A murder that might not have been murder. A family history filled with tragedy. Illicit love, bigamy, incest. And a daring escape from jail. This is the story of Katherine Nairn and Patrick Ogilvy.
(Adapted from a chapter in ‘Dark Heart, the story of the Edinburgh Tolbooth’ by Douglas Skelton. Now out of print)
In the Tolbooth records for 24 June 1765, there is an entry regarding the warding of Katharine Nairn and Patrick Ogilvie who had until then been in custody ‘in Forfar prison and council rooms which were not sufficient.’ They were to be brought to Edinburgh under ‘sure guard’ and placed in the gaol ‘therein to remain until they are liberated in due course of law.’ Appended to the order was a warning that the jailers were ‘to take the utmost care that (they) be kept separate and have no communication with one another.’
The pair had been charged with both murder and incest. Katherine Nairn came from a good family. Her father was Sir Robert Nairn, Baronet of Dunsinnane, and in 1765 she was married off to Thomas Ogilvy, Laird of Eastmiln in Glenisla, Fife. She was a beautiful 19-year-old girl; wilful, high-spirited and able to captivate any man she met. He was the 40-year-old third son of a family already steeped in tragedy. His Jacobite father had marched with Bonnie Prince Charlie but died during an escape attempt from Edinburgh Castle. His depressed eldest brother had taken his own life. Another brother was crushed to death while serving on a Man o’ War. Yet another, although not dead, brought disgrace to the family by marrying beneath him when he took to wife a porter’s daughter.
Young Katherine’s arrival at the house should have been the beginning of a brighter future for the Ogilvy family. Instead, it brought more death and scandal. Thomas was not a well man, or rather he appeared to enjoy ill-health, but his young and vibrant wife managed, for a time, to bring him out of his hypochondria. He began to dress well, certainly in a manner more fitting to his station in life, and finally, happiness came to live in Eastmiln.
Naturally, it did not last. Thomas had another brother, Patrick, a Lieutenant in the 89th Regiment of Foot, who came home from the East Indies. He was younger, more dashing and, according to the case against them, it was not long before he and Katherine were sharing more than familial affection. Eastmiln was not a large house – the family and servants lived in four rooms – and if such an intrigue was taking place it would not be long before Thomas heard about it. As it was, Anne Clark, a cousin of suspect motive and dubious virtue, had come to stay and she seemed to have been the prime mover in the telling of tales. There was a falling out among brothers after which Patrick left the family home and, within weeks, Thomas was dead.
Suspicions fell on his young wife and there were stories of poisons being bought by Patrick Ogilvy and delivered to Eastmiln. Matters were further darkened by the arrival of Alexander Ogilvy, the family black sheep who had married poorly. This failed medical student demanded that the funeral be halted because he had a suspicion his brother had been poisoned.
Alexander had led a far from blameless life and had been partnered, professionally and personally, in the past by Ann Clark. It is possible that she planted the poisonous seeds in his mind that Thomas had been done to death by Katherine and her alleged lover. Given Alexander’s own dissolute habits and lifestyle, it is also not unreasonable to suggest that the murder – if murder there was – had been carried out by Ann Clark herself on his direction in order to inherit the estate.
He insisted that doctors open the corpse to determine if poison had been used. However, although three different medical men scrutinised the body, not one of them conducted a post mortem and based their comments on an exterior examination only. They decided that poison could have been administered but conceded that the symptoms they found could also have their roots in natural causes.
However, Katherine and Patrick Ogilvy were arrested, largely on the testimony of Anne Clark and at the insistence of Alexander. They were accused not only of murder but also incest, for although they were not blood kin, they were related by marriage and the strict laws prohibited any sexual shenanigans among members of the extended family. They were, as we have seen, locked up in Forfar Tolbooth before being transported to the more secure Edinburgh counterpart. Meanwhile, Alexander looted the estate six ways from Sunday, even though he was not yet legally entitled to do so.
