Tipping the Doctor

POISON, they say, is a woman’s weapon, the perception being that there is something decidedly unmanly in slipping a victim a noxious substance rather than facing up to him with a weapon. Like all generalisations, it does not bear up to scrutiny. 

In 1828, a husband and wife team used laudanum to dull the senses of their victims before they plundered their pockets. No-one knows for certain how many men they robbed in this way, or how many they killed by dosing them with too strong a mixture. Although convicted for only one killing, they almost certainly murdered more, making them two of Scotland’s most prolific – if forgotten – serial killers.

They called it ‘Tipping the Doctor’ – lacing drinks with opium-based laudanum and then rifling the pockets of the insensible victim. Although it was fairly common in the 19^th century, it was John Stuart and his wife Catherine who seemed to take the practise to new levels.

Stuart wasn’t his real name – he was in reality John Bradfoot – and he had been married before. The respectable family of his first wife were non-too-impressed by their daughter’s choice of match and they never lost an opportunity to let him know. Eventually, he could take their constant criticism and sniping no longer and he took his bride away and joined the Marines. His wife could not stand being apart from her people and she sickened and then died in Chatham Barracks. Bradfoot obtained leave to the their young son back to Scotland, but never returned to his regiment.

Now a deserter, his low self-esteem caused him to be alienated by his friends and he fell into bad company. It was but a short step then to turning thief, if not of the top drawer, sheep-stealing, The Scotsman later observed, being his ‘boldest adventure.’ He picked pockets, he cheated at cards, he became a ‘coiner’ (a counterfeiter), he drank, he whored – and raised his standing among the ‘idled and unprincipled profligates’ he called friends when he broke out of Stranraer Jail.

It was while he was working as a coiner and forger alone – he having no faith in the honour of his fellow thieves – that he met Catherine Wright. She was 20 years of age and she became besotted by him – he could be very charming when he wasn’t blind drunk. They were married over the anvil at Gretna and he introduced her to a life of the passing bad money.

Coining proved too much like hard work and they decided to try ‘tipping the doctor’. All they had to do was select their mark, load him up with booze laced with laudanum and then rip him off at their leisure. The beauty of it was that they could spend their time in taverns and inns and still make some cash. The pair set off for Glasgow, where they believed there were richer pickings.

Laudanum was a highly addictive mixture of opium and alcohol which was viewed as a cure for all ills but used by the poorer classes as a soporific. It was easily obtained and an ideal tool for ruthless crooks. It was also very dangerous and it was not long before they killed their first victim, a little man in a Glasgow bar who was simply grateful that he had some convivial company. Another was left to die in a Bridgegate tavern, having been robbed of 30 shillings. During a sojourn in Ireland, they robbed and killed a drover, taking the 20 sovereigns he had hidden in the tail of his coat. 

The man who proved to be their downfall was farmer and merchant Robert Lamont, who left his home on the island of Ulva to make his annual pilgrimage to Glasgow to buy supplies. The 50-year-old father of four met the Stuarts on the Toward Castle packet steamer as it made its way from Lochgilphead. Below decks, they plied Lamont with drink, ‘tipped the doctor’ and took his £12 in bank notes, seven guineas and silver coins. He was found seriously ill before the boat berthed and died the following day. The Stuarts were arrested on board with cash and Lamont’s hand-stitched silk purse on their person. A small bottle of laudanum was also discovered.

They were sent to Edinburgh to languish in the Calton prison until their trial. Stuart, though, believed that no prison could hold him. He and eight other ‘stout and desperate ruffians’ planned to kill their way out using home made weapons. The plot was uncovered and spikes sharpened into daggers found under Stuart’s bed.

‘It was no more than anyone else would have done,’ he said when confronted.

He was described at the time as ‘one of the most accomplished villains that ever came under the cognizance of the law. He was ardent and fearless – resembling in these respects the lower animals, which rush forward with an impetuosity which nothing can impede.’ His wife, though, was ‘very penitent’ and had been haunted with visions of their first victim, the little man in Glasgow who had been so grateful for their company.

The charge against them was that ‘they did both, and each, or one or other of them, did go onboard the Toward Castle steamship plying on the River and Firth of Clyde from Inveraray to Glasgow and, when the said steamship was between Tarbert and Glasgow, they did wilfully, wickedly and feloniously administer to Robert Lamont, a passenger, a quantity of laudanum, being a deadly poison.’

The defence bravely tried to have the charge vacated on the grounds that there was no way of knowing when the poison was administered – and indeed, the couple might have given him the laudanum with the best of reason, if he was feeling ill while at sea. If so, the capital murder charge should be reduced to culpable homicide, what they call in England and elsewhere manslaughter. The fact that they had then robbed him was a bit trickier.

The objections were dismissed witnesses were presented and the pair was found guilty by the jury (numbering 15 in Scotland). The judge described the crime as being of ‘the most novel, most dangerous, most subtle and most daring nature.’

While awaiting execution, the couple were allowed to be together and displayed deep feeling for one another.

Before they were hung on 19 August 1829, Stuart admitted that they had killed eleven men. A contemporary broadsheet stated that ‘With the exception of Burke (the notorious Edinburgh murderer who along with William Hare and their wives supplied cadavers for anatomists) no criminals have excited so much detestation.’

In the midst of a torrential downpour, over 10,000 people thronged Edinburgh’s Lawnmarket to watch the deadly duo die. Just before the lever was pulled, Stuart reached out as best he could to grip his wife’s hand and together they fell through the trap.