Detour No. 2... Sandyford Place...

As found at Top 40 Glasgow Blogs at https://blog.feedspot.com/glasgow_blogs/

17 Sandyford Place

The second of House’s cases is that of Jess McPherson who was found murdered at 17 Sandyford Place in 1862. House describes the scene as ‘one of the most savage Glasgow murders…’. She had been hacked at forty times with a meat cleaver. It was said to have taken place on a lovely summer’s night of Friday July 4^th through to Saturday July 5^th. The house was owned by John Fleming, a wealthy and respectable accountant who also owned and rented some ‘squalid’ property - a respectable business man with a side-line as a slum landlord. Fleming's wife was dead and he lived in the house with his son and elderly father, known as Old Fleming, as well as the servant Jess McPherson. That weekend he had gone to his country house in Dunoon with his son and his sister, leaving his father at home with the servant.

Old Fleming

            The old man, who said in court that he was 87 and then later that he was 78, had been described by Jess McPherson as an old devil. He was forever asking her to marry him. He had a fondness for servants as it was later discovered, being called before the kirk as a young man of 27 when he got a servant girl pregnant. When his son and grandson came back to Glasgow on Monday morning they went to work. It wasn't till that evening, when they returned to Sandyford Place, that the body was discovered. Old Fleming claimed he hadn't seen Jess McPherson since Friday. The police were called… eventually, and a post-mortem carried out. The doctor determined that the lightness of some of the blows to Jess McPherson’s body indicated a female or a weak man had inflicted the blows. Three small naked footprints of a woman were found which were not McPherson’s and some of her best clothes were missing. Various other bloodstains were located around the house, including some on Old Fleming’s shirts. It was also noted that someone had attempted to wash blood from the floor in the murder room. Old Fleming also mentioned that some silver plate was missing.

A little later, a pawnbroker remembered some plate had been pawned and each piece bore the letter F - for Fleming. A woman who signed herself Mary McDonald pawned them. By coincidence, on the same day the pawnbroker took his news to the police, Old Fleming was arrested for the murder of Jess McPherson. Acting on information received – possibly from Old Fleming - the police then arrested Jessie McLachlan, a former servant of the Flemings and a very good friend of Jess McPherson. She admitted pawning the silver pate which Old Flaming had given her and using the false name which he had suggested as well as the false address. She made a long and detailed statement about her activities, most of which was nonsense and the police knew it was nonsense. McLachlan’s own husband had led the police to a box containing some of the missing dead woman’s clothes. McLachlan then claimed the murdered woman had given her the clothes to be cleaned and when she learned of the murder she panicked and hid them. The bloody footprints were also found to be identical to McLachlan’s. Old Fleming was released and she was charged with murder.

            At the trial, Old Fleming was called as a witness. His activities that weekend were dissected by the defence council but the judge in the case, Lord Deas, kept interrupting for the sake of ‘the old innocent’. Despite the judges attempts to protect the 'respectable' old man, there was one part of his testimony which produced a sensation in the court. The milk boy had sworn that when he called at Sandyford Place at his usual time on Saturday morning at 7:40am, Old Fleming had answered the door, fully dressed. The defence lawyer asked Old Fleming why he had not let Jess McPherson answer the door to the milk boy.

‘On Saturday morning, you mean?’ asked Old Fleming.

            ‘Yes, on Saturday morning.’
            ‘Jessie?’ said Old Fleming. ‘We ken’t it was a’ ower wi’ Jessie afore that.’
            I’ll translate for an English audience: ‘We knew it was all over with Jessie before that.’

The old man had already testified that he did not know she was dead until the Monday. And who was the ‘we’?

Lord Deas did his best to help the old man out of the difficulty but the point was made. The judge also did not allow other information concerning the behaviour of Old Fleming to be brought up in court. After all, said the judge, he was not the party being charged with murder. The jury was out for fifteen minutes. Jessie McLachlan was found guilty.