News of the arrival of the young murderess and her soldier lover reached Edinburgh and a vast crowd gathered at Leith to await her arrival. The person who stepped ashore from the ferry was not the demure, penitent lady they expected, even demanded. Instead, she was a beautiful young woman who laughed with her captors and showed no sign of remorse for her deeds. The crowd grew restive and a black mood settled that perhaps they should teach this arrogant wench a lesson in manners. The authorities had to force their way through the ugly mob to lodge the couple in the Tolbooth.
The trial was a farce. The jury was empanelled at 7am on 12 August and, as was the custom then, evidence heard non-stop until 2am on 14 August. The jury wandered about the court room, discussing the case – and no doubt anything else – with witnesses and counsel. As the trial proceeded without a breather, food and drink was necessarily brought in. Three judges sat on the bench on the first day but that whittled down to one, while the other two went off to join the melee in the various parts of the court room. A total of 33 hours was spent listening to the prosecution case but only three to the defence – the judges and jury were simply not interested in hearing what the accused’s lawyers had to say. The accused themselves were prohibited by law from testifying, their words only heard through pre-trial statements.
Much of the damning evidence came from Ann Clark, who had shown great willingness to tell all and sundry that the young couple were guilty but was less than forthcoming to repeat her allegations in court. She had to be taken into custody and kept under lock and key in Edinburgh Castle to ensure her appearance. Unfortunately, she was placed in the same room as servants from Eastmiln who were also due to testify against their erstwhile mistress. There can be little doubt that stories were compared and changed during those hours of enforced captivity. At the close of the trial, the judge, Lord Kames, broke with tradition and summed-up for the jury – the first time this was done in a High Court matter. How fair he was in his summary is open to question, given the prevalent mood in the court. It must come as no surprise that both Katherine Nairn and Patrick Ogilvy were sentenced to death.
Later, the attitude of the court was criticised in print by an English lawyer, who also lampooned the way the two were charged with two different crimes on the one indictment. Basically, his point was that each of the two charges – one of murder and one of incest – had been used to corroborate the other.
‘The intrigue was supposed to be certain, because the husband was supposed to have been poisoned; and, on the other hand, the man was believed to have been poisoned, because there was supposed proof of intrigue.’
The criticism excited the proud emotions of the Scottish justiciary and the various Scottish publications that had reprinted the article were accused of Contempt (even though the proceedings were done and dusted by that time). The publishers were sharply rebuked but not fined.
The Lieutenant spent his time in his Tolbooth cell perfecting his mastery of the violin. The sad notes he made wafted down the corridors of the Heart of Midlothian and reached the ears of his alleged lover, who had managed a temporary reprieve due to the fact that she was pregnant – by whom is unknown. Ogilvy’s execution was delayed three times as friends tried to have the verdict overturned but to no avail. On 13 November, Patrick Ogilvy was told to lay his fiddle aside for the last time and escorted to the Grassmarket. If he had hoped for a rescue by any of his former messmates, he was to be disappointed for they had been penned up in Edinburgh Castle as a precaution against any such folly. As he stood on the gallows, he continued to proclaim his innocence of the crimes for which he was about to die. As he was turned from the ladder, the rope snapped and he tumbled to the ground. The hangman and a chimney sweep grabbed him and propelled him back up the ladder. A new noose was rigged, this time the drop held and Patrick Ogilvy died. The Society of Tron-Men, the guild of the chimney sweeps, were so incensed at the involvement of their member in this shocking incident that he was drummed from their ranks and banished to Leith for five years.
Katherine Nairn remained in her Tolbooth confinement, enjoying ale, white wine, rum and tea twice a day, until her child, a daughter was born on 27 January 1766. She was visited regularly by members of her family and a well-known midwife named Mrs Sheilds or Shiells. When the child was little more than one month old, the authorities debated on whether her mother was strong enough yet to be put to death. A decision was delayed for seven days. Katherine and her family knew that if something was to be done, it would have to be done soon.
On 15 March, Katherine Nairn vanished, leaving her infant daughter behind. The official version at the time was that she simply walked out of her unlocked cell. Some say she wrapped her slim body in a man’s great coat.
