Read Online A Sink of Atrocity: Crime in 19th-Century Dundee by Malcolm Archibald - Free Book Online Page B

open arms. Instead he said that the jailer was not there, but if Balfour could wait outside? Balfour did, kicking his heels around the Pillars and walking away the last hour of freedom he would ever know. Eventually John Watson the jailer appeared and ushered David Balfour safely into a cell.
    That same morning Balfour wrote a confession that told his whole sad, sordid story. Like so many before him, Balfour had gone to sea as a young boy, and after four years, the Royal Navy pressed him. It was then 1801, the French Revolutionary War was at its height and Britain was struggling for her existence against a continent in arms. A few years later and still in the Navy, Balfour met Margaret. She was a Dundee girl, and her father worked in the Dundee Sugar House. She was very attractive, and he was a fit, virile young seaman. It is possible that Margaret was pregnant when they married in July 1805, and Balfour was very much in love, despite his more worldly-wise shipmates warning against her. Knowing women from a score of ports, they would recognise her type immediately.
    However, Balfour was as brash and confident as any other seventeen-year-old boy and set up home with his new wife in the Seagate, no distance at all from the harbour of Dundee. Perhaps it was because of her that he deserted the Navy, but there is ambiguity over that period of his life. He certainly served in the Navy until 1813 when he was discharged with a pension, which for some unknown reason he claimed under the name of Mitchell. During that period Margaret picked up half his pay, as was customary with nearly every seaman’s wife – the Custom Records in Dundee are littered with such instances.
    By that time the Balfours were considered an old married couple by nineteenth-century standards, but in David Balfour’s case, at least, the love survived. He seems to have been a decent, good-natured, hard-working man who did his best for his wife despite growing doubts about her fidelity. It was this good nature, combined with the wayward streak in Margaret, which was to begin the slide to murder. Perhaps David remembered the warnings of his shipmates before they married, but if so he tried to ignore them and remain faithful as they produced three children. Unfortunately only one boy survived.
    Notwithstanding his troubles at home, it was not hard for a seaman in Dundee to find a berth, and once Balfour was back at sea Margaret took in a lodger, Alexander Hogg, to help with the bills.
    Then Margaret’s brother, Robert Clark, needed money. He asked his father and Balfour to act as security, and in time the repayment was due. But as neither Robert nor his father had the wherewithal, Balfour became liable for the full amount. He did not have the money, but Margaret Balfour asked the lodger to help, and the difficulty eased. Nevertheless, there was a cloud to the silver lining, and Margaret and Hogg became more than friends.
    With Balfour at sea much of the time, the relationship between Hogg and Margaret had taken root and Balfour found himself a stranger in his own house. He suggested that Margaret and he leave Dundee together, but when Margaret’s mother applied pressure for her to stay, Balfour moved out alone. For the next three years he lived in Aberdeen, where Margaret occasionally visited him, while Hogg moved in with Margaret’s parents. Eventually David and Margaret moved to Greenock together, with their surviving son and Margaret’s brother.
    In Greenock the Balfours rented a house from a local inn-keeper, Torquil Macleod, who was a widower with a small boy. Margaret soon transferred her infidelity from Hogg to Macleod, and Balfour had renewed cause for jealousy. When he came home early from a voyage from Belfast, he found his house empty and it took little deduction to guess where Margaret was. Balfour waited outside Macleod’s house until two in the morning when he saw Margaret emerge. Naturally he confronted her, heard her admission of guilt and