A servant in a house at the outskirts of the city had been tempted
by the clear air and dry frost to leave a whole “washing” of things
out over night. She wanted them to get a nip of the frost, she said,
but instead they got a nip of another kind. The girl woke at four
o’clock in the morning and happened to look out at the green, when
the clothes were there all right. She rose again at six, and, looking
out, had to rub her eyes to make sure that she was not still in bed
and dreaming. Nearly the whole of the things were gone.
Satisfied that she was awake, she first asked herself if some kind
“brownie” had taken the brunt of the morning’s work off her hands
by taking down and folding up the things; but then, remembering
that these useful fairies had all vanished before the steam engine
and electric telegraph, she ran out of the house, fearing theft and
hopeful of catching some of the thieves. No one was visible. The very
best of the clothes were gone; the clothes pegs, all scattered over
the ground, the empty ropes, and a few articles of trifling value
alone being left to tell of the robbery. At least so the girl thought
as she ran into the house and roused all within it with the news. Of
course the servant got the blame, and received notice of dismissal
at once, although, as she afterwards informed me, it had been by her
mistress’s express orders that the things had been left out. The lady
denied that—it is convenient at times to have a bad memory—and so
the disgrace rested on the girl’s shoulders. Had the lady, instead
of indulging in recrimination and wrangling, sent word promptly to
us, the whole case might have assumed a very different aspect, as we
could thus have sent word to most of the pawnbrokers by their hour
of opening. A good haul had been made, including some gentlemen’s
shirts of fine linen, the best of the lady’s underclothing, and some
twenty or thirty pairs of worsted stockings, of all sizes and sorts,
as there was a big family. The most of the linen was marked with the
letters “A. M. B.,” and some of the stockings had the same initials
worked into them with pink worsted near the top of the leg.
When the news reached us I went out to see the place and get a list
of the stolen articles. Six valuable hours had been lost, and I
frankly told the lady that she need scarcely hope to recover all
she had lost, and all through that stupid delay. The green had been
left exactly as the servant had found it when she rushed out in the
morning—the clothes pegs littered the ground; and while I glanced
over the approaches to the green, the girl began to pick up these
pegs and put them into a cotton bag which hung about half-way up
one of the clothes poles. This bag was suspended from a nail at a
height convenient for the hand, and at the head of the nail there
fluttered a little pennon, which had never been meant for that queer
flag-staff. It was a shred of bright coloured tartan, which appeared
to have been rent out of some one’s shawl, as the owner hurriedly
switched past.
“You’ve been damaging your shawl, Maggie,” I remarked to the servant
girl, who was busy laying off to me her wrongs and grievances, and
the deplorable failings of mistresses in general.
“It’s no mine—I dinna wear shawls,” said Maggie shortly as she
continued her task. Her head was full of her troubles—mine was far
away from what she was most anxious to speak of.
I took down the shred of tartan. It began narrow at the nail head
which had caught it, and got gradually broader, till it ended, liked
a filled-up A, in a fringe of the same colours. I spread the piece
out along my palm, and then called to Maggie.
“Look here, now, and tell me if any one about the house, or living
near, wears a shawl of that pattern?”
Maggie looked at the scrap of tartan, and declared most emphatically
that no one in the household did wear such a shawl, and added with
a smile that none of her acquaintances would be seen in such a
thing—the colours being about the brightest and “loudest” that could
be made for money. The same thought had already struck me, and my
thoughts instinctively wandered in the direction of some of my own
“bairns.” The tartan was of just such a pattern as one may see on
scores of shoulders about the Cowgate on a Sunday afternoon. I seemed
to see the whole shawl in that shred—a little square thing, folded
across, and just big enough to cover the shoulders. By mentally
picturing the shawl on a woman’s shoulders, and gauging her height by
that treacherous nail, I could guess her to be a person rather under
than above medium height, and immediately began to ask myself which
of my “bairns” given to “snow-dropping” had been lately displaying
such a grand shawl. Useless! their name is legion. They nearly all
delight in these things, and a dozen at least might wear tartan of
the identical colours of the shred in my hand. I began to think that
I should make little of my discovery. However, I placed the scrap
of tartan carefully between the leaves of my pocket-book, completed
my list as far as I could at the house, and left. A bundle of the
stolen things was in the Office before me. They had been offered at a
pawnbroker’s shortly after the opening hour, and pledged for fourteen
shillings. The boy who had taken in the things and paid over the
money was a _blockhead_. He knew that the pledger was a woman, but
could not describe her appearance. He did not think she was very old,
and he did not think she was very young. Did she wear a tartan shawl?