The most likely method of egress was fulfilled with the connivance of Mrs Shiells, who had continued to visit the new mother. She had feigned a toothache for some time and a large scarf had become something of a fixture over her face. All Katherine had to do was swap clothes with the midwife, swathe the cloth around her face and hobble out of the gaol, apparently receiving a slap on the behind from a turnkey and dismissed as ‘a howling old Jezebel.’
Any legal moves against the midwife when the escape was discovered the following day are not recorded. It is known she continued in her professional duties, bringing many respected Edinburgh men into the world and hinting to some that there was more to the escape of Katherine Nairn than was generally known. This suggestion that the break-out was ‘winked at’ is underlined by the means with which the fugitive avoided capture.
As has already been stated, she came from a good if not overly wealthy family – hence the need for her marriage to the comfortable but not terribly well-placed Thomas Ogilvy. Her uncle was William Nairn, a respected layer who was at that time Commissary Clerk of Edinburgh and was later promoted to judge when he adopted the title Lord Dunsinnane. Clearly, he was a man not without influence in the Scottish judicial establishment and strings were probably pulled to ease his niece’s departure.
On leaving the Tolbooth, she was said to have knocked on the door of a house in James’s Court she thought to be that of her father’s lawyer but was in actual fact the home of Lord Alva. The servant who opened the door had supposedly attended the trial (even though it was held in private) and recognised her immediately. He raised the alarm and Katherine, still in her midwife’s garb, scuttled off to the home of her uncle. According to the tale later told, he hid her in a cellar until the furore had passed and it was felt safe enough to smuggle her out of the city in the company of his clerk.
However, a more likely story is that a coach and horses was waiting for her at the foot of Horse Wynd as soon as she left the Tolbooth. As it sped from the city, she changed into the clothes of an officer, complete with cocked hat, but still caused her companion, James Bremner, some disquiet due to her frivolous manner. Chambers in his Traditions claims that the coachman was ordered to drive the carriage into the sea and drown his passenger if any pursuers managed to catch up with them.
After that, nothing definite is known of Katherine Nairn, but rumours there are a-plenty. She went to the Continent, they say, and married a French nobleman. She moved to America and died, old and happy, surrounded by her grandchildren. She came through the French Revolution and died in England. She entered a convent in France, or England, and died in regret for her past sins. Her end is as much a mystery as the alleged crime itself, for it cannot be stated with any certainty that Thomas Ogilvy was murdered – although Patrick did buy arsenic in Brechin and sent it, or at least some substance, to Katherine at Eastmiln. But arsenic had other uses then. There is no firm evidence linking them either to murder or incest as most of the damning testimony came from Anne Clark, a woman who, by all accounts, had little more than a nodding acquaintance with the truth.
The baby daughter born in the Tolbooth died there two months later. They say she was ‘overlaid’, that is smothered, but no-one knows by whom. Mrs Shiells continued to practice her arts until 1805. Anne Clark vanished from history but her proclivities were unlikely to have kept her out of trouble. Alexander Ogilvy, the rascally brother who may or may not have conspired with her either in murder or at least in manoeuvring events to his own ends, failed to profit from his brother’s death. Although he had sold off parts of the estate before Patrick was executed, he was prevented from doing further harm by a court order raised on behalf of her unborn child by Katherine Nairn. On 11 March, 1766, he found himself in the Tolbooth at the same time as his sister-in-law but his crime was one of bigamy. He was legally married to the porter’s daughter, Ann Rattray, but had ‘taken up with one Margaret Don (or Dow), late a milliner’s apprentice and has procured himself to be married to (her) on the twenty-fourth day of February last.’ He pled guilty to the charge and was banished from Scotland for seven years. He was given two months to put his affairs in order and it was during that time that he leaned too far out of a window in one of Edinburgh’s tall tenements and plunged to his death. It is tempting to imagine the shadow of Anne Clark behind him in the room, assisting him in his flight.
