12 SCOTS TRIALS
THE DUNECHT MYSTERY
But who knows the fate of his
bones, or how often he is to be buried?
Who hath the oracle of his ashes, or whither they are
to be scattered?
---Hydriotaphia., SIRTHOMAS
BROWNE.
THE body-snatcher is a type of felon happily
obsolete in our
criminal practice, save for one signal instance, since the passing
of the Anatomy Act in 1832. Prior to the introduction of
Warburton's Bill, Scotland had paid a high price for the pre-
eminence of her medical schools in the outraged feelings of the
living and the violated sepulchres of the dead. The revelation
of the hideous traffic driven by Burke and Hare, that hellish
partnership whose transactions horrified mankind, at length
roused the nation from its apathy. Science, wilfully blind or
culpably incompetent, had seen nothing amiss, and as the
doctors either would or could give no aid in securing the
conviction of the murderers, Justice was forced to loose her
hold on the more fiendish of the pair, lest both miscreants
should escape unpunished. Legislation followed, to render need-
less and unremunerative for the future a form of sacrilege which
had made possible the perpetration of such fearful crimes.
The methods of the professional resurrectionist became but
an unclean memory, and only the ugly iron mortsafes in
our older graveyards served as reminders of his power in
the past.
When, therefore, on 3rd December 1881, the
readers of the
daily journals learned, some twelve months after the death and
burial of the late Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, that his
remains had been stolen from the family vault at Dunecht
House, near Aberdeen, in circumstances inexplicable and
mysterious, the excitement throughout the country was intense.
[248]
A similar outrage had startled the civilised world in 1878,
when the body of Mr. Stewart, an American millionaire, was
carried off and held to ransom, and, notwithstanding a reward
of 25,000 dollars offered by his widow, was never recovered ;
but with this exception such a crime had been unheard of for
over half a century.
The dead earl had been in his day a notable
nobleman.
Born in 1812, he succeeded to the title in 1869 as eighth Earl
of Balcarres and twenty-fifth Earl of Crawford. He was a man
of many tastes and talents ; much of his time and money was
devoted to astronomical research, and he was a capable theo-
logian as well as an erudite antiquarian and genealogist. He
published much, and in his Lives of the Lindsays has left an
exhaustive history of his ancient house, while the great library
at Haigh Hall, near Wigan, his Lancashire seat, is a monument
to his industry and learning. The outrage offered to the mortal
remains of a man of such illustrious lineage and of a personality
so distinguished was calculated to shock the least susceptible of
his fellow countrymen.
In the winter of 1879 the Earl of Crawford,
whose health
had begun to fail, visited Egypt and afterwards Italy, where he
(died at Florence on 13th December 1880. His body, which
for removal to his native land was embalmed by a Florentine
chemist skilled in the art, was placed within three coffins, the
inner one being of soft Italian wood, the middle one of lead,
and the outer one of polished oak, elaborately carved and
mounted with fittings of chased silver. These three coffins
were deposited within a huge walnut shell, on the top of which
was a cross carved in high relief, the weight of the whole
amounting to nearly half a ton. The conveyance of the
remains across the Alps was attended with great difficulty,
but under the care of a trusted family servant they reached
France in safety. A special steamer was chartered to convey
the body to London, and in crossing the Channel she encoun-
tered so heavy a gale that the coffin had to be lashed to the
[249]
deck. The removal to Aberdeen on 24th December was more
easily effected, but there an unexpected obstacle arose. No
hearse large enough to contain the coffin was procurable, and
the outer shell had to be removed. It was afterwards deposited
in the crypt beside the three coffins in which the body was
encased. The last stage of its long journey, that from Aberdeen
to Dunecht, was undertaken in one of the most violent snow-
storms ever experienced in Scotland, and it is recorded that
the hearse, when returning to Aberdeen, was snowed up by
the wayside for several days. These inauspicious happenings,
however, were but the prelude to a misadventure yet more
remarkable.
The house of Dunecht, one of the finest mansions
in Aber-
deenshire, had been for some years undergoing a complete
restoration. The alterations included the erection of a private
chapel attached to the house, with a mortuary chapel of white
marble in connection, beneath which was a mausoleum intended
to supersede the old family vault of the Lindsays at Wigan.
But recently completed, the mortuary chapel had not been con-
secrated at the time of the earl's death, so that rite was duly
performed by the Bishop of Aberdeen before the interment, and
on 29th December 1880 the first tenant of the new mausoleum
solemnly entered into possession. The crypt, which is built
throughout of massive granite blocks, is about twenty-one feet
long by eleven feet wide, in the centre an octagonal pillar
supports the groined roof, and the walls on each side are occupied
by catacombs arranged in tiers capable of containing twenty-five
coffins. Access to the vault is obtained solely by means of a short
flight of eight steps descending from the level of the ground
outside the mortuary chapel. When the remains of the earl
had been laid in what was believed to be their last resting-
place the steps and stairway were covered by four immense
slabs of Caithness granite, the interstices of which were filled
with lime. Five months later earth was spread over the flags
to a considerable depth, in which grass was sown and shrubs
[250]
DUNECHT HOUSE,
SHOWING THE MORTUARY CHAPEL
and flowers were planted, and the whole was enclosed with an
iron railing. In such circumstances the dead might well have
been expected to rest in peace.
On Sunday, 29th May 1881, exactly five months
after
the interment of Lord Crawford's body, the housekeeper at
Dunecht, coming home from church through the grounds,
perceived a pleasant aromatic smell issuing from the vault.
