The NINETEENTH Century

 

 

1800

THE BLACK OFFICER SUFFERS A WHITE DEATH

Early in January, Captain John Macpherson of Ballachroan and a few fellow hunters and their dogs tramped up Glen Tromie into the heart of the Cairngorms, in pursuit of deer. They planned to stay in a small bothy at Gaick, a remote spot in the valley floor, set between steep slopes. After a few days of constant snowfall the hunters had still not returned to their families, and so a search party was sent out. Eventually arriving at Gaick through the white and icy wilds, the search party found no trace of either men or bothy. Eventually it dawned on the rescuers what had happened: both the bothy and the hunters within had been entirely overwhelmed by a giant avalanche. The rescuers managed to dig four bodies out of the ruins of the bothy, buried deep under the avalanche debris, but the fifth body was not recovered until the spring. The disaster became known as Call Ghàdhaig – ‘the Loss of Gaick’ – and it was said to be a revenge upon Macpherson for his supposed dealings with the Devil, and for his unscrupulous and deceitful methods of recruiting young men for the army – a sinister reputation that earned him the sobriquet ‘the Black Officer’. Over the years, the stories of the dark doings of the Black Officer were more and more elaborated, and it was rumoured, after his body had been recovered from the snow, that ‘it required twelve men, with all their force, to keep down the lid of the coffin whilst it was nailed’.

1801

AN OTTOMAN FROM ARGYLL

En route to take on the French in Egypt, the British fleet called in at Marmaris in southwest Turkey, with which Britain was at that time allied. Among the British regiments on board was the 42nd, the Black Watch, who welcomed an Ottoman general of artillery onto their ship. They were considerably shocked when the man, who was in full Turkish costume and with a white beard flowing down to his girdle, addressed them not only in their native tongue, but in their own accent. It turned out that the general was a Campbell from Kintyre, who in his youth had been so upset when a school friend of his had met with a fatal accident while they played together that he had fled abroad and joined the Ottoman army, in which he had served for 40 years. Now he had come to ask for news of his family, and when he saw the Highlanders in his own native dress, he burst into tears.

1803

IMPRESSED

On their Scottish tour, Wordsworth and Coleridge passed through the remote mining village of Wanlockhead in the hills of Dumfriesshire. There they encountered some barefoot urchins, and were astonished to learn that these children not only attended the local school, but were also studying Homer and Virgil in the original.

NOT IMPRESSED

Visiting the Trossachs and Loch Katrine, Wordsworth described the place as ‘gloomy’, while his companion Coleridge complained that ‘the mountains were all too dreary’. The area had to wait till 1810, and the publication of Scott’s long poem The Lady of the Lake, with its vivid descriptions of the wild landscape hereabouts, to kick-start its local tourist industry, as recorded by Scott’s publisher, Robert Cadell:

Crowds set off to the scenery of Loch Katrine, till then comparatively unknown; and as the book came out just before the season for excursions, every house and inn in that neighbourhood was crammed with a constant succession of visitors.

It was less good news for the man who operated a ferry across Loch Lomond:

That d––d Sir Walter Scott . . . I wish I had him to ferry over Loch Lomond: I should be after sinking the boat, if I drowned myself into the bargain; for ever since he wrote his Lady of the Lake, as they call it, everybody goes to see that filthy hole Loch Katrine . . . and I have only had two gentlemen to guide all this blessed season.

Coleridge hadn’t thought much of Loch Lomond either, commenting that ‘Everywhere there is a distressing sense of local unrememberableness.’

SWEET CHARITY

Widow Henderson, a Glasgow landlady, together with her associate Mrs Kilpatrick, was charged with having barred her door against one of her lodgers, Mary Brounlie, who was too sick with a fever to find anywhere else to live, and so died on the doorstep. In her defence, Widow Henderson and Mrs Kilpatrick said they were not related to the dead girl, and had given her a bed out of pure charity. Realising that her illness was terminal, they decided to evict her, so as not to be troubled with bearing the expense of her funeral. Widow Henderson was banished from the City of Glasgow for three years, while Mrs Kilpatrick was sentenced to one month’s imprisonment, and fined two guineas.

1804

A JUDICIAL THESAURUS

Death of the famously prolix judge Lord Eskgrove. Henry Cockburn said of him that

never once did he do or say anything which had the slightest claim to be remembered for any intrinsic merit. The value of all his words and actions consisted in their absurdity.

Cockburn cites Eskgrove’s judgment on a tailor who had been convicted for stabbing a soldier to death:

And not only did you murder him, whereby he was bereaved of his life, but you did thrust, or push, or pierce, or project, or propel, the lethal weapon through the bellyband of his regimental breeches, which were His Majesty’s!

1805

NAPOLEON, SCOURGE OF GOD

As French forces massed along the Channel coast ready to invade Britain, Mr Robertson of Kilmarnock preached before the Associate Synod in Glasgow. He told his audience that the probable French invasion would be God’s way of chastising the sins of the nation, explaining that Providence was not always nice in the choice of instruments for punishing the wickedness of men. He continued:

Tak an example frae among yoursels. Your magistrates dinna ask certificates o’ character for their public executioners. They generally select sic clamjamfrie as hae rubbit shouthers wi’ the gallows themsels. And as for this Bonyparte, I’ve tell’d ye, my freens, what was the beginning o’ that man, and I’ll tell ye what will be the end o’ him. He’ll come doon like a pockfu’ o’ goats’ horns at the Broomielaw!

