Classic Scottish Murder Stories (28 page)

In May, 1888, Sandy was suddenly no longer there. Jessie said that his mother had died in the Royal Infirmary, and another woman had taken him. However, she also told Janet Burnie that his father had come during the night and taken him away. The little girl then went to ‘Mr Macpherson' for an explanation, and was told that the child was away across the water, for the good of his health. This was the baby found in Cheyne Street with an apron string tied round its neck, after Jessie moved there in June.

Since there was strong suspicion of three child murders, Jessie King and Thomas Pearson were arrested, but Jessie entirely exonerated her paramour in her judicial declaration and he was released to bear witness for the Crown against her. He was immune from prosecution, although his shared guilt was obvious. Jessie King alone was put to her capital trial at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh on February 18th, 1889, charged with murdering Walter Campbell, aged five months, Alexander Gunn, 12 months, and Violet Tomlinson, six weeks.

Thomas Pearson gave his perfidious evidence under the staring gaze of Jessie King in the dock. He knew nothing about any killings, he said. The sums got with the children were all
spent properly on the household expenses. He admitted that he had gone under three names: Pearson, Stewart and Macpherson. He had used the latter ever since he was a boy. He had found it an appropriate name when he was attending the Highland gatherings. His name could be seen in the
Scotsman
in 1857, as the winner of a first-class prize. He certainly did help to adopt Walter Campbell from Prestonpans, because Jessie wanted a child. After three weeks, it was missing, and Jessie said that she had grown tired of it and taken it to Miss Stirling's Home: ‘he
would see the boy running about the Causeway with a blue gown on.'

Evidence was brought that there was a home so named in Stockbridge, not Causewayside, and that Walter Anderson Campbell was not on the registers. He had simply vanished. The police and Dr Littlejohn had twice searched the premises at 24 Dalkeith Road and were satisfied that the body was not there, after taking up the flooring of two houses and examining the coal cellars of both. In fact, the Crown was soon to withdraw the charge relating to this child. Cunningly, Jessie King had refused throughout to say anything at all about him.

As for the twin, Alexander Gunn, or Sandy, Jessie had kept him for three weeks and he remembered coming home one night and finding him gone. Jessie said that she had taken him to Miss Stirling's. He had wanted to visit Sandy there, but Jessie said that male visitors were not admitted. He had no knowledge of Jessie's bringing a baby girl (Violet Tomlinson) to Cheyne Street, nor did he know whether or not the coal-closet in the passage was kept locked. His oilskin coat had disappeared and Jessie had said that she had thrown it out because it was covered in green mould. He thought that was a pity.

Jessie King's declaration, read out, caused horror in court. It contained graphic admissions and also classic baby-farmers' lies and evasions. She
did
try to get the twin, Sandy, into Miss Stirling's Home, and others, but all refused because
he was illegitimate. Thomas Pearson loved the little boy so, but they were poor people and could not afford to keep it. One Monday after she had unsuccessfully tried to place the child, she had drunk too much and lied to Pearson that she was off to Miss Stirling's. He went out and while he was away, she strangled the boy and put him in a cupboard. When they moved to Cheyne Street, she took the body with her, in a box and then hid it in the coal-closet. Later, she put the body outside.

As for Violet Tomlinson, the adoption was all her own work and Pearson had nothing to do with it. She brought the baby home while he was away at his work, and gave it some whisky to keep it quiet. The spirits were stronger than she had thought and took the baby's breath away. While it lay gasping, she put her hand on its mouth and choked it. When it was dead, she put the body in the closet where it lay until the police found it. She had tied a cloth over its mouth in case it came alive while she was out, and made a noise. (Her account was not in accordance with the post-mortem findings of Dr Henry Littlejohn and Dr Joseph Bell, who, while noting that the lower part of the face was, indeed, tightly enveloped in a piece of cotton cloth, twisted at the back of the head and knotted at the throat, found that the actual cause of death was strangulation by a ligature round the neck. Such was a favoured method of the baby-farmers: Mrs Amelia Elizabeth Dyer boasted, ‘You'll know mine by the tape around their necks.')

