Read Online Ill Met by Gaslight: Five Edinburgh Murders by Allan Massie - Free Book Online
Authors: Allan Massie
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where it must submit to his will.
Popular opinion has always been accustomed to make a distinction between murder and other crimes. Difference of degree comes to represent difference in kind, if it is pushed far enough. To take another man’s. property is seen to be one thing; offensive certainly to the laws of man. To take his life is quite another thing, a crime which has entered a different dimension, an offence against the laws of God.
It was to these that David, condemned by the laws of Man, had now to prepare to submit himself. Those condemned to death had not only the gallows to confront; from the moment sentence was pronounced they were besieged by the clergy. The ministers were doing nothing but their duty; they had souls to save. It would be impertinent to question their sincerity. To face a man doomed to die in a few days must always arouse feelings of awe. It is not however cynical to observe that it also offers an unrivalled opportunity. As Dr. Johnson remarked, `when a man knows he is to die in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully’. In these circumstances the ministers went to work with a will.
Notable success had been achieved in the case of the three young men who were hanged after the 1812 riots. All had admitted their previous ignorance of, or indifference to, religion. All had been converted and had died with Bibles in their hands, proclaiming their faith that they were going to meet their God. Clearly, at the very least, the ministers’ intervention performed a useful service. It gave the condemned men the courage to die with dignity, and that suited the authorities, for it awed the crowd and convinced them of the terrible majesty of the law. The Rev Mr Porteous, who spent many hours with them after their sentence, published a little book recounting their conversion. He expressed the hope that it would be an inspiration to others; that they would learn from it to lead a godly life and eschew temptation; but the others had not been sentenced to death, and so, for the most part, ignored the lesson, and went their way, like David Haggart, unrepenting.
Now it was his turn however. Three ministers, the Rev Henry Grey, the Rev Dr Anderson and Mr Porteous, the Chaplain of the jail, attended on him. Their purpose was to bring him to a proper understanding of his spiritual condition. It is hard to determine their success. On the one hand he observed the formalities of repentance. He read the Bible with which they provided him, admitted the errors of his ways, prayed dutifully, and, in his speech from the gallows eventually, `conjured the multitude’, as The Scotsman reported, `to avoid the heinous crimes of disobedience to parents, inattention to the Holy Scriptures, of being idle and disorderly, and especially of Sabbath-breaking, which, he said, had led him to that shameful end’; and immediately before the hanging, after the singing of part of the twenty-third psalm, he `knelt down and prayed fervently for a few minutes’. All that was satisfactory. On the other hand, much of his time in the condemned cell was passed in the writing of his autobiography, in which the expressions of regret are perfunctory and conventional, and the delight in his exploits real and unabated; and in the conversations with George Combe, in which he continued to promote the image of himself as a fine fellow, the very Dandy of the Sporting Life.
One attitude does not necessarily exclude the other. We have passed beyond the crude psychology that insists on absolute consistency as a test of sincerity. Instead we can recognise that contradictory emotions do not necessarily drive each other out, but can exist simultaneously in the same being, man’s elasticity of temperament being such that he can accommodate such contradictions. As a lively and impressionable boy, who was, moreover, in an emotional condition heightened to an exceptional degree, David took on the colour of the moment. He did what seemed immediately
Popular opinion has always been accustomed to make a distinction between murder and other crimes. Difference of degree comes to represent difference in kind, if it is pushed far enough. To take another man’s. property is seen to be one thing; offensive certainly to the laws of man. To take his life is quite another thing, a crime which has entered a different dimension, an offence against the laws of God.
It was to these that David, condemned by the laws of Man, had now to prepare to submit himself. Those condemned to death had not only the gallows to confront; from the moment sentence was pronounced they were besieged by the clergy. The ministers were doing nothing but their duty; they had souls to save. It would be impertinent to question their sincerity. To face a man doomed to die in a few days must always arouse feelings of awe. It is not however cynical to observe that it also offers an unrivalled opportunity. As Dr. Johnson remarked, `when a man knows he is to die in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully’. In these circumstances the ministers went to work with a will.
Notable success had been achieved in the case of the three young men who were hanged after the 1812 riots. All had admitted their previous ignorance of, or indifference to, religion. All had been converted and had died with Bibles in their hands, proclaiming their faith that they were going to meet their God. Clearly, at the very least, the ministers’ intervention performed a useful service. It gave the condemned men the courage to die with dignity, and that suited the authorities, for it awed the crowd and convinced them of the terrible majesty of the law. The Rev Mr Porteous, who spent many hours with them after their sentence, published a little book recounting their conversion. He expressed the hope that it would be an inspiration to others; that they would learn from it to lead a godly life and eschew temptation; but the others had not been sentenced to death, and so, for the most part, ignored the lesson, and went their way, like David Haggart, unrepenting.
Now it was his turn however. Three ministers, the Rev Henry Grey, the Rev Dr Anderson and Mr Porteous, the Chaplain of the jail, attended on him. Their purpose was to bring him to a proper understanding of his spiritual condition. It is hard to determine their success. On the one hand he observed the formalities of repentance. He read the Bible with which they provided him, admitted the errors of his ways, prayed dutifully, and, in his speech from the gallows eventually, `conjured the multitude’, as The Scotsman reported, `to avoid the heinous crimes of disobedience to parents, inattention to the Holy Scriptures, of being idle and disorderly, and especially of Sabbath-breaking, which, he said, had led him to that shameful end’; and immediately before the hanging, after the singing of part of the twenty-third psalm, he `knelt down and prayed fervently for a few minutes’. All that was satisfactory. On the other hand, much of his time in the condemned cell was passed in the writing of his autobiography, in which the expressions of regret are perfunctory and conventional, and the delight in his exploits real and unabated; and in the conversations with George Combe, in which he continued to promote the image of himself as a fine fellow, the very Dandy of the Sporting Life.
One attitude does not necessarily exclude the other. We have passed beyond the crude psychology that insists on absolute consistency as a test of sincerity. Instead we can recognise that contradictory emotions do not necessarily drive each other out, but can exist simultaneously in the same being, man’s elasticity of temperament being such that he can accommodate such contradictions. As a lively and impressionable boy, who was, moreover, in an emotional condition heightened to an exceptional degree, David took on the colour of the moment. He did what seemed immediately
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