1807

A DOCTOR CALLS

Death of Alexander ‘Lang Sandy’ Wood, a much loved Edinburgh surgeon, among whose eccentricities was his habit of visiting his patients accompanied by a pet sheep and a raven.

1809

THE GREAT PEDESTRIAN

For a wager of 1,000 guineas Captain Robert Barclay Allardice of Ury in Aberdeenshire walked 1,000 miles in 1,000 hours at Newmarket, completing the distance, according to The Times, ‘with perfect ease and great spirit, amidst an immense concourse of spectators’ – including two dukes and three earls. During the course of his walk he lost 2 st. 4 lb. Known as ‘the Great Pedestrian’, Captain Barclay walked 51 miles and back twice a week, and would exercise his dogs daily for 20 or more miles. On one occasion in 1802 he walked 64 miles in ten hours, while in 1806, on bad roads, he completed 100 miles in 19 hours. Captain Barclay died in 1854, as a result of being kicked by a horse.

BELL’S BEEZER

Death of Andrew Bell, the Edinburgh engraver. Although only 4 ft 6 in. tall, he insisted on riding the tallest horse in the city, and would dismount with the aid of a stepladder, to the applause of any onlookers. Other aspects of his appearance also drew attention, especially his crooked legs and his enormous nose. If he caught anybody staring at this protuberance, he would put on an even larger nose made from papier mâché. Among his commissions was the illustration of the midwifery article in the early editions of the Encyclopœdia Britannica (of which he himself was the co-publisher). These included graphic depictions of the relevant parts of the female anatomy, which were credited with boosting sales. So shocked was King George III that he ordered that the offending pages be ripped out of every copy of the Encyclopœdia.

1811

WASHING THE BRIDE IN WHISKY

When the poet Shelley eloped with Harriet Westbrook to Edinburgh, where they were married, they were so short of money that they were obliged to put up in inferior lodgings. On the wedding night, their landlord knocked on their door, and announced that it was the local custom for the guests to come in, in the middle of the night, and wash the new bride with whisky. ‘I immediately,’ said Shelley, ‘caught up my brace of pistols, and pointing them both at him, said to him, – “I have had enough of your impertinence; if you give me any more of it I will blow your brains out;” on which he ran or rather tumbled down stairs, and I bolted the doors.’

THE CURSE OF THE GENTRIFIERS

With the proceeds from his successful literary career, Sir Walter Scott bought an estate near Melrose and set to work building a grand Scottish baronial mansion for himself and his collection of relics and antiquities. He named the place Abbotsford, so disguising the fact that the farm that previously stood here had a much earthier, if more authentic, name: Clarty Hole. (Clarty is Scots for ‘mucky’, ‘filthy’.)

In the previous century a similar gentrification took place after William K. Laurie bought an estate in Kirkcudbrightshire, and called it Laurieston. He did not wish to keep the existing name, which would have meant he would have had to style himself Laird of Clachan-pluck.

A similar fit of pride came over the soap magnate William Lever, who, having acquired Lewis in 1918, went on, the following year, to purchase the South Harris estate. But he disliked the fact that a small fishing port in his new fiefdom went by what he thought of as the undignified name of Obbe (from Gaelic An T-ob, ‘the creek’). And so the place was renamed Leverburgh in his honour. Lever puffed himself up further on his ennoblement in 1922, taking the presumptuous title Viscount Leverhulme of the Western Isles.

THE ARGYLL MERMAN

(29 October) Before the sheriff-substitute at Campbeltown, a certain John McIsaac gave the following deposition regarding a creature he had seen on the shores of Kintyre:

The animal upon the whole was between four and five feet long, as near as he could judge . . . it had a head, arms and body down to the middle like a human being, only that the arms were short in proportion to the body which appeared to be about the thickness of that of a young lad, and tapering gradually to the point of the tail . . . for the first time he saw its face, every feature of which he could see distinctly marked, and which, to him, had all the appearance of the face of a human being, with very hollow eyes.

1812

SHEEPY AFREECAWNUS

Death of former Lord Provost Coulter of Edinburgh, a simple but vain man. On one occasion, while replying to a toast to his health, he announced, ‘Although I have the body of a stocking weaver, I have the soul of a Sheepy Afreecawnus!’ It is thought that Coulter was alluding to the Roman general who finally defeated Hannibal, Scipio Africanus.

1814

THE TRIUMPH OF HOPE OVER EXPERIENCE

(July) The European Magazine carried the following report:

Lately, at Glasgow, Mr H. Cain, aged 84, to Mrs Maxwell, of Clark’s Bridge, aged 96. It is the sixth time for the bridegroom, and the ninth time for the bride, being joined in wedlock.

FIVE CENTURIES AFTER BANNOCKBURN

An intemperate Englishman was heard to observe to a minister of the kirk that ‘No man of taste could think of remaining any time in such a country as Scotland.’ To which the clergyman replied: ‘I’ll tak ye to a place no’ far frae Stirling whaur thretty thousand o’ yer countrymen hae been for five hunder years, and they’ve nae thocht o’ leavin’ yet.’