Jessie, who couldn't stop herself from talking to the police even when she had nothing to say relevant to the case, wished for a statement to be read. A long statement. A very long statement. Yes, she had lied. She had been at the house on the night her friend was murdered. She had taken around some drink, she said, and she, Old Fleming, and the dead woman had shared it. During the drunken conversation that followed, Jess McPherson mentioned that if she told what she knew about someone it would frighten them. The old man, gathering that this was an insinuation for his benefit was not happy. Shortly afterwards, he gave Jessie McLachlan money to go and buy more drink. When she returned, she found her friend moaning on the floor of her room with a severe cut across her face. She wondered what had happened but her friend was almost senseless and the old man claimed not to know. The old man then began to clean the blood on the floor while McLachlan nursed her friend. The old man then spilled the basin of water over McLachlan’s dress, boots, and stockings, and she took them off to dry - which was why her bare footprints were found in the room. The old man did not want to send for a doctor and neither did the injured woman when she had recovered enough to make her intentions known.

While McPherson lay on the bed recovering, she told McLachlan the cause of the trouble in the house. The old man had been out one night recently and returned drunk. In the early hours of the morning, he had climbed into her bed and ‘tried to use liberties with her’. The next morning, he begged her not to say anything to his son who was already none too happy with the old man's drinking and associating with servants. The old man had been terrified ever since then that she might mention what had happened to someone. He had offered her money and, as she was leaving for Australia soon, she was determined to make him pay before she left. When McLachlan had gone out earlier for more drink, she and the old man had quarrelled about ‘her tongue breaking loose’ and ‘hinting a threat to tell’. He had followed her out of the kitchen and hit her across the face with something that had floored her.

McLachlan confronted the old man with this. He begged her not to speak and promised to make it worth her while. When McPherson suddenly became worse, McLachlan wanted to go for a doctor. The old man wouldn’t hear of it. Finally, McLachlan went upstairs to look out on the street and was about to leave for a doctor when she heard the noise from downstairs. She rushed downstairs and discovered the old man hacking at her friend with a meat chopper. He had been sure she was going to die, he said, and did not want her talking to anyone before she did - so he helped her on her way. He told Jessie McLachlan that if he was arrested he would say she had done it and, either way, both of them would face the charge, but... if they made it look like a burglary…
    She pawned the silver and disposed of the clothes. The old man promised to set her up in business and told her she would never want again.

It took forty minutes to read out her full statement to the court.

The court, obviously enough, was very excited. But not Lord Deas. He had made his own mind-up, despite the fact that other evidence had come to his attention which he was well aware placed even more suspicion on the old man. He would not allow the defence to reveal it in court. Jack House, who had covered many trials, says of Lord Deas: ‘I know of no other convicted person who was sentenced in so cruel and vindictive a manner as Lord Deas used towards Jessie McLachlan.’

On sentencing Jessie McLachlan, Deas said, on that night, ‘… you did most barbarously and most cruelly murder that unsuspecting woman. There is not upon my mind a shadow of suspicion that the old gentleman had anything to do with the murder.’ He then pronounced the death sentence.

The amount of disagreement with the verdict was such that a petition was organised in Glasgow to delay the execution until a further investigation was made. The petition spread throughout Scotland and even into England where a more balanced view of the case had been presented in the press. A week before the execution, the Home Office contacted the Lord Provost of Glasgow who was told to delay the execution. On the instruction of the Lord Advocate a private investigation was begun. After an official enquiry, the Lord Provost received a second letter. Jessie McLachlan was reprieved but she was told she would spend the rest of her life in prison.

In years to come, all of the Flemings subsequently left Scotland. The Daily Telegraph twice called for an investigation into Old Fleming’s background. It was found that on that beautiful summer weekend of the murder he had a fire going continuously, as he admitted, which was plenty of time to get rid of blood-stained articles of clothing, although he missed a couple of his shirts. And he never did explain, thanks to Lord Deas, why he was fully dressed when he answered the door so early to the milk boy which was normally the servant's job.

Jessie McLachlan served fifteen years before being released and emigrate, eventually, to America where she died. Old Fleming remained in Scotland and was dead  by the time of her release. He was buried in the kirkyard at Anderson. The kirkyard is gone. It is something else of Glasgow’s history which has disappeared with the building of the motorway slicing its way through the heart of the city.