Yes, he thought so; but then he changed his mind, and thought that
she hadn’t any shawl. No one could make anything of such a fool, and
I strongly recommended the pawnbroker, for his own safety, to get rid
of such a stupid assistant, to which the man replied that he would
have been happy to do so, had the lad not been his own son. I grinned
over my mistake, the pawnbroker helping me liberally, and then left.
I then took a long stroll through the likeliest quarters, with a
keen eye to every tartan shawl. Twice in the course of that walk
did I start joyfully at sight of a shoulder shawl of the identical
pattern, but in both cases the owners were decent, hard-working
folks, and not a trace of a rent or patch to be found in either of
the articles. With my eyes thus grown familiar in the search, I was
wearily trudging homewards late in the afternoon with the shawl
nearly gone from my thoughts, when on the South Bridge, near the head
of Infirmary Street, I came up to a wretchedly-clad woman bearing
in her arms a child, round which was wrapped a gaudy and apparently
new shawl of the exact pattern I sought. Now, at the first glimpse
of this shawl I decided that it was not the one I sought, which
I imagined would scarcely be so bright and fresh-looking; but it
was the incongruity of that bright shawl, allied to such rags and
poverty, which made me slacken my pace, and almost instinctively
follow the owner of the child.
The woman was not a professional thief—a glance at her somewhat
pinched features told me that—yet her poverty was so apparent that I
felt by no means certain that she would not have committed a robbery
under such pressure. Poverty and a hungry bairn—where is the mother
who could resist the pleadings of these? Then the shawl was the only
fresh thing about the queer pair. The mother’s clothes were meagre
and shabby in the extreme; her boots were mere apologies for foot
coverings, and her bonnet only fit for a scarecrow, and the clothing
of the child equally poor. They had also a worn and travel-stained
look, and stood out prominently among the ordinary passengers as
dusty tramps always do when they enter a city. They were strangers,
they were poor, and the child wore a tartan shawl of the exact
pattern I sought—it could do no harm to follow them, which I did with
a sigh for the dinner I had hoped so soon to be consuming.
My interesting pair turned down Infirmary Street, and stopped at the
gate of that institution—became, indeed, part of a crowd already
gathering there—visitors waiting the hour of admittance to see
friends. Five o’clock was the hour, and it lacked nearly ten minutes
of the time. Most of these visitors were of the poorest, and they
varied the monotony of the waiting by exchanging experiences and
expressions of sympathy. My tramp joined in the conversation, and
I soon learned from her tongue that she came from the West. The
Glasgow brogue was strong in her tongue, but not strong enough, and
I soon heard her say that she had come from Airdrie, which accounted
for the slight difference in the accent. She was the wife of a pit
labourer—an occupation considered far beneath that of a collier, who
ranks as a skilled workman; and her husband in working among the
hutches had got hurt in some way, and been laid up at home till their
little house was almost stripped of furniture. Then the disabled man
had gone to Glasgow for advice; and afterwards hearing of the great
skill of the Edinburgh professors, he had scraped together enough to
bring him through to this Infirmary, into which he was admitted as
an indoor patient. He did not write very hopefully of recovery; and
at length the wife, reduced to her last penny, had resolved to come
through and see him with her own eyes.
“I’m feared that he’s waur than he says, and maybe winna get better,”
she said, shedding tears freely as she spoke. “I’ve walkit every fit
o’ the road, thinking I saw a coffin at the end o’ the way.”
Cheering words and homely sympathy were showered upon her without
stint, most of those present seeming to find their own troubles light
beside what that slight woman had endured.
“Is that your only bairn?” one asked, to which the mother replied—
“Yes, and I thocht we wad baith a’ been frozen to death on the road.
It was awfu’ caul’ last nicht; I never thocht we’d see morning.”
“What? did ye sleep in the open air?” cried an old woman, holding up
her hands.
“I hadna a penny to pay a lodging; and I was tired and dune, and
didna like to gang to a poorhouse,” was the choking answer.