1815

HONOUR PRESERVED AT WATERLOO

(18 June) Sergeant Weir of the Scots Greys had the responsibility of guarding the payroll of the regiment. But at the Battle of Waterloo he requested special dispensation to be allowed go into action with the rest of the regiment. This being granted, Weir entered the fray, but in one of the charges he was mortally wounded. His body was later found on the battlefield. On his forehead the dying man had, in his own blood and with his own finger, written his name. It was supposed that this was to avert any suspicion that he had run off with the regiment’s money.

A survivor of Waterloo, one Corporal Caithness, was later asked if he was not afraid during the battle. ‘Afraid? Why, I was in a’ the battles o’ the Peninsula!’ His interlocutor, fearing he had insulted the corporal, explained that he was enquiring whether he had not been afraid of losing the day. ‘Na, na, I didna fear that,’ Caithness replied. ‘I was only afraid we should a’ be killed afore we had time to win it.’

Finally, the following epitaph is said to be copied from a gravestone somewhere in Scotland:

Here lies the body of Alexander Macpherson.
He was a very extraordinary person;
He was two yards high in his stocking-feet,
And kept his accoutrements very clean and neat;
He was slew
At the Battle of Waterloo;
He was shot by a bullet
Plump through the gullet;
It went in at his throat,
And came out at the back of his coat.

GOD ONLY SPEAKS ENGLISH

After the final defeat of Napoleon, the following conversation between two old women was overheard in Stranraer:

‘Was it no a wonderfu’ thing that the Breetish were aye victorious ower the French in battle?’

‘Not a bit. Dinna ye ken the Breetish aye say their prayers before gaun into battle?’

‘But didna the French say their prayers as weel?’

‘Hoot! jabbering bodies, wha could understan’ them?’

1816

MACNAB AND THE MOUNTAIN DEW

Death of Francis MacNab, 16th Chief of the Clan MacNab, immortalised as The MacNab in Henry Raeburn’s celebrated portrait of 1802, and known as Francis Mor owing to his mighty stature (he stood 6 ft 3 in. in height).

MacNab objected to government interference in what he regarded as his fiefdom, and was complicit in the distilling and smuggling of illicit whisky (‘mountain dew’) in the area round Callander and Loch Venachar, where he sat on the Bench as a justice of the peace. On one occasion he is said to have taken pity on a man arrested on a smuggling charge, and slipped him the key of the storeroom where his confiscated barrel of whisky was held. When the barrel was produced as evidence at the man’s trial, it was found to contain nothing but water. Feigning shock, MacNab dismissed the case, and threatened the excisemen with contempt of court.

On another occasion, MacNab refused to authorise an excise expedition against a convoy of smugglers believed to be passing through Killin at night, on the grounds that the area was well known to be haunted by goblins and fairies.

MacNab was fond of drinking, gambling and womanising (he never married), and as a consequence of which he lived in constrained circumstances and died leaving enormous debts. His nephew Archibald inherited the chiefdom and was obliged to sell the clan lands and emigrate to Canada.

1817

HELEN BECOMES JOHN

A young woman called Helen Oliver from Saltcoats was working as a servant-girl at a farm near West Kilbride. Here she took up with a young ploughman from a neighbouring farm, and the two, who were frequently seen walking together ‘in quiet and sequestered places’, were regarded as lovers. It turned out the ploughman too was a young woman. Early the following year, Helen returned to her parents’ house, where she helped herself to her brother John’s clothes, and walked to Glasgow. There she passed herself off as John, and learnt the trade of a plasterer. Whenever her gender was discovered, she was obliged to move on, but she readily found work, as she was a skilled artisan. One of the places she lived and worked was Johnstone. ‘There,’ wrote a contemporary, unable to get his head round the possibility that human sexual identity is various and multiple, ‘either for amusement or to prevent suspicion and ensure concealment, she courted a young woman, and absolutely carried the joke so far as to induce the girl to leave her service to be married.’ But John was exposed as Helen by a lad from Saltcoats, who recognised her. Helen/John had to move on again, to Kilmarnock. What happened to her/him after that is unknown.

1820

WOMANLY SACRIFICE

During the radical agitations of these times a band of weavers’ wives from Paisley vowed, as a demonstration of their opposition to the reactionary government then in power, to abjure tea and all other items subject to excise duty. John Galt recorded what happened next in his novel The Ayrshire Legatees (1821):

In conformity with this, and actuated by the fine frenzy of the time, they seized their teapots, and marching with them in procession to the bridge, sacrificed them to the goddess of reform, by dashing them, with uplifted arms and intrepid energy, into the river; and afterwards ratified their solemn vows with copious libations of smuggled whisky.

1821

THE LIZARD WITHIN THE STONE

A mason called David Virtue was surprised, when splitting open a large piece of rock from the quarry at Cullaloe in Fife, to find a small lizard embedded in the stone. He was even more surprised when, after a few minutes, the lizard came to life. He reported that it was about an inch and a quarter in length, ‘of a brownish yellow colour, and had a round head, with bright sparkling, projecting eyes’. The hollow within the rock bore an exact impression of the creature. The rock had been dug out from deep within the ground, and there was no fissure through which the lizard could have made its entry. Having been liberated from its prison, it ran around for about half an hour, until the mason saw fit to brush it off the rock and kill it.

1822

THE KING’S LAST ENEMY

During George IV’s visit to Scotland, an ancient Jacobite veteran of the Battle of Culloden called Patrick Grant was presented to the king in Holyroodhouse. The man introduced himself to the king as ‘the last of his enemies’. The king was pleased enough to award Grant a pension for the remaining two years of his life. When Grant died in 1824, aged 111, three pipers accompanied him to his grave, playing some favourite Jacobite tunes.

