Ill Met by Gaslight: Five Edinburgh Murders Read online

  `A prison is the blackest and wickedest place in the world. Many a poor boy is brought to the gallows at last because his first offence is punished by imprisonment. This teaches him evil ways, whereas if he had been well flogged and sent home to his parents, he might have turned out a good man. I cannot say my bad habits were learned in jail, but I am sure they were confirmed there.’

  There is an antithetical force in the last sentence of which Cockburn himself might not have been ashamed. If style is the man, it is not surprising that Haggart appears regularly to have made an engaging impression; that is how he writes also.

  Apart from his boast of being dux, he says little about his schooldays, though he claims that he always satisfied his teachers. He probably knew how to do so; it is clear that he had charm enough, that most insidious of qualities which sets out, consciously or unconsciously, to disarm the moral judgement. He passes quickly to his first criminal exploits: the theft of a bantam hen from an old widow in Stockbridge, some shoplifting in the same district, and the rustling of a pony from a farmer in Currie to carry him and a friend home from a tiring country walk. None of these thefts was serious; none of them beyond the ordinary run of childish misdemeanour. They show little more than an adventurous spirit. Actually Haggart was not acquisitive. While under sentence of death, he was examined by a phrenologist, George Combe, who published his report and also, bound with it, the record of an interview with Haggart in which his findings were discussed. Its purpose was, in Combe’s words, `not to indulge in idle curiosity, but to throw light upon the natural dispositions which particularly lead a young man into a sporting kind of life’. Combe remarks defensively that, `it has been conceived to be an anomaly in phrenology that Haggart should be addicted to stealing when the organ of acquisitiveness is only moderate in size’. He need not have felt the need for apology. The true thief- the thief of Haggart’s stamp at least - is not greedy for possessions; he does not desire the object as an object, as a miser may desire gold, but rather as a means. It is what enables him to be true to the picture he has of himself.

  David’s childish pranks seem to have been easily forgiven. All that he has to say of his parents suggests that they were decent, loving people, always ready to forgive their errant son. No doubt he relied on that. All the same, domesticity was boring. Accordingly he enlisted as a drummer-boy in the Norfolk Militia, who were then (1813) stationed in Leith. The uniform attracted him and the promise of a varied life. Discipline however proved distasteful and he was happy to be discharged the following year, and to return to his father’s home. Then followed a respectable interlude. He was apprenticed to Cockburn and Blair, millwrights and engineers, with whom he, worked until the firm went bankrupt in 1817. He claims to have done well with them, to have enjoyed trust and responsibility: for instance he was allowed to carry money to and from the bank. Though one cannot resist the speculation of how his life might have developed if the firm had remained solvent, it is hard to imagine him content with dull respectability. The attractions of the sporting life, his image of himself as a fine fellow, would probably have proved too strong. At any rate, Cockburn and Blair’s Bankruptcy threw him out of work in a year, when there were 1,600 unemployed workmen registered, and engaged by the Council in making the roads round the Calton Hill and the Salisbury Crags; impossible to imagine Davy Haggart as one of such a work-gang. In his own words, `to work and be a slave to mankind. I could never think of’.

  So, now that he was unemployed, he records that, `in less than three months I found myself plunged in such a state of vice and wickedness that my mind could not suffer reflection’. Perhaps so; more likely he thoroughly enjoyed it. His headlong gallop of a career had begun, as bitter-sweet- as John Gay’s Newgate Pastoral.

  David Haggart had entered a world, `where stealing was an activity so common as to be nothing less than banal’. The opportunities were legion, the pickings considerable and the chances of detection at least sufficiently long for the practitioner to discount them. David took to the streets, to casual shop-lifting and pickpocketing first. Probably nothing indicates the prevalence of theft so clearly as the extent of the thieves’ cant in which they conversed. Whole paragraphs of Haggart’s autobiography are completely incomprehensible without the aid of a glossary. `Picking a suck’ for instance, `is a kittle job’; on the other hand `the keek cloy is easily picked’, and `if blunt gets shy’ you can always take to the `boys and coreing’. A `prig’ should keep an eye open for `a coneish cove’ and if he is `well-budged’, the job’s easy. If you see a `cove’ with a ‘lil’ in his `fam’, then it should be yours, unless the `topers’ are to hand. Even readers steeped in the romances of Georgette Heyer will be baffled by the rich argot.