The old Irishwoman wiped her own eyes, and then I saw her slowly
fumble in her own pocket and produce twopence, which she tried to
slip into the hand of the baby.
“Oh, no, no! No, thank ye,” cried the mother, in strong protest, and
flushing painfully at the proffered help so thinly disguised. “I’m no
needing that now; I’ve got money since then. There’s some kind folk
in the world yet, and I’ve as muckle as take me to my mither’s after
I see how my man is.”
I did not hear the rest of her speech, for in putting back the
proffered coppers she had thrown up the corner of the tartan
shawl—turned it back with a whisk right under my eyes, and there I
saw a wedge-shaped rent, as if a piece had been neatly torn out of
the pattern near the edge. I was in a manner fascinated and horrified
by the discovery, and stood staring at the torn shawl in a manner
that must have looked idiotic in the extreme.
“That’s a bonnie shawl you’ve got on your bairn,” I at length managed
to say, by way of opening up a conversation.
“The bairn’s bonnier than the shawl,” one woman hastened to add, “but
that’s aye a man’s way o’ looking at things. The brightest colours
catch his e’e first.”
“Have you had it long?” I continued to the mother.
“He’ll be eleven months next week,” she answered, with a look of
pride.
“I don’t mean the bairn—the shawl,” I said in correction.
“Oh, no, not long,” she answered frankly; and then she appeared to
catch herself up, and said no more.
“You’ve torn it a little there,” I continued. “The bit seems to be
taken clean out.”
“Yes, I noticed that,” she quietly answered. She did not seem to like
me or my remarks—just when she was becoming so interesting to me, too!
“Would you mind turning back the corner of the shawl again for a
moment—just to oblige me?” I continued, in no ways abashed by her
coldness.
She gave me a look as if wondering at my impudence, and then threw
back the corner of the shawl over the baby’s shoulder as I had
desired. Her look of contempt was beginning to be reflected in
the faces around her, but I heeded the looks no more than if they
had been the glassy stares of so many wax figures. I took out
my pocket-book, turned open the leaves, and produced the shred
of tartan. Then I spread the torn part of the shawl flat on the
baby’s shoulder, placed the wedged-shaped piece I had taken from my
pocket-book in the opening, and found that in shape, colour, and size
they fitted and corresponded exactly.
The woman followed my movements with no great interest. Her
indifference might have been assumed or caused by the door being
about to be opened.
“Where were you this morning between four and six o’clock?” I
demanded, when I had satisfied myself that I had at last got the
right shawl.
“That’s nothing to you,” she indignantly answered, with a slight
flash of annoyance.
“It is everything; and if you won’t answer it here, you must go with
me up to the Police Office and refresh your memory there.”
The woman turned right round and looked me full in the face, more in
astonishment than alarm. Then some one whispered to her—
“It’s M^cGovan, the detective,” with a significant nudge on the arm,
and in a moment she became terribly agitated.
“Do you think I stole it?” she chokingly exclaimed.
“No, not exactly.”
“Then what for do you want me to gang to the Office?”
“That is not for me to explain, but go you must.”
“I winna! I’ve trampit a’ this way to see my puir man, and I maun see
him.”
I brought out my handcuffs, whereupon the assembled crowd began to
groan and hoot and abuse me to their hearts’ content. Would I drag
a poor creature like that away to jail at such a moment, before she
could even see her invalid husband? I replied that I would not
drag her if she was inclined to walk. Then names were showered upon
me enough to have stocked a slang dictionary. I pointed out to the
crowd that the door was now open, and that through it was their way,
while ours was in quite a different direction; and at length, with
the aid of a policeman who chanced to pass the head of the street, I
convinced them that I was right. The woman was now crying bitterly,
and the child was screaming in concert.
“What am I ta’en awa’ for? Am I charged as a thief?” she at length
sobbed as I led her off.
“Not yet. Just keep your mind easy for a little. It’s only your
baby’s shawl as yet that is in trouble. Why are you afraid to say
where you got it, and when?”
She could not see that anyone had a right to ask that. She had not
stolen it, nor had she bought it, but she declined to say more, till
she saw how serious things looked at the Office.
She was carefully searched, with the result that in her pocket was
found a half sovereign and some coppers, but none of the stolen
articles. Her baby was then inspected, and on it were found a pair of
worsted stockings a world too big for its little legs, with the fatal
initials “A. M. B.” worked in pink worsted near the top of the leg.