A TALENT FOR CRUDE PERSONAL ABUSE

(27 March) Sir Alexander Boswell, the son of Dr Johnson’s biographer, died of a wound he had received in a duel the previous day. A reactionary Tory, Boswell had purchased a seat in Parliament for the fee of £1,000 per session. He opposed any measure of parliamentary reform, which he believed was against the interests of Scottish landowners. Despite loyally voting for the Tory government, he was disappointed that the prime minister, Lord Liverpool, continued to ignore him, and his grievance intensified when Liverpool refused to award him a baronetcy. Facing financial difficulties, Boswell decided he could no longer afford £1,000 per session, and in 1821 resigned his seat. A few months later he was awarded his baronetcy, for ‘supporting his Majesty’s ministers in difficult times’.

Boswell had a talent for crude personal abuse, which he directed at his political enemies, the Whigs. A particular target was James Stuart of Dunearn, whom he anonymously vilified in the pages of The Beacon and The Sentinel. These attacks steadily became ‘not only more frequent, but more personal and virulent’, and included a song ‘most offensive and most injurious to his character . . . conveying a charge of cowardice’. Having established the identity of his abuser, Stuart insisted on an apology, and when this was not forthcoming issued a challenge. The two met at Auchtertool, near Kirkcaldy. Boswell fired wide, but Stuart, who had never before handled a pistol, found his mark.

Stuart was charged with murder, but was ably defended by his fellow Whig, the noted advocate Henry (later Lord) Cockburn. Regarding the deceased, Cockburn described how

unfortunately he possessed a gift, often a very fatal one, which gave him an uncommon facility of holding up his adversary to censure or to ridicule. This he had too successfully employed on the present occasion.

Cockburn continued:

With respect to Mr James Stuart, he should prove him to be of an unimpeachable character; and he affirmed that the rank which he held in society, forced him, as it did many others, to appeal to the laws of honour, when no other tribunal on earth could afford satisfaction.

A succession of favourable character witnesses persuaded the judge that Stuart had acted entirely without malice, and the jury duly returned a verdict of ‘not guilty’. According to the court report, ‘The verdict was received with loud cheers from without the doors, and with marked approbation from those within.’

Somewhat ironically, in 1819 Boswell – who left debts of £72,000 – had succeeded in having two old Scottish laws against duelling repealed.

1827

A PAROCHIAL MINISTER

Sir Walter Scott noted in his journal that the minister of Great and Little Cumbrae in the Firth of Clyde offered the following prayer:

Oh Lord, bless and be gracious to the Greater and the Lesser Cumbrays, and in thy mercy do not forget the adjacent islands of Great Britain and Ireland.

‘THE SCOTCH, AS A NATION, ARE PARTICULARLY DISAGREEABLE’

The English essayist William Hazlitt offered the following disobliging opinion of Scotland and the Scots in the Monthly Magazine:

Among ourselves, the Scotch, as a nation, are particularly disagreeable. They hate every appearance of comfort themselves, and refuse it to others. Their climate, their religion and their habits are equally averse to pleasure. Their manners are either distinguished by a fawning sycophance (to gain their own ends, and conceal their natural defects), that makes one sick; or by a morose, unblending callousness, that makes one shudder.

1828

THE DAY IT RAINED FISH

Major Forbes Mackenzie of Fodderty, in Ross-shire, was astonished to find while out walking one spring morning that one of his fields was blanketed with the fry of herring, each young fish measuring between three and four inches in length.

1830

THE STONED MERMAID OF BENBECULA

It was reported that the body of a small mermaid was washed up on the shores of Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides. Apparently the creature had been fatally injured by a local boy throwing stones. The local sheriff saw that the body was properly buried, but there was no funeral service. Although the island has both Catholic and Protestant inhabitants, it was presumably not possible in the case of a mermaid to determine whether she kicked with the left or the right foot.

1832

NOTHING HAPPENED

A house in Culross, Fife, bears a sign with the following legend: ‘In 1832 on this spot nothing happened.’

1835

REFUSAL TO FIGHT DUEL JUDGED A MARK OF INSANITY

A Quaker preacher called Catherine Watson visited the small Shetland island of Papa Stour. There she encountered the Hon. Edwin Lindsay, an officer in the Indian army who had been confined on the island since 1809 by his father, Alexander Lindsay, 6th Earl of Balcarres. The Earl had concluded his son was insane after he had refused a challenge to fight a duel. The preacher took pity on the prisoner, finding him neither ‘mischievous nor insane’, and wrote to his brother, the 7th Earl, to inform him of the case, and to beg for his release. She received no reply. But with the assistance of Captain George Pilkington it was arranged for the Hon. Edwin to be brought before the sheriff of the islands, who agreed that there were no legal grounds for his detention.

On attaining his freedom, the Hon. Edwin wrote to the newspapers to describe how he had been ‘struck, maltreated and abused’ by his keeper. His supporters explained why he had refused to fight the duel:

. . . he did not feel disposed to rush into the presence of the Almighty, merely to satisfy the splenetic feelings of a military martinet; nor did he himself desire to send a fellow creature to his last account unprepared . . .