  There was then a criminal underworld into which it was easy to sink. There were boozing-kens where a prig could lie up or houses of ill-fame where he would be hailed, Macheathlike, as a hero; and as for fencing the stuff, why Haggart sometimes found the choice embarrassing. He notes on one occasion that he couldn’t recall where he had fenced some stolen goods, being drunk at the time. It must have seemed sometimes as if almost everything invited the young man to take up the sporting life. It was in those terms that he thought of it. Combe reports that, `when we alluded to his crimes in common language, he became sullen and ceased to converse. He, however, used the phrase “the sporting line of life” himself; and we found that, on our employing it, he again became communicative.’ It offered easy money, excitement and good living; `the love of dress and company was my motive’, he said. When the alternative was a choice between long laborious toil and starvation, it is not difficult to understand how a bright young spark like Davy Haggart should adopt the sporting line of life.

  The first weeks of his new career are worth following in detail. They set the pattern for the rest of his short life. He was quickly established as a pickpocket, for which calling he showed a natural aptitude. `I had the ill-luck to be born lefthanded, and with thieves’ fingers,’ he remarks with the utmost complacency, `for my forks were equally long, and they never failed me.’ For one with these talents, racemeetings and country fairs, where people were free with their money, and often well-liquored, proved the natural habitat. Davy soon met with a young Irishman, Barney MacGuire, a few years older than himself, and experienced in the business. Barney and he became fast friends and partners.

  In August they went together to Portobello Races, where they made £11. Determination of comparative money values is always difficult and frequently futile; both difficulty and futility are exacerbated when the society being considered shows very marked gradations in personal wealth. In the early nineteenth century the Earl of Durham could say, `a man can jog along on £40,000 a year’, while an agricultural labourer counted his week’s wage in shillings. Captain Gronow in his incomparable Reminiscences and Recollections notes that, in the only hotel in London `where you could get a genuine French dinner … you would seldom pay less than three or four pounds; your bottle of champagne or of claret, in the year 1814, costing you a guinea.’ Since Davy and Barney were aspiring to the High-Life rather than to mere subsistence, Gronow’s figures may seem more relevant to their desires than a note on the price of bread.

  The Portobello Races marked the start of a tour of the Borders and the North of England. They headed for Jedburgh and Kelso, where they cleared £20 at the St James’s Fair, then to Hawick, where they stayed at the Black Bull, and thence, by way of Langholm, to Dumfries for the Rood Fair. For the boy until recently tied to his apprenticeship, respectability and labour, it was an exhilarating change of pace.

  At Dumfries they stole £10 in a hosier’s shop. David’s own description is a fair indication of their habitual effrontery. Having spied a man with who was seeking to change a ten pound note, he `followed him into a hosier’s shop in the High Street, where he again asked for change; the shop was throng and the shopman said he would give it presently. He put the note in a careless manner into his waistcoat pocket, when I was standing by him with my arms across, and in that position touched him of his scrieve (banknote). I immediately asked the shopman the price of silk stockings, which were in the window. His answer was “the price is marked on them, sir.” This was the best answer in the world for me. I went out to see, but missed my way back. I did not inform young MacGuire of this prize; but Barney and I shared it with £4 of the smash taken by him.’

  Young MacGuire was Barney’s brother, who had recently joined them. The relations between David and Barney may be fairly judged by their exclusion of the young MacGuire from a share in the profits. They were both ready to cheat their confederates, but David was also prepared to take risks on Barney’s behalf. His tone is warm and sincere whenever he speaks of him; David and Jonathan also ran.