Next day the gardener also noticed the odour, which he attri-
buted to the arbor vita used as a background to the flowers
of
the numerous wreaths left upon the coffin. He thought that
it came through, the ventilator, but though he had been in
the habit of passing the vault daily, he had never observed
the smell before. It was afterwards remarked by several
other persons about the estate, and masons were accordingly
employed to examine the condition of the flagstones covering
the entrance stairway, which, owing to the unusual severity of
the weather, had not yet been cemented and planted over.
They observed a crevice between two of the outside flags which
they thought had been caused by frost. This was filled up
again with lime, cement was placed round and over the stones,
and the sweet smell was noticed no more for the time. Imme-
diately thereafter, on 2nd or 3rd June, the flags were covered
with earth, grass was sown, and the railing erected, as already
described.
On 8th September following a curious incident
occurred
which was not made public until later. Mr. William Yeats,
advocate, Aberdeen, commissioner on the Dunecht estates and
the family's local solicitor, received that day an anonymous
letter in the following terms:--
SIR,--The
remains of the late Earl of Crawford are not beneath
the chaple at Dunecht as you believe, but were removed
hence last
spring, and the smell of decayed flowers ascending from
the vault
since that time will, on investigation, be found to proceed
from
another cause than flowers.
NABOB
On receipt of this extraordinary communication,
which bore
[251]
the Aberdeen postmark, Mr. Yeats at once saw the builder who
had constructed the vault, and from which he learned from him,
came to the conclusion that the letter was a wicked hoax. He
therefore said nothing to the family about the letter, but laid it
aside as of no importance.
The works in connection with the mansion-house
were still
in progress, and on the morning of Thursday, lst December, one
of the labourers, passing the entrance to the vault between
seven and eight o'clock, observed that the turf at the mouth of
the tomb had been displaced. He at once told the overseer of
his discovery, the earl's commissioner was informed, and the
police were summoned from Aberdeen. When they arrived in
the forenoon it was decided to enter and examine the vault.
The soil was found to have been removed from above the
flagstone directly over the upper steps and farthest from the
chapel wall. The stone itself, a huge block six feet by four feet
in size, and weighing 15 cwt., had been raised about eighteen
inches on one side, and pieces of wood inserted to keep it in
position. Within the railing round the entrance were two
iron shovels and a pick, which, as later appeared, belonged to
the workmen, and had been left in an ajacent lime-shed on the
previous night. Another slab was removed, and the party
descended to the crypt. On the stairs they found three iron
bars and two planks. Though nowanuticipating the worst, they
were horrified at the sight which awaited them.
The floor of the vault was strewn with planks
and sawdust,
the three coffins, which at the interment had been placed in
one of the niches in the middle tier at the left-hand side of
the crypt, were lying open and empty side by side in the middle
of the floor, and the body of the dead earl had disappeared.
The lid of the outer coffin had been unscrewed in a tradesman-
like manner, after which it had been turned over on its side and
the leaden coffin rolled out and cut open. The inner coffin had
then been opened with some sharp instrument sufficiently to
admit of the body being drawn out. Its silver handles, plates,
[252]
and mountings were untouched. From the scented sawdust
with which the coffin had been filled came the peculiar
aromatic odour that had been remarked in the previous May.
The fact that the sawdust was mildewed and the leaden
shell, where cut, oxidised, indicated that a considerable time
had elapsed since the commission of the outrage.
A grim satire, this, on the vanity of "Monuments
and
Mechanical Preservations " !
An inquiry into the mysterious circumstances
of the case
was at once commenced by the procurator-fiscal, the official by
whom the initial steps of a criminal investigation in Scotland
are conducted. The house and policies were guarded by the
police, and all persons connected with the estate were closely
examined. The new earl, who had been absent from home at
the time of the discovery, was at once informed of what had
occurred, and returned forthwith to Dunecht. An exhaustive
search of the surrounding district was instituted, and was con-
tinued diligently for a fortnight, but without result. It was
interrupted by a severe snowstorm which began at that date,
and as the snow remained upon the ground until well on into
tile following spring, the search had to be abandoned for
the time. A sensational feature of these attempts to discover
the body was the employment of the celebrated bloodhound
"Morgan," which in 1876 had successfully run to earth Fish,
the Blackburn murderer. Owing, however, to persistent frost
the experiment proved unsuccessful.
Weeks passed, and the public excitement and
curiosity
continued unabated and unappeased. The inquiry was con-
ducted in private, the authorities would give no information,
and the gallant band of reporters who attempted to storm the
house of Dunecht were repulsed with heavy loss--of copy. In
the absence of authentic news, all sorts of rumour scirculated in
the press. It was said that the outrage had been committed
the day before the discovery of the rifled tomb, under cloud of
a tempestuous night, by Florentine desperadoes who had tracked
[253]
the corpse from Italy. Alternatively, the body had never been
in the vault at all, having been abstracted before the coffin left
Florence. According to other accounts, the deed had been
done by certain Italian painters employed in decorating the
interior of the mansion-house, or by some medical students
from Aberdeen for professional purposes. Prints of many feet
were said to have been found in the sawdust on the floor of the
vault and in the earth at the entrance, indicating that several
persons had been concerned in the offence. Suspicious char-
acters of varied aspect and nationality had been seen lurking
about Dunecht, or pervading tile neighbourhood in dubious and
elusive dogcarts. Finally, it was confidently reported that the
body of the late earl had been taken to Italy in an Italian
yacht, the Speranza, and was then in Florence.
