Films, books and folklore have maintained the fame of many nineteenth-century lawmen. The names of Pinkerton and Wyatt Earp are well known; in the 1860s Edinburgh had detective James McLevy, while the fictional Sherlock Holmes spawned a huge genre of stories based on brainpower and detection. Dundee, however, also had a man who stood out against the underworld and although he has now disappeared from public memory, his name can still be found in the records of faded court cases and in many newspaper columns. His name was Patrick Mackay.
Before the 1824 Dundee Police Act introduced professional policemen to the streets of Dundee, the streets were guarded by night watchmen, the much-derided ‘Charlies’ who were often recruited from the aging ranks of paid-off soldiers. These men were backed by the elected constables and the far more professional servants of the courts. There were two levels of the latter: Sheriff Officers and Messengers-at-Arms. While Sheriff Officers had local responsibility and could pursue warrants within the burgh of Dundee, Messengers-at-Arms were officers of the Court of Session, with the responsibility of serving legal documents and enforcing court orders across the entire country. Patrick Mackay was one of the latter. He had a commission as a sheriff officer, but with his wider remit, was also able to pursue and arrest criminals all across Scotland.
The position is ancient; officially Mackay was an Officer of the King, but since at least 1510 the Lord Lyon King of Arms has been their ultimate controller, and he had a fixed scale of fees set by an Act of Sedurant passed by the Court of Session, Scotland’s supreme Civil Court. Patrick Mackay, then, was a powerful official, and as an energetic man, he was arguably a dangerous enemy of Dundee’s criminal population.
Born in August 1772 to Patrick Mackay and his wife Isabel Meek, Mackay was a native of Dundee and spent his life working for the peace of the burgh. He married comparatively late, on 21st November 1818 when, according to the Old Parish Register, he chose Anne Scott of Auchterhouse as his wife. Their marriage was not to last, though, and Anne died not three years later. Her gravestone in the Howff is still as moving as it must have been to Mackay when he set it up. ‘Erected by Patrick Mackay, Messenger at Arms Dundee,’ it says, ‘and dedicated to the memory of Anne Scott, his spouse, who died the 29th May 1821.’
After the loss of his wife, Patrick Mackay seems to have redoubled his efforts to quieten the turbulent underworld of Dundee. He lived in Methodist Close in the Overgate, the heart of Dundee, and was also active in the commercial world, holding shares in the shipping that was the lifeblood of Dundee. However it was his crime-fighting skills that made him well known and probably well-hated by the seething Dundee underworld. Despite his position, his pay was not always remitted promptly. For instance, there is an entry in the Collectors Book in Dundee Archives for 19th July 1831 when he still had not been paid the £2 16/6 that was due to him for apprehending two smugglers, David Dick junior and James Paterson senior, in 1823.
Mackay’s work was surprisingly varied. For instance, in April 1823 he was called to control a prize fight in the west end of Dundee. The combatants were to be a heckler and a baker, and thousands of people gathered in expectation of blood and gore and bravery. Patrick Mackay brought three peace officers with him to control the unruly thousands, but when only one of the fighters turned up the throng dissipated reasonably quietly and his services were not required.
A few months later, in August of 1823, Mackay swooped down on one of Dundee’s most notorious characters, a man named Doig, but who was better known by the name of ‘Thiefy’. Doig was a well-known petty thief, in and out of trouble, and when Mackay searched him he found a collection of false keys in his pockets. Thiefy Doig was hustled to jail, where he belonged. In October Mackay was busy again. There had been a robbery at the house of Colonel Chalmers, one of Dundee’s elite, and the forces of authority were under pressure to catch the burglars. One man named James Ferguson was caught and thrown into Dundee’s jail, but when he turned King’s Evidence and named his accomplices, the others were hunted down.
Three of the thieves were speedily caught and lodged in various jails, but one must have had a loose tongue, for two women, Mrs Cook and Mrs Wallace, were implicated for receiving the stolen property. Cook was quickly captured, but Wallace fled to Edinburgh. Patrick Mackay caught the packet boat and traced her. When he reached her and declared her under arrest, Wallace had a petticoat, some shifts and a shawl that belonged to Mrs Chalmers, so Mackay escorted her back to Dundee. The whole operation had been neat and effective; it proved how efficient Dundee’s crime detection service could be, but it did little for crime prevention.
Only two days after Wallace had been deposited in jail, Mackay caught two other women named Robertson and Mary Thomson strolling the streets. Both had been outlawed for creating counterfeit coins, so Mackay quietly locked them up.
He had barely settled their paperwork when there was further trouble as five of Dundee’s most notorious criminals escaped from the Town House jail. During this incident, Mackay was in Forfar, but a rider notified him what had happened and he began to hunt for the absconders. Eventually, he found them, but more on this particular story later.
Save for the constant but necessary routine paperwork of his office and recapturing and incarcerating the banished Thiefy Doig, Mackay seems to have enjoyed a fairly quiet period over the next few months, but in June 1824 he was off on his travels again. A female pickpocket had charmed her way into the company of two visiting farmers, smiled sweetly, patted them fondly and relieved them of their pocket books and all their money.