Travelling to London with the preacher, the Hon. Edwin went to court to secure the ‘small patrimony’ to which he believed he was entitled, and in this he was successful. After his liberation, it transpired that his twin brother Richard had also been incarcerated on one of the remoter Orkney islands, allegedly dying ‘in a state of complete imbecility’. But there was no inquest. The Hon. Edwin himself lived on for another 30 years.

1840

THE GHOST BIRD OF ST KILDA

The last great auk in the British Isles was captured on St Kilda. The locals thought it was a ghost, and blamed it for the poor weather they had been experiencing. So they killed it and buried it under a pile of stones.

1842

DANGEROUS DRIVING IN THE GORBALS

The Dumfriesshire blacksmith Kirkpatrick Macmillan, known as ‘Daft Pate’ by his neighbours, and remembered by us as the inventor of the bicycle, pedalled all the way to Glasgow. There, travelling at a reckless 8 mph through the Gorbals, he knocked down a small girl. Although she was only grazed, Macmillan was arrested and brought before the magistrate. The latter fined him five shillings (although he may have paid the fine himself, so struck was he by Macmillan’s invention). The press was more cynical, opining that ‘This invention will not supersede the railway.’

1844

ALLART’S HAPPY FAMILY

The exhibit so-named was put on show at No. 63 Princes Street, Edinburgh, an advertisement advising the public that said happy family consisted

of upwards of 100 ANIMALS, of an Opposite Nature, All Living and Feeding in One Apartment. The following are a few of the Collection, namely Rats, Cats, Ferret, Coatimundi, Squirrel, Hawks, Owls, Pigeons, Crows, Jackdaws, Magpies, Starlings, Blackbirds, Chickens, Monkeys, Hedgehog, Sea-Gull, Guinea Pigs, Goose, Parrots, &c, &c too numerous to mention. Most wonderful to see how they all agree in one large cage.

BOSJEMANS EAT LIVE RATS IN GLASGOW

Meanwhile, Glasgow flocked to an entertainment featuring ‘Bosjemans’ – i.e. Bushmen from southern Africa. Although nearly 100,000 people paid a penny per head to watch the show, it was rumoured that the Bosjemans were actually Irish labourers dressed in skins and feathers, and that their incomprehensible utterances were in fact Gaelic. The high point of the performance seems to have been the consumption of live rats by one of the players.

1845

ACADEMIC DOES FOR FAIRIES

The New Statistical Account of Scotland records that a late Principal of Aberdeen University had contributed ‘by his benevolent exertions in an eminent degree to the expulsion of fairies from the Highland Hills’.

1847

SURGEON INADVERTENTLY REMOVES MAN’S TESTICLES

(7 December) Death of the Edinburgh-trained surgeon Robert Liston, known as ‘the Great Northern Anatomist’. In the age before anaesthesia his speed with the scalpel and the bone saw were highly valued, and he would encourage his watching students to time him on their pocket watches. On one occasion he amputated a man’s leg in two and a half minutes, although he inadvertently also removed the man’s testicles at the same time. The patient later died of hospital gangrene, as did Liston’s assistant, who lost his fingers to the surgeon’s scalpel during the same frenzied operation. To cap it all, Liston in his haste somehow slashed the coat of a fellow surgeon who was observing the proceedings, and who, convinced that he had been stabbed, promptly died of fright.

EAST–WEST RIVALRY

Following the Ordnance Survey measurements establishing that Ben Nevis and not Ben Macdui was Britain’s highest mountain, the Earl of Fife, on whose land that latter hill was located, declared that he was to be buried on its summit under a vast cairn that would take its height from 4,295 feet to something in excess of Ben Nevis’s 4,406 feet. The plan was never put into action.

1848

A DOSE OF THE WRONG SALTS

(14 June) Death of Donald Robertson, at the age of 63. The inscription on his gravestone in Eshaness, Shetland, reads:

He was a peaceable, quiet man, and to all appearances a sincere Christian. His death was much regretted which was caused by the stupidity of Laurence Tulloch of Clothister (Sullom) who sold him nitre instead of Epsom Salts by which he was killed in the space of five hours after taking a dose of it.

1850

A ‘GOOD-HUMOURED FROLIC’ IN LINLITHGOW

Sir William Don, whose profligacy had lost him his inherited fortune and obliged him to pursue a career on the stage, appeared at Linlithgow Sheriff Court. There he faced three charges: one of malicious mischief, one of wanton and reckless mischief, and one of breach of the peace. This embarrassing circumstance arose from the events of the night of 29–30 November the previous year, following the dinner of the Linlithgow and Stirlingshire Hunt at the Star and Garter in Linlithgow. After leaving the inn, Sir William and several of his equally well-refreshed friends – including Sir John Dick Lauder, Professor Lizars, Captain Stirling Stewart, Lord Gilbert Kennedy, Mr Ramsay of Barton and Sir Alexander Gibson Maitland of Cliftonhall – made their way to the station to catch the Edinburgh train.

The station master, a Mr Young, was alerted to their arrival by the sound of breaking glass. Mr Young was then confronted by a number of gentlemen demanding tickets, and while he was attending to them, Captain Stewart vaulted over the counter, extinguished a gas lamp, and started to play with the telegraph wires. On being requested by Mr Young to desist, the Captain threatened to beat him with his cane, although all he managed to do was to rattle the official’s hat with a ruler. At this point, Sir William barged into the back office, extinguishing another light. This inspired his friends to play a game involving turning off every lamp they could find, while singing at the tops of their voices. Mr Young and a number of porters rushed around after them attempting to re-light the lamps. While this was going on, Sir William started fiddling with the telegraph, turning the handles and ringing the bell. By this time the floor was strewn with broken glass, torn notices and a number of boiled potatoes that Sir William had pocketed at the Star and Garter.