But those better informed knew from the condition
of the
vault that the outrage had been perpetrated long before the
date on which the violation of the tomb was discovered, while
the fact that a number of strangers, perambulating a quiet
countryside with an embalmed corpse, would be calculated to
attract attention, led to the belief that the body had been
abstracted by persons familiar with the locality, and was con-
cealed within a short distance of the house.
Meanwhile, on 4th December the procurator-fiscal
published
in the local newspapers an advertisement earnestly requesting
anyone, who during that year had observed anything leaving
reference to the removal of the remains, to communicate with
him or with the Chief Constable of Aberdeen. Mr. Yeats, the
commissioner, called to mind his mysterious correspondent of
the previous September, and an advertisement was inserted on
9th December as follows :--"NABOB.--Please communicate
at
once." Any information regarding the affair was to be sent to
Mr. Alsop, the earl's London solicitor, who was then at Dunecht.
On the 13th a further advertisement appeared :--"Fifty pounds
reward will be paid to the writer of the anonymous letter in
September last addressed to a person in King Street, Aberdeen,
[254]
on his furnishing full particulars." Although neither the earnest
request of the fiscal nor the offer of the reward were sufficient
to tempt "Nabob" to discard his anonymity, that retiring
individual was stimulated by these announcements once more
to take up his pen, and on 23rd December Mr. Alsop received
from him in London a letter in the following terms :--
SIR,
The late Earl of Crawford
The body is still in Aberdeenshire,
and I can put you in posses-
sion of the same as soon as you bring one or more of
the desperados
who stole it to justice, so that I may know with whom
I have
to deal. I have no wish to be assinated by rusarectionests,
nor
suspected by the public of being an accomplice in such
dastardly
work, which I most assuredly would be unless the gulty
party are
brought to justice. Had Dr. Yeats noted on the hint I
gave him
last Sept., he might have found the remains as though
by axedand
and hunted up the robers at lsure, but that chance is
lost, so I hope
you will find your men and make it safe and prudent for
me to find
what you want.
P.S.--Should they find out thad
an outsider knows their secret
it may be removed to another place.
NABOB
On the 30th a notice was published, both in
the press and
by means of placards and hand-bills, headed " £600 REWARD,"
which stated that £100 would be paid by Her Majesty's
Government and £500 by Messrs. Alsop, Mann & Co., Lord
Crawford's London solicitors, to any person unconnected with
the police force who should first give such information as
would lead to the discovery and conviction of the perpetrators
of the offence, and that the Home Secretary world advise the
pardon of any accomplice, not being the person who actually
committed the offence, who should first give such information
as would lead to a like result. Among the bushels of epistolary
chaff produced by these advertisements, the authorities with
mich acumen reckoned the "Nabob" letters alone as genuine
grain, and to the discovery of the identity of tie writer their
efforts were now directed.
[255]
As months elapsed without any fresh news, public
interest
in the case began to wane, and the impression became general
that the Dunecht mystery would never be solved; but the
police had not relaxed their efforts. 0n 27th February 1882
it was revived by the announcement that two arrests had been
made in connection with the affair. Tie suspected persons
were Thomas Kirkwood, a joiner for many years in the employ-
ment of the Lindsay family, and John Philip, a shoemaker, who
had been at one time drill instructor of the Echt Volunteer
Corps, both of whom were brought before Sheriff Comrie
Thomson at Aberdeen, and were remanded for a week. After
being judicially examined, both men were discharged. The
reason of Philip's arrest was not disclosed ; he was later adduced
as a witness for the prosecution.
Nothing further was heard of the case for
five months, but
on 17th July the police, acting upon information received, the
nature of which we shall presently learn, apprehended a man
named Charles Soutar, forty-two years of age, who followed
the occupation of a vermin killer, and resided in Schoolhill,
Aberdeen. He had been employed for five or six years as a rat-
catcher at Dunecht, but on account of his poaching proclivities
had been dismissed some three years before the earl's death.
The same day the prisoner was judicially examined
by
Slieriff Comrie Tlhomson, and emitted a decclaration. He admitted
that the two letters signed "Nabob" were both written
and posted by him. On being interrogated, "What do you
know of the removal of the late Earl of Crawford's body? "
he told the following remarkable tale :--
One night about the end of April or the beginning
of May
1881, after eleven o'clock, he was poaching with a net in the
Crow Wood, near Dunecht House. On hearing a rustle in the
brushwood lie thought the keepers were trying to surround
him, so he took to his heels, making for the thickest part of
the wood. After running about twenty yards, he was tripped
up by someone and thrown on his back to the ground, where
[256]
he was held down by two men, "young-like chaps, of middle
size." Their faces were "black," and they wore wincey shirts,
but had on neither hats nor coats. They spoke with an
Aberdeenshire accent, and seemed common men. They were
presently joined by two others, tall men, also hatless and coat-
less, in white shirt sleeves. These seemed to be gentlemen,
and spoke like educated men. The taller of the two appeared
to be the leader of the party. Both wore masks. One of them
presented a large plated revolver at his breast, and said to one
of the men holding him, "Remove your arm, and I will settle
him." The other replied, "Hold on; there's more of them."