There was a view, which took little cognizance of the human suffering involved, that the mothers of children offered for adoption connived at their eventual demise. If that were so, the money scraped together at what cost to go with the child must have represented a conscience-salving device! Closing for the defence, Counsel tried this approach, suggesting that the parents were not without their share of moral responsibility. However, the grief of Sandy's mother in
the witness box as she identified a pair of baby's shoes was well remarked and it was remembered that she had paid weekly terms for the twins to be properly cared for until they were nearly one year old.

Was it not possible, Counsel suggested, as he had to, that Jessie King had been under the influence and control of Thomas Pearson throughout and was acting as much for his advantage as her own? He asked for a verdict of culpable homicide, but he did not prevail, because the case was beyond mercy. Baby-farmers, like serial killers, were not prone to remorse. They were too hardened, being, if we must define, mass killers for gain. Once they were caged, however, the tears flowed – for themselves. Mrs Dyer tried to throttle herself with her bootlaces, and Jessie King attempted strangulation in the condemned cell, with strips torn from her skirt. On March 11th, 1889, Jessie King became the last woman to be hanged in Edinburgh. The fate of her own baby, one of the lost children of the Victorian underworld, passed from hand to hand, or worse, was never revealed.

T
he smart way to approach the Peter Queen mystery – the classic discussion case – must be with temperance, not in the spirit of Sir Bernard Spilsbury, who was liable to stalk off in high dudgeon, refusing to speak to fellow-experts after a trial in which, as here, the jury did not believe him. Appearing unusually for the defence, he held to his adamantine opinion that suicide, not murder by Peter Queen, was the explanation for the death of his common-law wife, Chrissie Gall, on November 20th or 21st, 1931.

Had Queen strangled her, driven beyond endurance by her difficult, drunken behaviour, on an impulse, perhaps, or had she felt, indeed, in Gerard Manley Hopkins' searing words, that ‘I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree/Bitter would have me taste' and decided to end it all, on an impulse, perhaps?

It was regarded by those who had the conduct of the matter as a most difficult case, full of mysteries at every turn. The verdict of Not Proven was widely expected. The learned judge suggested, in terms, that the opposing medical experts cancelled one another out. The defence resented that comment. Professor Sidney Smith, called by the defence, felt that the facts did not warrant a definite opinion either way. The judge directed the jury to the circumstantial evidence in preference to the scientific views.

The scene of crime, strikingly photographed with only the bedclothes over the corpse altered by the investigators by folding back, should have been more productive of non-equivocal
clues. The place was number 539 Dumbarton Road, Partick, Glasgow, that being a ‘house' in a tenement, ‘two stairs up', of a superior type, with a ‘room' as well as a kitchen, both small. There is an extant plan, from an exhibit in court, showing the disposition of the furniture in the kitchen, which, typically was the actual, warmer living area, with bed recess, kitchen range, sink, four chairs, a table, two ‘carpets', and a luxury – a gramophone cabinet.

This is by no means, unless the camera lies, a sordid setting for a sudden death. The wallpaper, which extends around the bed recess, is flower-sprigged, the valance of curtaining below the bed has a decorative border, the upper curtain, pulled back, is of some shiny material, and the bed-clothing is ample and comfortable. On the table in the foreground, which nearly abuts the bed, except for an upright chair set closely in the runnel between bed and table, there is a pale tablecloth with a hint of seersucker. Two potted plants, one of which looks remarkably like an aspidistra, and some remnants of a meal lie on the table: closest to the head of the bed, there is a shiny, rectangular tray bearing a plate with some discarded food to one side, of the consistency of mince or Christmas pudding. Other items visible are a large jug, probably for milk, a sugar bowl, a tall jar of relish type, two glasses, three cups and saucers with two of the cups not on their saucers, three spoons, one knife, and perhaps another, a small cluster of pearly bead-like objects, like a Christmas bauble or an ornament, an ashtray with one or two butts sticking up and an opened packet of cigarettes. It is impossible to see if there are any cigarettes left. The indications are not of a home where all hope had been abandoned.