At this point, Lord Kennedy demanded that Mr Young sell him a ticket. The latter requested that His Lordship be patient, while they lit the lamps. Patience was a virtue lacking at this moment in Lord Kennedy, who promptly struck Mr Young over the head with his cane. Mr Young grabbed the cane, and turned it on his erstwhile assailant. Showing considerable initiative, one of the porters, a Mr Masterton, went out onto the platform and rang the hand bell to indicate that the train was approaching. At this signal, all the gentlemen rushed onto the platform, while Masterton dodged back inside, and locked the door. Masterton had tricked them, and the gentlemen were obliged to wait for ten minutes in the cold for the actual arrival of the train, their barrage of shouting and hammering on the locked door having failed to move the station staff to relent. When the train did arrive, the gentlemen piled aboard, taking with them the hand bell. Mr Young requested its return, explaining that the train could not depart unless he rang it. His request was met with ‘an extraordinary volley of oaths’, amounting to a refusal.

Nevertheless, no doubt to Mr Young’s relief, the train did depart, and the gentlemen (with the exception of Professor Lizars, who slept throughout) then set about vandalising the two compartments that they occupied. By the time they reached Edinburgh and alighted, the guard, William Bassett, found that many of the fittings – including rugs, curtains, brass rods and straps – had been thrown out of the window.

At this point Sir John Dick Lauder returned to the platform, and asked the guard if he had seen his hat (presumably having failed to notice that his companions had thrown it out of the window, along with all the fittings). Bassett said that in view of the damage, he would have to detain Sir John until he received further orders, and blocked his attempt to escape. Two policemen at Waverley Station declined to become involved, as the damage had been perpetrated outwith their jurisdiction. However, when Sir John took Bassett by the lapels and began to shake him, one of the policemen interposed his body, round which Sir John attempted to land kicks and punches on the unfortunate guard, who later testified that three punches had reached their mark, while a boot had struck him in the groin, resulting in a feeling of nausea that had persisted for two hours.

The upshot was that some weeks later Sir John found himself before the Sheriff Court in Edinburgh, and was found guilty of assault. The Sheriff said that, in passing sentence, he had a difficult task, as he had known Sir John since infancy. He gave him a choice: pay a fine of £10, or spend 20 days behind bars. Sir John opted for the fine.

Sir William got off even more lightly at his trial in Linlithgow. He alone was chosen to face the charges, as he was deemed to be by far the soberest of the gentlemen involved. His defence counsel described the evening’s events as merely a ‘good-humoured frolic’, and after weighing all the evidence the jury returned a verdict of ‘not proven’ on all three charges. The Sheriff was, he confessed, thus relieved of the ‘very painful’ duty of handing down a sentence on the young baronet. He was, however, obliged to issue an admonishment, and he duly told Sir William that he hoped that his conduct in future might never again ‘place him in such a position as he had occupied that day’.

Sir William continued his career on the stage, and in later life specialised in taking female comic roles. He died suddenly in 1862 of an aortic aneurysm while touring Tasmania with a burlesque of Kenilworth, in which he played the part of Queen Elizabeth I.

1851

THE COW OF PROPHECY

Having fallen into ruin, Fairburn Tower, between Muir of Ord and Strathpeffer, was used by a local farmer to store hay. One day one of his cows followed a trail of hay up the stairs of the tower, but then became stuck at the top. Unable to descend, the unfortunate creature was obliged to give birth to a calf in this lofty location, thus, it was widely said, fulfilling one of the prophecies of the Brahan Seer:

The day will come when the MacKenzies of Fairburn shall lose their entire possessions; their castle will become uninhabited and a cow shall give birth to a calf in the uppermost chamber of the tower.

The Brahan Seer, also known as Coinneach Odhar, was a somewhat murky figure who was said to have offered many predictions about the future in the 16th or 17th centuries, although his historical reality is uncertain.

The farmer kept the cow atop the tower for five days, charging visitors to witness this prodigious event.

1852

A DUCAL PEACOCK

(18 August) Death of Alexander Hamilton, 10th Duke of Hamilton. At the age of 15 he had been painted by Joshua Reynolds with long hair and open-necked lacy shirt, and his subsequent career gave him many opportunities to dress up, his posts and honorifics including Ambassador to the Court of St Petersburg, Lord Lieutenant of Lanarkshire, Lord High Steward at the coronations of William IV and Victoria, Knight of the Garter, Hereditary Keeper of Holyrood-house and Grand Master of the Freemasons in Scotland.

After Hamilton’s death an obituary noted that ‘timidity and variableness of temperament prevented his rendering much service to, or being much relied on by his party [the Whigs] . . . With a great predisposition to over-estimate the importance of ancient birth . . . he well deserved to be considered the proudest man in England’. Indeed, such was his family pride that he considered himself, as the descendant of the Regent Arran, as the rightful heir to the throne of Scotland. A contemporary remembered that even in old age the Duke ‘was always dressed in a military laced undress coat, tights and Hessian boots, &c’, while another acquaintance remarked on how his fingers were covered in gold rings.