The man who held him rose, and said to the one with the pistol,
"It's all right, it's the ratcatcher; he's poaching." Where-
upon the speaker conversed in whispers apart with the two
tall men. On their return they told the man who was still
holding him to let him up, which was done. The man with
the pistol then examined his net, and asked what he was doing
there, and whether he was alone? He answered that he was
"looking for a beast," and was alone, upon which the tall
man remarked that it was well for him, as if he had been a
spy he would not have seen the light of another day, adding,
"Remember what I am going to tell you ; you're known to our
party, and if you breathe a syllable of what you have seen,
I will have your life if you're on the face of the earth." He
was then released and told to leave the wood by the way
he came. After "hunting for an hour or two" he returned
at daybreak to the spot. The four masked men were gone, but
looking about, he noticed "a heap of rubbish where they had
concealed something." On opening this up he saw a blanket,
which he lifted, disclosing the dead body of a man, whom he
thought at the time had been murdered. He looked at the
face, and covered the body up again as he had found it. There
was a strong smell like benzoline, from which he inferred
that an attempt had been made to destroy the corpse with
chemicals. The same smell stuck to his hands for half a day
[257]
afterwards. He returned on foot to Aberdeen by the turnpike
He further declared that in July 1881, on
the day of the
local cattle show, he had a conversation at Aberdeen with a
plasterer named Cowe, who had been employed at Dunecht.
Cowe mentioned that the vault in which the old lord was
buried had been closed up, because of "the strange, sweet-like
smell" that came from it. On his askimg what it resembled,
Cowe said it was like decaying flowers, or wine, or benzoline.
It then occurred to him that such was the very smell he had
perceived on the body in the woods; so a few days afterwards
lie returned to the spot, and found that a mark he had placed
there had not been removed.
In answer to a question by the Sheriff, tile
prisoner declined
to take the police to the place or so to describe it that they
might find it for theluselves, remarking, "I'll rather wait
until you get them that took the body - it will be safer for
me then."
In consequence of the clue thus obtained,
the search was
renewed with fresh vigour, arid some twenty keepers and con-
stables, provided with sharp-pointed iron probes to test the
nature of any suspected spot, began to scour the wood around
the mansion-house. But for the narrowing of its area the search
would have been much more hopeless than the earlier one in
December, for the ground, which was then bare, was now
covered by a thick growth of vegetation, and the chance of dis-
covering the grave would have been small indeed. About
mid-day on Tuesday, 18th July, after some eight hours' beating
of the wood, as the party were searching the course of an old
ditch, the probe rebounded. There was no visible indication
of the ground having been disturbed, and the soil at that
point was as firm as in any other part of the ditch. A
spade was obtained, the earth dug up, and there, at the
bottom of the old ditch, about a foot below the surface, lay,
wrapped in a blanket, th e missing body of the earl. The
[258]
place was some five hundred yards from the house, close by
a gravel-pit.
Before its removal from the grave, the body
was inspected
by Dr. Ogston, Aberdeen, who prepared reports of its position
when found and of its condition when subsequently examined
by him. From the state of the wrappings and of the surround-
ing soil, he formed the opinion that the body, which had
suffered no injury, had been buried for a considerable time,
and had not since been disturbed. The face was quite
recognisable.
The remains of tile late earl were in due
course removed
to Haigh hall, and were afterwards reinterred in the family
vault beneath tile Lindsay Chapel, in the parish church of
Wigan.
On 21st July the Glasgow police arrested in
connection
with the case a man named James Collier, who had been a
sawyer on the Dunecht estate and had recently left the district.
He was, however, liberated in a few days, and, like Philip,
appeared later as a witness at the trial.
On 23rd July the prisoner was again brought
before Sheriff
Cowrie Thomson at Aberdeen for further examination, and
was informed that Lord Crawford's body had now been found,
whereupon he remarked, "I am very glad to hear it; they did
riot get it through me, at all events." He still declared that
he was not concerned either in its abstraction or concealment.
Upon the application of the fiscal the examination was then
adjourned to Dunecht, and the prisoner was taken to the empty
grave in the wood. He was asked if that was the place where
he had seen the body of a dead man, and replied, "I cannot
,say, I am not acquainted with this part of the woods." Asked
further if that was the wood referred to in his first declaration,
he declined to answer any more questions on the subject. He
added that he wrote the first "Nabob" letter for the purpose
of unburdening his mind and giving a hint which might be
acted on, that he had nothing to do with the lifting of the
[259]
slab in the end of the previous November, and that he had not
been near Dunecht since July 1881. He further declared that
when he found the body there were five or six inches of earth
over it, which he removed with his hands. It was not raining
that night, but very cloudy.
The prisoner was then taken to the house of
Dunecht, and
being shown the earl's body and asked if it was that which
he had previously seen, he declared, "It bears some resemblance
to the face of the body I saw in the wood." He recognised the
aromatic odour. This concluded the judicial examination of
the prisoner.
On 24th July a petition was presented to the
Sheriff for
Soutar's liberation on bail, under an Act of 1701 to the effect that
all crimes not entailing capital punishlncnt should be bailable
at the amount of 300 merles, equivalent to £60 sterling.
The
Sheriff found that the offence charged was bailable, and granted
warrant for the prisoner's liberation, on caution to that extent
being found for his reappearance. Next day, however, the
friends of the prisoner learned that if the bail was forthcoming
the authorities were prepared to rearrest him upon a fresh
charge on which bail would not be allowed, so the matter went
no further, and the prisoner remained in gaol to await his
trial.