The case now seemed very clear, if a little sad. The woman had been
in great want; had been tramping past the place, and under a sudden
temptation had taken the clothes and pawned some of them. I fully
expected her to admit the robbery, and plead the circumstances in
piteous tones in extenuation, but nothing of the kind. She roused
out of her torpor of grief, and in the most indignant tones made a
statement which seemed to us to have not even the merit of ingenuity.
She had been sleeping in the open air on the outskirts of the city,
with her child closely clasped in her arms, “to keep it frae the
caul’,” as it was but thinly clad, when she was roused by a hand
shaking her violently. The disturber of her half-frozen torpor was
a woman dressed like a servant girl in a common print wrapper, and
carrying a big bundle. The strange woman shook her till certain that
she was awake, and then rebuked her strongly for exposing herself and
her child when shelter was within her reach.
“I tellt her I was a stranger, and didna ken where the Night Asylum
was, and that I hadna a penny in the world,” continued our prisoner.
“Then she took my bairn in her arms, and kissed it and cuddled it
to make it warm, and then she took the shawl off her shouthers—that
shawl that you’re makin’ sic a wark aboot—and wrapped it roon’ my
wean, an’ brocht a pair o’ stockin’s oot o’ her bundle for it, an’
tellt me to keep them. Then she gie’d me a shillin’, an’ tellt me
to gang to a lodging in the Grassmarket, and then said she was in a
hurry or she wad have ta’en me there hersel’, and gaed awa’.”
And the half-sovereign found in her possession? How did she account
for that? How did it happen that when the mysterious woman with
the bundle spoke to her she had not a penny, and now she had a
half-sovereign?
“Oh, a gentleman gied me that,” she answered, quite promptly. “I was
sittin’ restin’ on a step, when I got in the toon a bit—for I didna
think it worth while to gang to the lodging as it was after six
o’clock—when a gentleman cam’ up to me and asked me hoo far I had
come, and aboot my man and my wean, and then he put his hand in his
pooch, and brought oot a half-sovereign and put it in my hands. I
thought it was a sixpence, for it was dark at the time, and maybe he
thought that too. He looked a wee touched wi’ drink—drunk, ye ken—and
I was gled when he gaed awa’.”
Clumsy, clumsy! a clumsy story in the extreme. We tried to convince
her of that, and by cross-examining her to trip her up, but she stuck
to her statements with amazing firmness, and even volunteered fresh
details in confirmation. Finding her obdurate, we gave her up in
despair, and she was taken away and locked up in a state of frenzy
which looked wonderfully real, and therefore piteous enough.
The only wonder to us now was where the rest of the stolen clothes
had been hidden. Allowing for the woman spending some money in
the forenoon, she might be reasonably expected to have about ten
shillings left of the fourteen given by the pawnbroker, but that
disposal accounted for only a part of the stolen things. Could she
have had any assistant who would share the plunder? I was anxious to
settle that question. I brought in the pawnbroker’s son to see her,
and he identified her in a haphazard fashion as the woman who pawned
the things, but then, as I have recorded, he was a _blockhead_,
and his evidence had no great value. I then thought of visiting
the Infirmary to see if she had a husband there, and learn if the
name she had given—Ellen Hunter—was real or assumed. A little to my
surprise I found the husband there, Archibald Hunter by name, as the
card at the head of his bed testified; and the moment that a hint of
the truth was given him he was so terribly excited and agitated that
he would almost have been out of the place there and then had he been
allowed.
“Hoo can you blame a starving woman with a wean at her breast?” was
his wild inquiry. “Can ye no show mercy where it’s no a real thief,
but ane forced to it?”
“I daresay she would be shown mercy if she would admit the truth,
and declare that she was driven to the act,” I replied, “but that
she refuses to do. She persists in trying to screen herself and put
all the crime upon some imaginary persons who gave her the things.
There’s nothing new in that story; every thief has it at his tongue’s
end.”
Though we thus disbelieved Ellen Hunter’s story, we made every search
for the rest of the plunder, and actually did come upon traces of
it. Several articles were recovered, which had been either sold or
pawned, in which the linen mark had been removed bodily with a pair
of scissors. This was particularly noticeable on the gentlemen’s
shirts, which had been marked on a little tab at the bottom of the
breast. In the case of one recovered, this tab had been cut off and
the remaining end neatly stitched down. The consequence was that,
though morally certain as to the identity of the shirt, the owner
could not swear to it, and it was given back to the buyer, who
declared that it had been bought from a man, whose appearance he
described, and whom he declared himself able to identify.