  Dumfries was dangerous however, because of Barney’s record. `We were not in safety to be seen at this place, as the MacGuires were well-known by John Richardson (a most respectable sheriff-officer from Dumfries) whom we suspected was at the Fair.’ Richardson flits through David’s story, one of those persistent, dogged detectives one meets in nineteenth century novels: like Wilkie Collins’ Sergeant Cuff, or Inspector Bucket in Bleak House, he had no method but a terrier’s. His presence was sufficiently alarming however to persuade Barney to keep to their inn room. Despite this, there were good pickings at Dumfries: Davy got £23 off a drunken farmer. (Such unhappy men were among his most frequent victims. Indeed if other pickpockets met with comparable success, as seems likely, the phrase `agricultural depression’ takes on a new meaning. Bad harvests were not necessarily the worst of it.)

  Langholm Fair, whither they next proceeded, was to provide one of their most notable coups. Young MacGuire spotted their chosen victim - ‘a coneish cove (gentleman) with a great swell in his suck. He had seen him with the lil in his fam. and he was sure there were hundreds in it’. It was an opportunity not to be let slip. Davy went to it with a will and admirable speed of hand. He got £201, and they cheated young MacGuire of his fair share yet again. This was indeed the life. `I never was happier in my life than when I fingered all this money; but I thought about it sore afterwards when I was ill and like to die.’ Such repentance, brief when it came, cast no shadow on present pleasure. However within half an hour of the coup, they saw the persistent Richardson `running about’. It was time to be off; nothing after all could explain their wealth but the truth. Fortunately it enabled them to travel like gentry. They ordered a post-chaise and set off for Carlisle.

  There followed the sort of interlude that was the reward of their profession; four weeks in which they could live like the bucks, swells or dandies they saw themselves as being. They passed the mornings riding, their afternoons and evenings gaming and occasionally took in a dance. It was a provincial version of the life led by their social superiors, the Corinthians themselves. Barney of course was a dab hand at all this, an `excellent card-player’, Davy assures us; `to him I am indebted for the great proficiency I afterwards arrived at in the use of cards, dice or billiards.’ But unlike the gentry they aped, Barney and David were businessmen, with a calling to follow. Money soon ran through their hands. Stocks had to be replenished. Pleasure, the criminal soon realises, has to be paid for. This time they received a check, the first of young David’s career. An attempted `snib’ in the Rickergate failed. Worse, they aroused the suspicion of the authorities, who must always have kept a wary eye on such newcomers to the town as flashed money about, had no obvious source of income, did no work, and could not - whatever their pretensions - qualify as gentry. Barney and David found that the constables had taken possession of their portmanteaux and awaited them at their inn. No doubt they were to be asked to assist with inquiries. It was a distasteful notion and they were naturally reluctant; it was time to evaporate. They did so, making no effort to salvage their goods. Easy come, after all, easy go. They left town at once, pausing only to replenish their wardrobes, `bilking and fleecing a merchant-tailor’. Next stop was Kendal Fair, `one of the finest horse-markets

  in England’. Here a `deeker’ attempted to queer their pitch. Much to their irritation, they found themselves compelled to pose as bona ride horse dealers, and even buy a horse to divert suspicion from their real activities. They sold it almost at once. Less skilled in this sort of business than in their chosen avocation, they dropped five shillings on the deal. The loss was short-lived. Reverting to their proper role, they then robbed the buyer and found themselves in the end £43 to the good. Continuing their round of the Northern Fairs they proceeded to Morpeth, where they found a deal of criminal competition, but where the resourceful Barney fleeced a gang of prigs from York.

  They felt entitled again to the reward of leisure, and established themselves in Newcastle, taking private lodgings in Castle Street as John Wilson and James Atkinson, gentlemen travelling for pleasure. Their standing was evident, at least in their own eyes: `great swells with our white-caped coats. top boots and whips’. The landlady had three daughters, `very pleasant girls’, says David complacently, and with them they passed `a jolly Christmas Day, 1817’.

  He had been in business just eight months.