On Monday, 23rd October 1882, Charles Soutar was
placed
at the bar of the High Court of Justiciary, Edinburgh, indicted and
accused of the crime of violating the sepulchres of the dead and
the raising and carrying away dead bodies out of their graves.
Lord Craighill presided. The prosecution was conducted by the
Solicitor-General (Mr. Alexander Asher) and Mr. Æneas J. G.
Mackay, Advocate-Depute, the prisoner being represented by
the Dean of Faculty (Sir J. H. A. Macdonald, the present
Lord Justice-Clerk), Mr. (now Lord) Mackenzie, and Mr.
William Hay. The only official shorthand notes of the trial
were taken by Mr. Crabb Watt, K.C., who had not then been
admitted to the bar. These notes were extended verbatim, and
[260]
are now in the possession of the Crawford family. The indict-
rnent bore that the accused, either by himself or acting in
concert with some person or persons to the prosecutor unknown,
on an occasion or occasions between 1st April and 8th Septem-
ber 1881, broke into the vault, forcibly removed from the
coffins the dead body of Lord Crawford, and carried away the
same. No objection was taken to the relevancy, and the pannel
pleaded not guilty.
The circumstances attending the burial of
the earl on 29th
December 1880, the first perception of the odour on 29th May,
and the lifting of the stone on lst December 1881, the arrest
and examination of Soutar on 17th July 1882, and the discovery
of the body on the following day, all as before narrated, were
duly established by various witnesses. It remains to be told
upon what evidence the Crown relied for proving the prisoner's
connection with the crime.
James Collier, who had been a sawyer at Echt
for thirty
years, until he left the district in July of that year, deponed
that he knew the prisoner by sight. On Friday, 27th May
1881, he travelled from Aberdeen by the Cluny coach, which
passes the Broadstrake Inn at Waterton of Echt, about a mile
from Dunecht House. The prisoner was also in the coach. The
witness's attention was attracted by the fact that he knew that
Soutar "was newly out of prison for another offence," the
nature of which does not appear from tile proceedings at the
trial. It was, however, stated in the press at the time that
Soutar, in 1878, had been sentenced to eighteen months'
imprisonment with hard labour for participation in a poaching
affray, wherein a police sergeant was fatally injured. The
coach stopped at the inn, where Collier pointed out the prisoner
to a man named Coutts. When Collier got down, half a mile
from Dunecht, the prisoner was still on the coach. Coutts
corroborated. He had seen the prisoner get off the coach at
the inn, but did not notice whether he proceeded by it further.
Mrs. Leith, the innkeeper, who knew the prisoner personally,.
[261]
said that he arrived by the coach that afternoon at six o'clock.
He walked up the road towards the village of Echt about the
time that the coach resumed its journey. She saw no more
of him that night. Her daughter Barbara gave similar
evidence.
Dunecht House lies midway between the hamlet
of Waterton
of Echt and Echt village, and the evidence of these four
witnesses proved the presence of the prisoner in the neighbour-
hood on the Friday before the Sunday on which the odour was
first noticed at the vault.
James Cowe, plasterer, Aberdeen, said he had
known the
prisoner for three or four years. He did not see him on 21st
or 22nd July 1881, during the cattle show in Aberdeen, or
about that time. He did not remember ever speaking to him
of the removal of Lord Crawford's body, or as to the smell from
the vault, nor did he say to him that the smell was like
decaying flowers, wine, or benzoline. The last word he never
mentioned to hiin in his life. The evidence of this witness
contradicted the statement made by the prisoner in his declara-
tion that he first heard of the matter from Cowe. Mrs. Legatt,
a daughter of Mrs. Leith, said that the prisoner arrived at
Broadstrake Inn by the Aberdeen coach one afternoon in July
or August 1881, when her mother was from home. After
having some refreshment he left on foot, going in the direction
of Dunecht. There is no evidence as to what he was doing in
the neighbourhood n this occasion.
William Lawrie, farmer, Echt, stated that
lie was introduced
to the prisoner by a gardener of Dunecht at Mrs. Livingstone's
inn at Echt on 20th September 1851. They had a drink together.
The prisoner asked him if any person had disappeared mys-
teriously thereabouts, and on his replying in the negative,
said, "Ay, but there was," adding that he had happened to
be on the estate of Dunecht one night, a and came across some
men with a body. The witness understood the prisoner to
mean that a murder had been committed. At the time he
[262]
thought the story "a parcel of lies"--the jury later arrived
at the same conclusion--and paid it no attention. Elizabeth
Mitchell, a servant at the mill, deponed that she overheard
part of the above conversation. She mentioned the matter to
her mistress, who advised her to say nothing about it. There
was then no suspicion of any interference with the vault.
John Philip, shoemaker, Aberdeen, said that
he had been
apprehended in connection with the affair in the end of
February, and was liberated on 4th March 1882. Shortly
thereafter the prisoner, whom lie did not know except "by
reputation," accosted him in Aberdeen. The prisoner intro-
duced himself thus: "You must know me, I am Soutar, the
ratcatcher, who was at Dunecht when you were drill instructor
there," to which Philip made the euphuistic reply, "I remember
distinctly a gentleman of your profession having been employed
at the policies, although I never saw you." "I added," continued
the courteous shoemaker, "that I believed he was the party who
should have been where I had come from--meaning the prison."