When one of the farmers ran to the authorities for help, Patrick Mackay asked around his informants. Contacts on the fringe of the Dundee underworld were a vital component of the King’s Messenger’s armoury; Mackay discovered the pickpocket and her friend had boarded Quentin Durward, one of the steam packet boats that sailed between Dundee and Leith. Catching the next boat, Mackay apprehended both women and kept them secure in the police office in Edinburgh, from where they were brought back to Dundee and jailed.
Not all Mackay’s arrests involved a hectic dash across Scotland, however. Most were routine, such as the incident on Thursday 8th September 1824 when he again picked up previously-incarcerated David Scott, who had returned to Dundee despite a sentence of banishment. Two weeks later he arrested another well-known criminal, Rose Bruce, for exactly the same reason.
In October 1824 Mackay reached the peak of his professional career. Dundee was in a fervour about creating a new uniformed police force and debating who should be the first superintendent. It was not surprising that Patrick Mackay’s name should be mentioned and for a while it seemed that Dundee’s most energetic peace officer would be given the position of head of Dundee’s police. However, he was not selected for the post as he was already in a position of responsibility. Apparently he was too good at his present job to be spared. It would have been fascinating to see the impact an experienced and dedicated officer could have had on Dundee, but that was not to be.
The second half of 1825 was destined to be one of the busiest periods in Mackay’s career. On 2nd June he arrested David George, who was charged with attempted rape on the Coupar Angus Road. During the same week, Thomas Abbott, an ex-watchman turned weaver, was accused of stealing twenty spindles of yarn from the bleach field of Turnbull and Company. Abbott defended himself vigorously, claiming that the mill foreman had sold him the yarn, but while Mackay had not arrested Abbott, he did capture William Stewart, who bought the yarn. On 23rd June Mackay was again busy when he hunted four men, John Robertson, David Lamb, John Smith and George Thomson who had assaulted David Simpson of Wester Gourday near Longforgan Market. Leaving Dundee and travelling west, Mackay scooped three of them up, and completed the task by capturing the fourth, John Robertson, at Kingoodie.
Despite this constant run of success and his name being linked to the police superintendent’s job, Mackay found himself in trouble. Only a few days after Mackay arrested Robertson, John Home, the superintendent of police, accused him of employing Jeffrey Goddart, a serving police officer, as his assistant. While Goddart promptly resigned, Mackay argued that Goddart had only worked for him in his spare time, and never when he should have been on duty. Home pulled strings and found Goddart a job as town officer in Cupar, but the situation had revealed a tension between the new, raw police force and the established body of peace officers.
Despite this newly created division, Mackay had another success in July 1825, when he arrested Mrs Malcolm of Bucklemaker Wynd and Mrs Anderson of Nethergate for stealing and resetting yarn. In a textile town, such thefts were perhaps not unexpected.
On 11th November of that year, 1825, Mackay himself was involved in a violent situation. Together with his assistant and solicitor David Ramsay Forrest, and the Sheriff Clerk Depute, James Jones, he visited Mr Myles at the inn at Mile House, Lochee, to witness a disposition being signed by a duo of solicitors, James Lees and Ramsay Forrest. However, when there was a barrage of noise from an upstairs room, the landlord, Mr Souter, sent his maid to ask Mackay to remove ‘four blackguards’ who refused to leave. As soon as Mackay entered the room, three or four men attacked both him and Mrs Souter, who was also present.
Of the men in the upstairs room, three Lochee weavers, Robert McGavin, Andrew Taylor and John Gray, were the most aggressive. When McGavin knocked Mrs Souter aside, Mackay shouted, ‘Be still, that won’t do,’ and tried to intervene but had to block McGavin’s attack on him. Moving from defence to offence, Mackay grabbed hold of McGavin’s jacket, pushed him to the ground and knelt on him.
Hearing the commotion upstairs, Ramsay Forrest grabbed a pair of fireside tongs and rushed to help. He arrived in time to see Andrew Taylor attack Mackay, delivering a swift punch to the face and thumping him on the head and back until he released McGavin. Forrest, who seems to have been a handy man to have around, smashed the tongs into Taylor’s shoulder. Enraged, Taylor closed with him and they fought, with Forrest receiving brutal cuts on the face and one of his knees.
At this stage Mackay was on the ground, and a man described as wearing a ‘sailor’s suit’ was attacking him with a sharp object that, according to James Lees, ‘peeled’ the skin from his fingers. Mackay struggled free and escaped downstairs, bleeding heavily, as Taylor, having finished with Ramsay Forrest, turned his attention to Jones, the Sheriff Clerk Depute.