There are no signs of a struggle on the bed or in the room. The young, slim body of Chrissie Gall lies on the outer side of the double bed (her usual place) half on her back, but with her legs drawn up and turned towards the wall. On the well-plumped up, very white pillow, her head is still neatly coiffed
with a lacy cap, variously described as a mob-cap or a boudoir cap. Its purpose was, I believe, to preserve the hairstyle of the '30s. On the other pillow, to her left, apparently placed in an upright position, slanting at an angle of 45 degrees to the floor, is a bottle, nowhere designated, but almost certainly designed to hold alcohol. It looks as if some hand has deliberately planted it there. It may be full or empty or at some stage in-between.

The body is fully clothed in a garment, which, although said to be pyjamas looks more like a spangled, shiny kimono. It is not the bedtime apparel of a woman who has given up. Chrissie cared about appearances and there is a sad, jazz-age glamour about her death-bed. It is a famous photograph, and rightly so.

The house in Partick was a love-nest, of sorts, but really a sham, lacking in joy and romance. The relationship was fundamentally marred by Chrissie's heavy drinking and profound depressions. The doomed young couple had been secretly living in sin, at a time when the wedding ring mattered. She desperately wished to be taken as a married woman, which may explain her careful housekeeping, even though she was often incapacitated – unless Peter Queen saw to everything. He was quite capable of doing so. His inability to make a respectable woman of her, because he already had a living wife, was blamed for her poor mental state. All who observed the pair commented on his absolute devotion to her.

Peter Queen was born in Glasgow at the turn of the century to a life outwardly promising enough but mined with terrible unhappiness waiting for him to grow towards it. He was powerless, predestined. The son of a bookmaker, he worked for him as a clerk. At 19, he entered into a marriage and there was one son, but it was a failure, and the couple separated after only two years. He paid maintenance. In 1929, his wife was removed to Gartloch Mental Asylum. Her diagnosis was said to be chronic alcoholism, but I would not vouch for it.
The son was cared for by relatives.

Queen himself was later seen by two psychiatric experts, and they concluded that he was hypersensitive and nervous, and that his margin of control was exceedingly small. Since he was condemned to death at the time, this may not be a fair assessment. Of the several who have written on the case, none seems, other than William Roughead, although even he relegates the information to a footnote, to appreciate the importance of his special knowledge: ‘I happen to know on high authority that he suffered from a minor form of epilepsy,
with short periods of unconsciousness.
[Author's italics.] Some years earlier he had tried to commit suicide by shooting himself through the left breast with a revolver, “because he had been blamed for losing a pair of boxing-gloves”.'

The two doctors referred to above also stated that Queen had been taking bromide and chloral for a long time, as prescribed by his medical advisers. They do not specify the complaint, but those drugs were the medicament of choice for epilepsy in the '30s. It was not until a memorial pleading for his reprieve was presented that his illness was brought forward. As we shall see, his epilepsy might well explain parts of his conduct before and after the death. It will be only a suggestion.

In 1925, Queen first met Christina Gall, who was born in 1903, when she came to his home to work as a nursemaid for his younger siblings. She left school at 14 and went out in service as a housemaid. Her family were described as respectable, and she certainly feared their disapproval. Love bloomed. In October, 1927, her mother died and she went home to look after her father for three years, while still seeing Peter Queen, who took her out regularly in his car. Mr John Gall took a moderate view: ‘I had made up my mind that nobody would be able to separate them; they seemed to be so much attached and had been meeting so long, that I thought it was impossible.'

Chrissie's drinking began after the death of her mother, which underlines the strong depressive element associated with her alcoholism. I wonder, however, if her decision to leave the Queen household after two years, in order to keep house for her father was not in fact motivated by filial duty but rather arose out of a desire to use the opportunity to cause some kind of change or resolution of a deadlocked relationship? Now, as Queen still pursued her, her behaviour deteriorated. She spent her household allowance on drink and failed to pay the rent. She was nearly 30 and she had no prospects.

By September, 1930, Mr Gall had had enough and he decided to wind up the house and go to live with a married daughter. Chrissie was homeless, her position was insecure and she was a liability, but Queen did not abandon her. On the same night that she left her father's roof, he transported her to live as a lodger with his friends, James and Fay Burns, at Hayburn Street. He was a tram conductor. They welcomed her and looked after her like a daughter. She was drunk when she arrived, and Mrs Burns put her to bed.