The Duke prepared for his own death well in advance. In 1836 he had acquired an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus ostensibly for the British Museum but in fact for his own interment, while in 1842 he began the construction of the immense and grandiose Hamilton Mausoleum. In accordance with his wishes, his body was mummified after death, but when it came to placing him in the sarcophagus, a difficulty arose. The Duke was of considerably greater stature than the princess for whom the sarcophagus had originally been made, so it was found necessary to cut off His Grace’s feet and place them beside him in his grave.

1853

LAIRD PREVENTS PROFANATION OF SABBATH BY DAY-TRIPPERS

(22 August) Day-trippers from Glasgow attempting to disembark from the paddle steamer Emperor at the resort of Garelochhead were informed by the local laird, Sir James Colquhoun, that they could not do so, as it was a Sunday. The day-trippers were inclined to ignore this prohibition, so Sir James ordered his keepers to prevent the disembarkation by force. There was something of a ruckus, ending in a defeat for the righteous. However, Sir James took the matter to the courts, who banned cruises on the Sabbath for a number of years.

1854

AN ARITHMETICAL PRODIGY

The North British Daily Mail carried an account of an astonishing arithmetical prodigy. This was the eight- or nine-year-old Margaret Cleland, daughter of a shoemaker in Darvel, Ayrshire. Her rapidity in mental calculation astonished her teacher and her classmates alike. Two of the latter reported how, for the bet of a penny, she had multiplied 123,456,789 by 987,654,321 in less than half a minute (they had laboriously checked her answer). She, however, refused to accept her winnings.

1859

THE SPEECH THAT NEVER WAS

(25 January) On Burns Night in the poet’s centennial year, John Stuart Blackie, translator of Goethe’s Faust and Professor of Greek at Edinburgh University, was asked to make a speech. Seeing that he was to be the last speaker of the evening, he was inclined to refuse the invitation, given that no one would listen to him, for the company would be tired and in its cups by then. But he was reassured that his every word would be attended upon. A grand speech, he was told, was required for such a grand occasion, so he must ‘build it up architecturally, like Cicero, Demosthenes, and the orators of old’. Blackie himself picks up the story:

Like a good-natured fellow as I was, I wrote out a long speech. Well, at the dinner, people soon got tired, and the most eloquent men were not listened to. When it came to my turn I saw there was no chance; so I merely said, ‘I propose so and so; goodbye,’ and sat down. But next day, there in all the papers was the great speech that I had never delivered a word of – not only a whole column of type, but sprinkled with ‘hear-hears’, ‘hurrahs’ and all that sort of thing. It was the greatest lie that ever was printed; and you will find it there, making me immortal to the end of the world, wherever the name of Burns is known.

Professor Blackie never wrote down a speech again in his lifetime, preferring to speak extempore whenever called upon.

1861

WE ARE NOT AMUSED

(8 October) Queen Victoria stayed the night at the inn at Dalwhinnie, and was less than pleased. ‘Unfortunately there was hardly anything to eat,’ she wrote in her journal, ‘and there was only tea, and two miserable starved Highland chickens, without any potatoes! No pudding, and no fun!’

PLUCK

(24 November) One of the rickety old tenements that lined the High Street of Edinburgh collapsed, causing the deaths of 35 people. The only survivor was a boy called Joseph McIvor. Trapped under the rubble, he kept up the spirits of his rescuers with the adjuration, ‘Heave awa, lads, I’m no deid yet.’ The building that was constructed on the site the following year became known as ‘Heave Awa House’.

1864

THE LAST PUBLIC HANGING

George Bryce, ‘the Ratho Murderer’, achieved the dubious distinction of becoming the last man to be hanged in public in Edinburgh. He had slit the throat of a nursemaid called Jane Seton, who had advised her fellow servant Isabella Brown to break off her affair with Bryce before her reputation was ruined. Bryce, who was known to be ‘simple’, was hanged on the Lawnmarket before a jeering crowd of 26,000 people. The execution did not go according to plan, however, as the hangman, who had been drafted in from York, miscalculated the length of rope required. As a consequence, Bryce’s neck was not instantly broken, and instead he took some 40 minutes to die by slow strangulation. This turned the crowd’s wrath against the hapless hangman, who required police protection. Thereafter the Edinburgh authorities declared that in future all executions should be conducted behind closed doors. Today a pub close to the site bears a memorable name: The Last Drop.

1865

END OF THE WORLD PREDICTED – AGAIN

Charles Piazzi Smyth, the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, conducted detailed measurements of the Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt. He concluded that it was designed using a unit he called the ‘pyramid-inch’, equal to 1.001 British inches and based on the biblical cubit. He also asserted that the architect of the Great Pyramid must have been an Old Testament patriarch, perhaps the priest Melchizedek, who had been guided by God. The inch being therefore divinely ordained, Piazzi Smyth was confirmed in his fervent opposition to an official proposal made in 1864 to introduce the metric system into the UK – for was not the metre and all its kin the spawn of atheistical French radicals? In his researches, Piazzi Smyth found many ‘significant’ measurements in the structure of the Great Pyramid: for example, the perimeter of the base measured 365,000 inches, 1,000 times the number of days in the year, while the height of the pyramid in inches bore a numerical relationship to the distance to the Sun measured in miles. Piazzi Smyth believed that embedded in these and other measurements, numbers and ratios were a collection of prophecies, including a prediction that the world would come to an end in 1881. When this failed to occur, he issued a succession of alternative dates. The Royal Society declined to publish his paper on the matter, and this and other disappointments led to his resignation as Astronomer Royal for Scotland in 1888.