Soutar, so far from taking offence at this observation, proposed
adjourning for refreshment. The object of this hospitable
offer was to find out if Philip, on his judicial examination, had
said anything about him (Soutar). He received the discon-
certing answer that Philip, "from information lie had obtained,"
had felt obliged to tell the Sheriff that Soutar was the perpetrator
of the outrage. Lord Craighill, in charging the ,jury, commented
on the singular fact that no question was put to this witness
from either side of the bar to ascertain upon what knowledge
he had made such a statement.
George Machray, who had been gamekeeper at
Urie, Stone-
haven, when the prisoner was employed as a ratcatcher there,
stated that on two occasions prior to the month of March 1882
Soutar said to him that he could tell where Lord Crawford's
body was hidden. The witness, who had previously heard of
the outrage, "thought nothing about it." On Friday, 14th
July 1882, the prisoner invited him into a public-house in
[263]
Aberdeen, and requested him to inform one. Mr Cassells, who
was then making inquiries on behalf of the Crawford family,
that he (Soutar) "could tell where the body was on two con-
ditions, namely, that they would find out the persons who took
the body, and give protection to him." He said nothing about
a pardon. At that time the reward was advertised in the
newspapers. Machray failed to find Cassells, and next day the
prisoner again asked him to deliver the message. He tried
to do so, without success. On Sunday, the 16th, the prisoner
for the third time asked him to see Cassells, and he made
another attempt, with the like result. Perceiving that it was
useless to contend further with fate, Machray then gave the
information to the police which led to Soutar's arrest.
A notable, if not unique, feature of the trial
was the fact
that none of the witnesses for the prosecution were cross-
examined by counsel for the defence, only a single question
being put to Machray by the Dean of Faculty, to the effect
that the prisoner had said he was "threatened very hard by the
men in the wood."
The case for the Crown closed with the reading
of the
prisoner's declarations. No witnesses were adduced for the
defence, and the Solicitor-General rose to address the jury.
He submitted that the character of the crime precluded the
possibility of presenting direct evidence, unless through the
confession of an accomplice. The facts and circumstances of
the case all pointed conclusively to the prisoner as at least one
of the persons guilty. The outrage was unquestionably com-
mitted by someone acquainted with the locality and the, cir-
stances of the family, with the motive of obtaining a ransom
for recovery of the body. The prisoner lived in Aberdeen, and
knew Dunecht well. The winter of 1880-1881 was a very severe
one--there was snow on the ground till late in the spring--and,
in order to avoid discovery, the attempt had to be delayed, as
indicated by the evidence, till about the end of May. There
could now be no doubt that the peculiar odour first discovered
[264]
on Sunday, the 29th, was connected with the opening of the
vault on the 27th or 28th May. The crevice between the
flagstones was observed by the masons on the morning of
Monday, the 30th. On Friday, the 27th, the prisoner was
proved to have gone by the coach from Aberdeen to Waterton of
Echt, where he arrived at 6 P.M. He was
afterwards seen to go
along the road towards Dunecht, and no explanation was
offered as to how he spent that night. The cause of the odour
was misunderstood, the flags were cemented, covered with
earth, and sown with grass, and all trace of the outrage was
in a fair way of being obliterated. But the hope of reward
depended on its discovery. The prisoner returned to Waterton
in July or August, and again there was no explanation of what
he was doing in the neighbourhood. No doubt he visited the
vault and found that the grass was growing over the entrance,
so that accidental discovery was becoming daily more impos-
sible. Therefore, on 8th September,he wrote and sent the
first "Nabob" letter, not to the police, to whom he would
naturally have looked for protection, but to Mr. Yeats, the
agent for the Crawford family, as the source of ransom or
reward. Mr. Yeats paid no attention to the letter, and the
prisoner then took a bolder step. He returned to Echt, and on
20th September, in Livingstone's inn, told Lawrie that a
murdered man was buried in the woods of Dunecht--a hint
intended to spread the belief in the neighbourhood that some-
thing had occurred, which he hoped would lead to inquiry. But,
for his own protection, he made his information too vague, and a
more definite step had to be taken for the purpose of attracting
attention to the matter. On 30th November one of the flag-
stones covering the entrance to the vault was displaced. The
outrage was at length detected; the body was searched for
without success, advertisements were published, and finally a
ransom was offered and a pardon promised, but under the, for
him, unfortunate condition that the informant must not be
the person who committed the offence. In view of this he
[265]
wrote the second "Nabob" letter to Mr. Alsop, Lord Crawford's
agent in London. Again, he did not go to the police for pro-
tection, as would leave been the natural course if his story were
true, but to those who world be the source of a reward.
Mr. Alsop having taken no notice of his letter, he attempted
to put himself in communication, through his friend Machray,
with Mr. Cassells, who, as representative of the Crawford
family, was makng inquiries at Aberdeen. Again he failed.
Cassells was not at hone, and Machray informed the police.
The declamations emitted by the prisoner after his arrest were
altogether incredible, but they at least showed that he was
in the wood when the body was buried. The story he told
was most cunning and highly dramatic, but was it natural
that the four men, surprised in those circumstances, should
seize and detain him, instead of allowing him to escape? The
date assigned by the prisoner for the occurrence was clearly
false. His statement that he only discovered on 21st July
1881, from his conversation with Cowe, that the body
he had seen was that of Lord Crawford was also false.
Cowe denied that any such conversation ever took place.
