excited, as she was going to meet her fiancé, a labourer who had moved to the city for work.
Flora sailed on Dunara Castle, a newly built MacCallum Orme 457-ton steamer that sailed every week from the Hebrides to the Broomielaw with cargo and forty-four passengers. While on the voyage she met a handsome young engineer named Hugh Brodie, with whom she got friendly. Indeed, they got more than friendly, and in the course of the short voyage Flora and Hugh got engaged. They stepped off the ship at Broomielaw arm in arm and very much in love, with Flora’s labourer fiancé already consigned to history.
From the berth at the Broomielaw Flora and Hugh strolled to Dorset Street, where her friends waited for her. She introduced them to Hugh, and when her fiancé arrived to meet her, Flora threw him out without remorse. The speedy engagement continued, with Hugh expressing his undying love and Flora, the first time she had been away from the Isles, taking it all in. They arranged a further meeting in Glasgow Green, where they spoke of the practicalities: the banns, the ring and the ceremony. It was now that Hugh made a small confession. He wanted to hurry on with the wedding, but there was a slight difficulty: he had plenty money as engineers were well paid, but it was all tied up in the bank. Could Flora possibly lend him £2 and ten shillings?
Flora agreed immediately and parted with the money. And when Hugh asked for her golden earring as well, to pawn and raise money for the ring, she handed that over as well. And that was the last Flora saw of the charming Hugh. She had lost her fiancé, her money, her earring and her naivety all in the space of two days. Flora searched for Hugh and discovered he was no engineer but a much more prosaic fireman – a stoker – and she was not the first girl to fall for his charms. Hugh Brodie had a history of picking up unsophisticated girls from the Hebrides, promising marriage and leaving them with a broken heart and a depleted purse.
Other men also preferred multiple women.
Not yet twenty-one, Septimus Thorburn must have been quite a charmer. At least both his wives thought so. There was Elizabeth Trainer, whom he married on 19 December 1842, and no doubt to whom he swore his undying love. However, Helen Duffy also caught his attention, and on 17 November 1843, he tapped on the door of Hugh Hamilton in St Andrews Square and asked if they could get married, please?
Now Hugh Hamilton was a Justice of the Peace for the County of Lanark, and he was well known as a man who asked few questions in such circumstances. However, bigamy was a crime and Thorburn ended up in the jail for a year as a result of his romantic endeavours, but there is another angle to this story. Hugh Hamilton also married William Stewart to Barbara McBeth, which angered Stewart’s other wife, Ann Williamson. She reported him to the authorities, who searched diligently for Stewart. They learned that he planned to abscond with his new wife to America, and swooped on the ship he was on as it lay in Gourock Bay. The police arrested Stewart, but if he expected support from his new wife, he was disappointed, as she remained on board and sailed alone to the United States.
Hugh Hamilton married up to three couples a week. He did not officially charge a fee, but occasionally he did accept half a crown as a token of appreciation. He had also been known to help celebrate the new unions with a dram or two of whisky, but on one memorable occasion he was paid a sovereign and a half. Hamilton had one golden rule: he never married a couple if they were drunk.
Although Hamilton was quite happy with this side business, it was illegal, and in 1844 Lord Cockburn, the Circuit judge, found out about it, quite by chance. In the Spring Circuit of 1844 Cockburn tried two cases of bigamy, both of which revolved around Hugh Hamilton. The JP’s register showed over 1,200 such irregular marriages over the last decade, so if he was typical of the type it was no wonder that bigamy was such a major concern in the period. However, some hopeful grooms had other methods of achieving their objectives.
William McMurray was a joiner with a problem. It was June 1862, and he was due to get married very shortly. Marriage meant certain outlays of money: to have the banns read, pay for the minister and even buy a wedding ring. McMurray had promised to pay for all these and then take his sweetheart as a wife, and then provide for her the rest of their lives. That was the arrangement, but there was a small hitch. McMurray did not have enough money to do any of that. Indeed, McMurray had barely enough money for the railway ticket he hoped would help him resolve his problem.
On 25 June, McMurray limped into the office of the Renfrewshire County Police. He was agitated and upset as he gabbled out his story to the duty officer. He had caught the Greenock train at Bridge Street and got off at Langbank. From there he walked by Drums, going toward Barrochan Mill, but three men approached him when he was half a mile from Hardgate Toll.
One of the men asked him the time. He said he did not know and walked a further few yards when there were footsteps behind him. Before he could turn somebody grabbed him, threw him on his back and wrapped a rope around his neck. One of the attackers was a bearded man about five foot seven inches tall, but he did not get a clear view of the others. He fought back as best he could, but he was choked into unconsciousness.
When he woke, McMurray checked his pockets and found he had been robbed. The three men had taken his new leather pocketbook with the £32 he had saved to pay for his wedding, as well as a passbook for the Union Bank.
At first the police believed McMurray’s story. They sympathised with his loss, although they were surprised that there could be such a crime in what they knew to be a safe area. Officers scoured the countryside to make enquiries, but nobody had heard or seen anything. They called McMurray back, but when he altered his version of events they became suspicious.
After a while they realised McMurray’s entire story had been a lie to hide his lack of money, but he was let off with a small fine. Given the right combination of circumstances, love was as capable of creating crime as hatred was.