1866

THE DEVIL’S SHARE

The belief that the soul of the first corpse to be buried in a new graveyard would be taken by the Devil caused problems when a new site was opened in Aberdeenshire. Quite simply, the locals refused to bury their dead there. The difficulty was resolved when a tramp was found dead on the road. As no one claimed him, he was duly interred. Thereafter, people were quite happy to be buried in the new graveyard, confident that their souls would be safe.

1868

A CURE FOR MADNESS

It was claimed that a ‘madman’ was cured after some ancient rituals were performed on Isle Maree in Loch Maree. St Maree or Maelrubha had become conflated with the old Celtic god Mourie, and on the island there is a well and a tree sacred to this local deity. The rituals, performed from time immemorial, involve offerings of milk, sacrifices of bulls, and the insertion of coins into the bark of the tree. This last tradition was upheld by Queen Victoria when she visited the island in 1877.

1872

DRUNK IN CHARGE OF A COW

The Licensing Act made it an offence to be intoxicated while in charge of a cow, horse or steam engine in Scotland.

1873

THE RIGHT TO ROAM

Death of William Dobson of Galashiels, a man certain of his rights. One day, while he walked in Gala Parks, he was hailed by the laird, who demanded what right he had to be there. ‘Od, man,’ replied Dobson, ‘I hae walkit here lang afore ye was born, and was never found faut wi’, and I’m no gaun to be stoppit noo.’

1879

A REMNANT OF BELIEF IN WITCHCRAFT

A man in Dingwall was sent to prison for attacking an old woman he claimed was a witch. He had concluded that he could only break the curse he believed she had placed upon his fishing boat – which as a consequence failed to land any fish – if he shed her blood.

1880

MANY A TRUE WORD . . .

Grand Duke Alexis of Russia visited Scotland to attend the launch of the steam yacht Livadia, which had been commissioned by Tsar Alexander II. In the course of his speech at the John Elder yard in Govan, Grand Duke Alexis described Glasgow as ‘the centre of the intelligence of England’.

1884

HIGH DUDGEON

Two men from Lewis, having fallen out with their local minister, set sail for the small, remote island of North Rona. The last inhabitant, a shepherd, had left the island 40 years before, the place having been devastated by an invasion of rats in the 17th century. Within a year the exiles from Lewis were both dead.

1887

HIGHLY DEVELOPED BREASTS OBSERVED IN LOCH MORAR

This year saw the first sighting of ‘Morag’, a monster supposed to haunt Loch Morar, Scotland’s deepest loch. Numerous sightings have subsequently been reported. In some accounts the creature is something like a mermaid, with flowing hair and ‘highly developed breasts’; in others it is a ‘black heap or ball’ presaging the death of a local, possibly by drowning. In a 1948 report it was described as a ‘peculiar serpent-like creature, about 20 feet long’.

The closest encounter came at about 9 p.m. on 16 August 1969. Duncan McDonnel and William Simpson had been having a day on the loch. McDonnel was at the wheel of their motor boat, and later described what he saw:

I heard a splash or disturbance in the water astern of us. I looked up and saw about twenty yards behind us this creature coming directly after us in our wake. It only took a matter of seconds to catch up with us. It grazed the side of the boat, I am quite certain this was unintentional. When it struck the boat seemed to come to a halt or at least slow down. I grabbed the oar and was attempting to fend it off, my one fear being that if it got under the boat it might capsize it.

Simpson added his account:

As we were sailing down the loch in my boat we were suddenly disturbed and frightened by a thing that surfaced behind us. We watched it catch us up then bump into the side of the boat, the impact sent a kettle of water I was heating onto the floor. I ran into the cabin to turn the gas off as the water had put the flame out. Then I came out of the cabin to see my mate trying to fend the beast off with an oar, to me he was wasting his time. Then when I seen the oar break I grabbed my rifle and quickly putting a bullet in it fired in the direction of the beast. I watched it slowly sink away from the boat and that was the last I seed of it.

The creature had by this time grown to some 25 or 30 feet, and possessed three humps and a head said to have been a foot wide.

1891

THE LOCHABER MATTERHORN

A correspondent wrote to the Glasgow Herald bemoaning the fact that Ben Nevis, Britain’s highest mountain, was so lacking in distinction in terms of shape. Indeed, from most directions the Ben appears to be no more than a flat-backed lump. To remedy this, the correspondent suggested that vast amounts of rock be dynamited from neighbouring peaks and piled on top of the Ben ‘to form a more lofty and graceful summit to the hill, bringing it to the full height of 5,000 feet, and giving the British tourist a finer mountain to look at and to ascend; the view would be superb’. Happily, the Ben was saved from being turned into a slag heap by the indifference of the public.

1892

OUR LOST LAUREATE

On the death of the poet laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the Dundee rhymester William McGonagall walked 60 miles in the rain to Balmoral, intending to ask Queen Victoria to appoint him to the recently vacated post. He had, he claimed, penned much fine royal verse, such as ‘An Ode to the Queen on her Jubilee Year’:

And as this is her first Jubilee year,
And will be her last, I rather fear:
Therefore, sound drums and trumpets cheerfully,
Until the echoes are heard o’er land and sea.

On his arrival at Balmoral, he was informed Her Majesty was not in residence.