How, tnen, could the prisoner know that the body was Lord
Crawford's except from guilty participation in the commission
of the crime? When he met Lawrie at Livingstone's inn on
20th September, he knew whose body it was, although at that
time no one else was aware of the violation of the tomb. Yet
he represented the body to Lawrie as that of a murdered man,
In conclusion, tile Solicitor-General submitted that the admis-
sions of the prisoner, taken along with tile rest of the evidence,
clearly established that the mystery had at last been solved,
and that the prisoner at the bar was one of the persons who
perpetrated this outrageous crime.
The Dean of Faculty then addressed the jury
for the
defence. It was, he said, admitted by the prosecution that
this crime could not have been committecl by the prisoner
alone, and therefore the mystery was only half solved. The
[266]
prisoner's presence in the neighbourhood on 27th May 1881
was sufficiently explained by the fact that he was a notorious
poacher, and had been dismissed from service on this very
property on that account. There was no secrecy in what he
did ; he travelled in a crowded coach in broad daylight, and
left it at the inn, not the nearest point to Dunecht. The
assumption of the Crown that the crime had been committed
that night was not warranted by the evidence. The odour
perceived on 29th May, two days afterwards, might, so far as
the evidence went, just as well have proceeded from the arbor
vita as from the opened coffin, and might have existed for
weeks before it was noticed. It was also a far-fetched argu-
ment to say that because the prisoner had endeavoured to
spread the report that a man had been murdered and his body
buried in the woods, he then knew that it was the body of
the earl. His statement that he never knew until his inter-
view with Cowe was not contradicted by that witness, whose
evidence amounted at most to non memini. The story told by
the prisoner in his declaration was quite consistent with all
that he had previously said. If a reward were what the
perpetrators had in view, it was likely enough that they should
seize the prisoner and bind him to secrecy, because his know-
ledge placed him in a position to obtain the reward and put
them in danger of being punished. The prisoner wished to get
the reward, and with that object he communicated with those
acting for the Crawford family. If he were guilty it was
strange that he should make the conditions, first, that the true
perpetrators should be apprehended, and second, that he himself
should be protected, for he knew from the advertisements that
no protection would be given to a principal. If the perpe-
trators were arrested he would be quite safe, and the fact that
he applied to the family agents instead of to the police was no
reason for assuming his guilt. If he were not a principal
his position was quite intelligible, and the stipulations he
made were those of an innocent man. This prosecution was a
[267]
highly sensational case based upon a number of small points,
which, if carefully examined, did not cohere, and it was there-
fore the duty of the jury to discharge the prisoner.
At the conclusion of the learned Dean's address
the pro-
ceedings were adjourned till the following day.
At half-past ten o'clock on Tuesday, 24th
October, Lord
Craighill began his charge to the jury. His lordship at the
outset referred to the unfamiliar nature of the crime charged.
In former times, he said, bodies had been raised in order to
be sold for dissection, but nothing of that kind had occurred
for the last half century. There were in this case only two
conceivable motives, either to wreak vengeance upon the
family of the deceased or to obtain from them a ransom for
discovery of the abstracted body. There was here no sugges-
tion of any ill-will towards the family, and the perpetrators were
therefore actuated by the hope of reward, yet the offenders
must secure themselves from punishment. All the acts of the
prisoner from first to last were characterised by an attempt
to realise this motive. The competency of the evidence led
in support of the charge was not disputed, and the vital
question was, not what was its nature, whether direct or
circnmstantial, but what was its power and effect? It was
perfectly impossible that one man alone could accomplish what
had been done; probably more than two were concerned. The
vault was opened and closed the same night without suspicion
being aroused, and not only strength but skill was employed
in the perpetration of this offence. The body was removed,
the grave was dug, and all traces of these operations were
obliterated. Probably these things were not all done on a
single night, and certainly one man could not have done them;
there must leave been others. The guilt of the prisoner,
however, if he were concerned was in law the same as if he
had been the sole offender. The question for the jury was
whether they were satisfied that the prisoner was art and part
in the deed. After the funeral on 29th December 1880, all
[268]
that was done was to close the entrance of the vault and
to joint with lime the crevices between the flags. From that
date till 29th May 1881 nothing was heard about the vault.
That day the peculiar smell was noticed, and on 2nd June
the flags were cemented and grass was sown. The Crown fixed
Friday the 27th or Saturday the 28th May as the date of the
outrage, because the prisoner was proved to have been in the
neighbourhood on the 27th. He came by the coach from Aber-
deen to Waterton of Echt; he left it there, and walked towards
the village of Echt, Dunecht House being situated between those
two places. Where he went or what he did the jury did not
know. If the odour noticed was that of arbor vita, there could
be no inference that the body had been removed ; but the
prisoner had stated that he touched the blanket and perceived
a smell which remained on his hands for half a day. The
precise time of the outrage was, however, immaterial if the
jury were satisfied that the prisoner was concerned in it.
With reference to the first "Nabob" letter of 8th September
1881, his lordship observed that the person who wrote it
knew that the vault had been rifled, and also where the body
lay. The purpose of writing it was to bring the matter to
the knowledge of the family, who suspected nothing. The
prisoner's conversation with Lawrie on 20th September--one of
the mysterious communications made by him from time to
time--was an attempt to get the news circulated in the district.
As both these acts proved ineffectual, on 1st December the
flagstone was raised. His lordship then referred to the
various advertisements published on behalf of the Crawford
family, and remarked as to the second "Nabob" letter of
23rd December, that it showed the writer knew the place of
concealment, and assumed that the body might be removed.