As quickly as it had erupted, the disturbance was over. The weavers poured down the stairs and into the street, leaving Mackay’s party to lick their wounds. Mackay was probably the most badly hurt, with three bleeding gashes on his head and another on his hand. James Lees had a bone-deep cut on his forehead; the solicitor David Ramsay also had a cut on his forehead and another on the top of his head, while Mrs Souter was understandably upset by the turmoil in her house. However, the excitement was not yet complete. Almost as soon as they were outside, McGavin and his band returned, hammering at the outside door with great stones as the people inside debated what was best to do.
Despite Mackay’s advice not to let them in, Robert Souter opened the door. Strangely, when the weavers returned the atmosphere had altered completely. After spending about quarter of an hour trying to kick pieces out of Mackay and his colleagues, now they said they wanted to come to some sort of agreement. Lees turned them down, but according to Mrs Souter, all the men were ‘good billies’ – good friends – and Mackay paid for half a mutchkin of whisky. It is an interesting scenario, but one that is difficult to believe, given that Mackay’s wounds seeped blood for some hours.
When the case came to court in April 1826, the defence lawyer attempted to lay the blame on Mackay, but the jury disagreed, and Lord Pitmully awarded Taylor nine months in prison, with Gray and McGavin receiving six months each.
After the excitements of 1825, the following year was comparatively quiet for Mackay, but there were still moments of drama. Around the time he gave evidence about his own assault, Mackay escorted the wife-murderer David Balfour to Perth for the Circuit Court. While others due to stand trial travelled by the steam packet, Mackay took Balfour in a chaise, passing crowds of people who had come to watch him go. In this case, the crowd were full of sympathy, for they knew Balfour had been sorely tested before he killed his wife.
That year Mackay also arrested Mrs Swan, an elderly midwife charged with assisting with an abortion, and he had an interesting episode in the Nethergate. The police had been watching John Robertson, whose house was notorious for the disreputable crowd that gathered there, but they did not have enough proof to arrest him. Then in early December of 1826 there was a robbery in Auchtermuchty in Fife and a man named Robert Anderson was arrested and placed in the jail in Cupar. Anderson mentioned Robertson’s name to Inglis, the local jailer, who in turn came to Dundee and approached Mackay.
Mackay and Inglis searched Robertson’s house very thoroughly, with Robertson watching, knowing that previous searches by the police had found nothing. This time, however, Mackay was on the job. He found a secret cupboard, full of watches, silk handkerchiefs and other portable valuables. When he saw his hoard was discovered, Robertson made a quick dash to climb out the window, but he was stopped, and along with his wife, Elizabeth, and a certain David Walker, was escorted to Dundee jail. The material Mackay and Inglis found was later identified as having been stolen in Auchtermuchty and St Andrews.
Strangely, it was again the closing months of 1827 that saw Mackay break out of the normal routine of his job. As Messenger-at-Arms he was responsible for ensuring that convicted prisoners were taken to whatever jail they had been consigned to. On 4th October 1827 Mackay and two of his assistants were escorting three men onto the smack Glasgow to be taken to English hulks prior to being sent to Australia. All six had to board a small boat that would take them to the smack, and as the convicts were handcuffed together, they had to step on the gunwale of the boat simultaneously. The sudden weight capsized the boat, sending all six into the water of the wet dock. It was nearly an execution rather than transportation. Fastened together, the convicts could not escape, but fortunately one of Mackay’s assistants was an excellent swimmer and dived under the water to unlock the handcuffs. Sodden wet but alive, the convicts were dragged on board the smack and Mackay had another small adventure to add to his list.
In 1828 there were a number of minor incidents. In May Mackay sent one of his assistants to arrest Alexander Gordon, an Auchterhouse smuggler. Gordon was a daring man who had been arrested and held in Forfar Gaol, preparatory to standing trial at the High Court. Rather than face the judge, he escaped and remained free until Mackay’s man put on the handcuffs. Three weeks later Mackay picked up four men accused of assaulting a seaman walking along the Perth Road. It was a fortnight before he learned that two of the men were actually trying to save the seaman from the others, and the case collapsed when the victim returned to sea.
After that frustrating experience, Mackay’s next arrest must have given him more satisfaction, when he brought in John Dean, a millwright from Feus of Carnoustie, accused of forging an £18 bill. At that period Dundee was notorious for supposed lodging houses, a name that was a cover for brothels, and it was often these places that were notorious hideouts for thieves. In September 1828 Mackay made a tiny dent in the proliferation when he travelled to Perth to arrest a young prostitute named Easson, who had robbed one of her customers that March. In July the following year he made a significant arrest when he captured a man named Low who had assaulted and attempted to rape a farmer’s wife. In 1830 he arrested Billy Cook in Ogilvie’s Close, Fish Street. Cook was a noted forger and Mackay scooped up over £52 in forged silver money, but frustratingly the sheriff freed Cook because there was no proof he had actually made the coins or used them as currency.
That was Mackay’s last major arrest. He died of consumption on 9th August 1833, aged just forty, and the criminal fraternity of Dundee would have breathed their relief if they did not have other worries. The professional beat bobby, with his top hat, rattle and truncheon, was now patrolling the streets, and if the police had a lot to learn about crime prevention, they were growing better every year.