  One night in the New Year they took the girls to the theatre, where Barney, more experienced and always mindful that they had to work in order to continue to live in their chosen style, proposed a theft. David replied that, `it might be done if it were not for the blones’ (girls). It was therefore agreed that he should occupy them while Barney lifted the loot. It was worth £70, but this did not defray their Newcastle expenses by £14. They therefore resorted to burglary, a new departure for David but not for Barney. In the course of the job they tied up the master of the house, but burglary had dangers that their normal pursuits lacked. Unless a pickpocket is actually identified in the instant he commits his crime, or found with the stuff on him, detection is difficult; all that can usually be said is that he was in the crowd, in the vicinity. And the nature of a crowd is such that this can be said of many others. Burglary however admits to a more positive identification, especially when you have had to tie up witnesses. David and Barney were both apprehended within days. ‘Unfortunately,’ says David (rashly or stupidly, one may rather think) they were wearing the same clothes in which they had committed the burglary. They were carried off to Durham, tried and returned to prison to await sentence of death at the end of the assizes.

  Fortunately early nineteenth century jails were not so hard to escape from. The buildings were frequently old and in poor repair, the turnkeys aged also, drunken, corrupt and incompetent. Barney, David and some other prisoners in the same unhappy condition set to work on the wall of their cell. Interrupted by a turnkey, whose slumbers the noise had disturbed, they seized him, `took the dubs, and bound and gagged him’. They gained the backyard and scaled the wall. By bad luck Barney and another prisoner fell back after reaching the top, and, the hue and cry having been raised, were recaptured.

  Here however the amiable element of David’s character reveals itself. He at once organised Barney’s escape. It would have been easy to have shrugged his shoulders and said, `well, that’s the way of the world’. Not at all; at some personal risk he got him out, perhaps killing of a policeman in the course of the action. `Whether I have his murder to answer for, I cannottell, but I fear my aim was true and the poor fellow looked dead enough.’ If so, it probably sat lightly enough on his conscience. It is difficult to place much value on another’s life, when you hold your own cheap.

  The escape was vain enough, for after another tour of the Borders, Barney was again arrested. Still legal liaison was so poor that he was not identified as the perpetrator of the Durham burglary, who should have been awaiting sentence of death, and in fact he received only three months’ imprisonment. The disconsolate David returned to Newcastle and his old lodgings, where he amused himself with his worthy landlady’s daughters, and did not work till the Spring, `having been tolerably successful in gambling’. This association in Newcastle appears to have been the only respectable one of his adult life. Pleasant though it was, it provided in its cosy and teasing domesticity, no substitute for the glamour and thrills of action. In the early summer of 1818 David returned to Edinburgh.

  Naturally he found lodgings in the Old Town, first on the south side of the Grassmarket. He was now a fully - fledged member of his profession, and as such was quickly absorbed in a dense yet multifarious, fraternity. The rhythm of his life was established. It was one of short stops and sudden aid to identification. There must have been many who knew Haggart well enough. Edinburgh was still a small city, even more so in geography than in population - and the handsome redheaded boy, still only eighteen, was not someone easily ignored. Yet the fraternity could absorb him easily. There was nothing fixed or formal about it of course; it had no limits. The cheap lodging-house, the boozing ken and the brothel were not easily distinguished from each other; they were all part of David’s world, a world where he had also innumerable associates and casual partners. One example will suffice, his encounter one day with George Bagrie and William Paterson, a fortuitous meeting which reveals very clearly something of the nature of their society. They were, in David’s disdainful words, `very willing but poor snibs’. David came upon them when they were with `a lushy cove’ on whom they were going to work `in a very feckless manner’. Irritated by their evident incompetence - perhaps they were a spot lushy themselves, always an occupational hazard when so much time was spent waiting for prospective victims to attain a suitable state of inebriation - he intervened, carried out the job on their behalf, and then proceeded with them to a house on South Bridge, kept by Miss Gray, a celebrated Madame; for refreshment of one kind, or several.