Meantime the trial of Ellen Hunter came on at the Sheriff Court, to
which she had been remitted. No reasoning or persuasion could induce
her to plead guilty, or advance extenuating circumstances by way of
lightening her sentence.
“They may do what they like to me, but I winna say I’m guilty when
I’m innocent,” was her firm declaration. “If my wean could only
speak, it wad tell ye that I’ve spoken naething but the truth.”
The case accordingly went to proof, and was speedily settled to
the satisfaction of the jury, who, without leaving the box, found
the charge proven. But then there arose in the Court, close to the
bar, a pale shadow of a man, who in broken tones stated that he
was the husband of the accused, and pleaded for permission to say
a few words in mitigation of his wife’s offence. The permission
was granted, and, in a husky and broken tone, Hunter proceeded to
narrate the circumstances which had brought him to the Infirmary—his
wife’s devotion, integrity, and sterling honesty; and the dread
fear which had brought her on that long journey on foot, and in the
dead of winter, with a child at her breast. The speech was given in
the homeliest of language, and without any attempt at grammatical
correctness; but there was a power and native eloquence about it
which went to every heart. The wife was sobbing loudly at the bar
with her infant in her arms, and the judge, visibly affected along
with the whole Court, was about to pass a light sentence, when there
came an interruption, the very last that any would have looked for in
that place.
“I will do it, and I don’t care for you!” was shouted out in a
woman’s voice in the audience, and as all looked round a girl known
to me as “Sally the Snowdropper,” struggled up from one of the seats
in spite of the efforts of a man at her side to detain her. Then
there was a brief struggle and altercation, and the man rising with
her dealt the poor girl a terrific blow in the eyes. The whole Court
was aghast, and the brute was speedily collared and brought forward
in custody. Then the prisoner at the bar started up with a joyful
scream, and pointing to Sally, cried out—
“That’s the woman! that’s the kind lassie that gied me the shilling
and wrappit her shawl roon’ my wean. Ask her and she’ll tell ye.”
Sally came forward, staunching the blood flowing from her nose, and
looking pale with excitement, but firm and self-reliant withal.
“The woman is innocent as the child in her arms,” said Sally, as soon
as she could speak. “A month or two in quod is nothing to me, but
it’s hard to send an honest man’s wife there for nothing. I can’t
stand that. I never thought it would come to this, or I would have
spoken out sooner. I _stole the things_—every one of them—and I met
her and gave her the shawl I had on, as her child was nearly dead
with cold. I never knew the shawl was torn, or likely to be traced,
or I’d never have given it. I gave her the stockings too—the first
pair that came to hand in the bundle, and put them on her bairn with
my own hands. The mother was half-frozen in her sleep, and at first
I thought they were both dead. Just let her go, and shove me in her
place, and the thing will be squared.”
“She’s mad!—she’s drunk, and doesn’t know what she’s saying,” shouted
the man who had assaulted her; but he was promptly removed and locked
up, the immediate result of which was that he was discovered to be
wearing a gentleman’s white shirt resembling one of those stolen, and
having the tab cut away from the breast, and stitched down exactly
like the one already described.
Sally very speedily proved that she was neither mad nor drunk by
revealing where all the stolen things had been disposed of, and
stating that the tabs of the white shirts had been doctored by her
own hands. Her companion was next day identified as the man who had
sold one of the shirts, and the case was complete.
Ellen Hunter, half frenzied with delight, was set at liberty and
taken into her husband’s arms; and when our case was complete,
Sally, instead of appearing as prisoner, was taken as a witness,
and so moved every one that the Sheriff, before allowing her to
be dismissed, thought fit to address to her a few words of strong
commendation for her generous spirit and truly noble nature, at the
same time advising her, in a kind and feeling manner, to try to get
out of the debasing life for which she was so ill-suited. In vain! he
might have saved his breath. Sally was too far gone to mend her ways;
and, while her companion went to prison, she went drifting on to the
death and destruction which speedily became her lot. But she left one
green spot on her memory. How many such can each of us boast?