The postscript was inconsistent with the idea that the perpe-
trators knew that an outsider was aware of what they had
done. These letters were written by the prisoner, therefore so
early as 8th September he knew of the removal, and on 23rd
[269]
December lie knew that the body was still in the wood. With
regard to the prisoner's conversation with Philip in March
1882, his lordship pointed out that if Soutar had been, as he
asserted, an innocent spectator of the crime, it was difficult to
see why he should be so anxious as to what Philip had said
to the Sheriff. Before March the prisoner twice told Machray
that he knew where Lord Crawford's body was hidden ; he
repeated that statement on 15th July, and requested Machray
to inform Cassells, evidenly for the purpose of obtaining the
reward. Was the prisoner's account of his knowledge of these
matters a reasonably credible one? The thing might have so
happened, but apart from its improbability was the further
fact that this man, let loose as he was, should return to discover
the deed and should so easily find the body. If, as he said, it
was then covered with rubbish, the men must have returned
later to bury it in the ditch. The prisoner had hunted for two
hours, yet he went back, and though, as he said, unfamiliar
with that part of the wood, he readily found the spot. If the
body was untouched after he first saw it, he could not have
found it, as there was no external indication on the ditch of
where it lay. He got no information fron the men as to the
identity of the body, yet in September 1881 he knew whose
body it was. His story that he learned this from Cowe was
disproved by the evidence of that witness. Cowe was sure
that the word benzoline was never mentioned, and if such a
conversation had occurred, the witness could not have forgotten
it. If the jury believed Cove, then the prisoner had a guilty
knowledge derived solely from participation in the commission
of the crime.
At the conclusion of his lordship's charge,
which occupied
an hour and a half, the jury retired to consider their verdict,
and after an absence of thirty-five minutes returned to Court
with a unanimous verdict of guilty as libelled. Mr. Mackay
having moved for sentence, his lordship said that he would be
glad if counsel could refer him to any precedents. Mr. Mackay
[270]
said that he had looked into the precedents, and found that the
previous cases were almost all those of body-snatching for pur-
poses of anatomical dissection, generally followed by sentence
of imprisomnent. The present case was, he submitted, entirely
different.
Lord Craighill, in passing sentence, commented
upon the
peculiar heinousness of the crime of which the prisoner had
been convicted, and, referring to the fact that in previous cases
imprisonment had been deemed a sufficient punishment, observed,
"But when I look at this case, at the coolness, the determina-
tion, the perseverance, the continuous heartlessness of the
proceedings, when I look at its cold-blooded and mercenary
character, and when I remember also the strength of this vault
which was violated, I cannot help thinking that, of its class,
this is a case by itself, and that what was adequate punishment
in those previous cases, where the same character of offence was
dealt with, is not, in my opinion, adequate punishment on the
present occasion. The sentence of the Court is that you be
subjected to penal servitude for a period of five years." The
prisoner was then removed, and the Court rose.
Unusual interest had from the first been taken
in the trial
by the other judges, and it is understood that Lord Craighill
acted throughout in concert with the Lord Justice-Clerk
(Moncreiff), as is frequently done in difficult cases. Parts of
the evidence were transcribed for Lord Moncreiff, and it may
be assumed that Lord Craighill in his charge expressed the
views of the Justice-Clerk as well as his own.
The Dunecht mystery was, in the words of the
Dean of
Faculty, only half solved by the verdict of the jury. That
Soutar was not alone concerned in the crime is certain; and
while it is satisfactory to know that one of the miscreants who
inflicted upon a noble house such long mental agony for so base
an end, did not escape retribution, the failure of .Justice to detect
and punish the other actors in the execrable plot must be a
matter of regret. It does not appear that Soutar ever disclosed
[271]
the identity of his accomplices, but some of these at least were
probably his superiors in station and intelligence, for it is
difficult to believe that a scheme of this elaborate sort, devised
with diabolic ingenuity and executed with a skill and success
unequalled in the annals of crime, was the product of the brain
and hand of an obscure and illiterate ratcatcher. Was his
adoption of the "Nabob" pseudonym due to familiarity with
Daudet's work?
On 24th June 1883 an interesting debate took
place at
Aberdeen before Sheriff Guthrie Smith regarding the allocation
of the reward, upon which his lordship was to adjudicate by
instructions of the Home Office. The proceedings were con-
ducted in private. It had been announced that as the
authorities believed Soutar was not the sole person concerned
in the crime, and as others might yet be implicated, only one-
half of the Government reward of £100 would be paid. For
this there were three claimants, namely, Machray, Philip, and
Collier, all of whom had been witnesses at the trial. The two
former were represented by agents, the latter appeared in person.
After hearing the cases for the respective applicants duly stated
the Sheriff gave judgment, finding Machray alone entitled to
the £50. It was said by the press to be understood at the
time that Lord Crawford would probably hand to Machray one-
half of the reward of £500 offered by the family. Be that as
it
may, one is glad to learn that Machray's claim was recognised,
as, but for his action in giving information to the police, the
ratcatcher might otherwise have remained uncaught.
Advocates of burial reform have in the Dunecht
case a
strong argument in favour of cremation. "To be knaved out
of our Graves," says Sir Thomas Browne, " to have our Skulls
made Drinking-Bowls, and our Bones turned into pipes, to
delight and sport our Enemies, are tragical abominations
escaped in burning Burials." The fate of his own skull, had
he foreseen it, would probably have confirmed his judgment
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