The Last Hanging In Crieff ; Kangaroo Court ?
The Last Hanging In Crieff
The Gallows of Crieff
: The importance of Crieff as a place of significance in Perthshire was
emphasised rather strangely by the fact that it not only was it an established place for executions but
also had a full time hang man to carry out the prescribed sentence . This was
somewhat unusual in Scotland in the 16th , 17th and
18th centuries and his services
were often called upon for from not only the “
Fair City “ of Perth but places much further afield . Although there has
been some debate over the
years as to where the actual location of the
gallows was in the town , circumstantial evidence points
pretty convincingly to the appropriately named Gallow Hill , a small knoll once the locus
of cattle pens but now given over to a small development by
Hillcrest Housing Association . When the news
broke that houses were to be
built on the site I contacted
Hillcrest pointing out that
because of the historical importance of
Gallowhill in the annals of our local heritage I felt it incumbent upon them to
recognise this in some way to
preserve such an important part of our
past . I do wish that other developers had the same community attitude as
Hillcrest . I had a meeting with their architect and they came
up with a proposal to erect a granite
cairn on the site . I was asked to write an appropriate text and
it gives
me great satisfaction that despite
the hustle and bustle of today’s society there is now a
physical reminder of what
was such a traumatic part of yesterday’s
society .
Why did Crieff
have a gallows
and a hang man from such an early
date ? The answer lies in the fact the
this was
the centre of the ancient Kindom of Fortren or Fortriu
ruled over by the all powerful Pictish
Earls of Strathearn . The hub of their
control over their Kingdom lay in the Stayt a court of administration and
justice . The original Stayt was located
in what is now a farmer’s filed
virtually opposite the good’s entrance
to the Strathearn Campus and High
School . The Earl’s representative was the Steward of Strathearn who sat on
top of a large mound on
a throne like chair where he listened
to a passed judgement on a variety of cases ranging in magnitude from
boundary disputes to cattle theft and
physical assault . He was judicially omnipotent and if he felt it required the ultimate
sanction you were dispatched a
mile down the road to Gallow Hill !
The fame and
notoriety of this continued for
centuries . Sir Walter Scott and Lord Macaulay both mentioned the “ Kind
Gallows of Crieff “ in their writings . The gibbet was a multi capacity unit
allowing for more than one cadaver to dangle from its arm. Although the last execution
took place prior to the height of the annual Tryst after the end of the ’45 Jacobite
Uprising , it was an undoubted
deterrent to the approaching catarans with their beasts . They would
doff their Highland bonnets in respect and indeed awe as
they passed the dreaded knoll .The
term the “ Kind Gallows “ was born and survives in writings
to this day . The original gibbet
was kept in Wright , the blacksmith’s smiddy at the
top of King Street , a site now occupied
by the Police Station . Mr Wright
may have been excellent at shoeing horses but he
was also a capable entrepreneur !
It is said that he
would cut up pieces of the scaffold
and sell them as souvenirs to eager visitors
to the town ! Eventually enough was
enough and what remained was
placed in a glass case and
displayed for many years in the meeting room of Crieff Town
Council . With the advent of Regionalisation
it was finally removed to the safe
keeping of the basement of Perth museum where it still remains
despite an effort some
twenty or so years ago to display it back in Crieff .
The Last Execution : On
the 8th of June in 1681 The
Bishop of Dunkeld heard a complaint against the incumbent minister of Kinkell.
Kinkell was a small parish which
had been amalgamated with its
larger neighbour , Trinity Gask, to the north on the other side of
the fast
flowing River Earn .The minister , Richard Duncan was accused of “ scandalous offences “ and it was written “ a visitation shall be held at the Kirk of Trinity Park for the tryal of ane scandal, laid to the charge of Mr Richard Duncan , minister there “ . The
inspection duly took place and Duncan was deposed
from his office .After he
had left his manse some alterations were
required and to the horror of
those carrying out the work , the body of
a child was found
under the hearthstone . Duncan was
alleged to have been the father of the child born
to him by his maid – servant .He was charged with that if he had not murdered the child he had
been an accessory to it’s killing
. He was tried at the Steward’s Court ,
presided over by the Earl of Perth – the Drummond family were the heirs to the old jurisdiction and as one of the
local land owning families wielded considerable
power including that of being
responsible for the annual Tryst and
being allowed to levy monies
on each beast sold . The minister
was found guilty and condemned to
be hanged on the gallows of Crieff . In modern day talk we often refer to “kangaroo
courts “ where individuals are
condemned without proper evidence and with out
independent juries . The Reverend Duncan had support for his innocence from several quarters . Lord Fountainhall ,
an eminent expert , stated that “ he had
been convicted on very
slender presumptions , which however
they might amount to degredation , and banishment , yet it was thought hard
to extend them to death “ . His parishioners and others
held similar compassionate views and
efforts began to try to obtain a
reprieve . In those day power very much lay in the hands of titled classes
and it was James Drummond , son of the very Earl of Perth , who took the case in hand and after much effort was duly successful .
This is the stuff
of our present day Sunday broadsheets ! Although Drummond
had secured a reprieve
for the unfortunate Duncan it
is quoted in Porteous ‘s History of Crieff that “
the hour of the executions was anticipated by the ill-will of some pretentious
busy body dressed in a little authority “. Duncan was led to the scaffold and summarily dispatched . The
person bearing the reprieve had by then reached Muthill, a mere three miles
distant but too late ! . The tale is told that Duncan professed his innocence
to the end and declared that after
he had
been executed a white dove
would land on the scaffold in token of his
stand . It is said that in fact this
did indeed happen !
The tragic demise of
Richard Duncan was preserved in a verse
in the Scot’s language :
Oh! What a parish Oh !What a
parish
Oh !What a parish
is that o’ Kinkell
They hae hangit the minister , droned
the precentor ,
Dung doon the steeple and drucken the bell .
A “ precentor “ was
the person in the Scottish church who led the congregation in the singing of the psalms
or hymns prior to the introduction of
the organ . The Kinkell Precentor was drowned
accidently one day while trying to ford the River Earn at Kinkell . At that period there were two churches , one at Trinity
Gask and the other at Kinkell on the south side of the river and the
Precentor was making
his way to one from the other .
The present building that was Kinkell Church is
that of St Beans near the present bridge ( I will be covering the history of the church
in my next Blog ). The steeple was
removed and the bell , for some reason was sold and discovered many years later in the possession of a church in Cockpen in
the
Lothians !
This sad tale was perhaps
one of the reasons that the power of the Strathearn Stewards was
lost when in Scottish Law abolished heritable Jurisdictions in 1748 .
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