https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ Theses Digitisation: https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/research/enlighten/theses/digitisation/ This is a digitised version of the original print thesis. Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] DEAD MAN TALKING: THE HANGING OF DAVEY HAGGART By PATRICIA LUCIE SCHOOL OF SCOTTISH STUDIES FACULTY OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW A thesis submitted to the University of Glasgow in December 2005 for the degree of Master of Philosophy Patricia Lucie December 2005 ProQuest Number: 10390669 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely ev e n t that the author did not send a co m p le te manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10390669 Published by ProQuest LLO (2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C o d e Microform Edition © ProQuest LLO. ProQuest LLO. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.Q. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 4 8 1 0 6 - 1346 f GLASGOW UNIVERSITY LIBRARY; ABSTRACT David Haggart was hanged for murder in 1821. Before he died he wrote an account of his life that sold well and generated a lot of comment, mostly of outrage. His posthumously published Life was not the only medium for this ‘dead man talking.’ So too was his cranium, measured by leading Edinburgh phrenologist George Combe and argued over in scientific and literary journals for almost a decade after his death. This is not a biography of David Haggart but a thesis about how he and the many people who attempted to explain his delinquency interpreted what he called ‘the sporting life’ and others called crime. It examines six ‘versions’ of him; that of the court that tried him, his own Life, his readers’ responses, the theories of the phrenologists, the story told on the streets, and the cinema’s attempt to portray him a century and a half later. What the world made of him was of particular importance because his criminal career coincided with major changes in society. Scotland was fast becoming urbanised. The population was both rising and moving, placing strains on poor relief, policing and housing. Although the period of most intense industrialisation lay ahead, working lives were changing in both countryside and town, and economic recession in the years following the Napoleonic Wars fuelled discontents and exacerbated poverty. It will be argued that both popular and scientific literature about wrongdoers changed significantly in the 1820s. In answering the question, ‘What made Davey Haggart steal and murder?’, the literature opened out to address the larger question of moral agency and even the possibility that nature and the environment might have shaped him, shaped all of us. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My thanks go to Professor Ted Cowan of the University of Glasgow, my supervisor, who encouraged me to roam freely across the boundaries of academic disciplines. Molly Rorke was a fund of information on slang and vulgar tongues.The staff of the National Library of Scotland, the National Archives of Scotland and the University of Glasgow’s Special Collections could not have been more helpful. CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter One : The Court’s Version 11 Chapter Two: David’s Version: The Art and Part of Criminal Biography 44 Chapter Three: Haggart’s Life: According to Readers and Writers 80 Chapter Four: The Criminal Not the Crime: The Phrenologist’s Version 115 Chapter Five: Executing David Haggart: The Version on the Street 155 Chapter Six: ‘Sinful Davey’ : The Cinema Version 188 Conclusions: What the Blind Men Saw 203 Bibliography: 210 îïSivTÎT m m THE BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT It was six men of Indostan To learning much inclined. Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind), That each by observation Might satisfy his mind The First approached the Elephant, And happening to fall Against his sturdy side, At once began to bawl: “God bless me! But the Elephant Is very like a wall!” The Second, feeling of the tusk, Cried, “Ho! What have we here So very round and smooth and sharp? To me ‘tis mighty clear This wonder of an Elephant is very like a spear!” The Third approached the animal. And happening to take The squirming trunk within his hands, Thus boldly up and spake: “I see,”quoth he, the Elephant Is very like a snake!” The Fourth reached out an eager hand. And felt about the knee. “What most this wondrous beast is like Is mighty plain,”quoth he; ■‘’Tis clear enough the Elephant is very like a tree!’ The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear. Said: “E’en the blindest man Can tell what this resembles most; Deny the fact who can This marvel of an Elephant Is very like a fan!” The Sixth no sooner had begun About the beast to grope. Than, seizing on the swinging tail That fell within his scope, “I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant is very like a rope!’ And so these men of Indostan Disputed loud and long, Each in his own opinion Exceeding stiff and strong. Though each was partly in the right, And all were in the wrong! Moral: So oft in théologie wars, The disputants, I ween, Rail on in utter ignorance Of what each other mean’ And prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen! John Godfrey Saxe INTRODUCTION David Haggart’s life was short and eventful. It ended on the gallows on 18 July 1821 when he was ‘about twenty’ and had been convicted of murder at the High Court in Edinburgh. He was what would nowadays be called a ‘persistent youth offender’ with a ‘revolving door’ history of petty crime alternating with jail sentences, which he rarely served in full before exercising his considerable talent for escape. It was in the course of escaping from Dumfries jail that he killed a turnkey, Thomas Morrin, and then went on the run for a few months. Recaptured in Ireland, he was brought back to face trial and sentence of death. Although in his time he was described as ‘notorious’ he did not achieve the kind of infamy that attaches to peculiarly depraved killers. When he struck Thomas Morrin over the head with a stone he certainly meant to disable him, steal his keys and escape, but he probably did not intend lethal force. His was not a name to rank with the sadists and poisoners, axe-murderers, rapists and child-killers who, then as now, haunted and titillated the public imagination. Haggart does not invite attention as a psychopathic ogre, or even as a peculiarly interesting example of a murderer. Nor does he claim fresh historical interest as a "cause celebre\ a falsely convicted or misunderstood man. There is no miscarriage of justice to deplore and rectify. A more colourable case may be made for reconsidering his reputation as a ‘celebrity criminal’, one who amazes us by his dexterity, cunning, boldness, or roguish personality and invites us to side with him in mocking authority. England had produced such characters in the eighteenth century, villains like Dick Turpin, Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild, whose exploits were celebrated in popular ballads and plays/ David Haggart may have seen himself as belonging to this company but, despite some early kindling of such a reputation in broadside and ballad, it never took off. Some of the reasons will be discussed in the chapters that follow— whether this was because his career came too late and missed the fashion for picaresque heroes, or he was not a sufficiently gifted pickpocket and escapologist, or a sufficiently charismatic one; or there was something about Scotland in the 1820s that made it inhospitable to that kind of criminal celebrity. He fared a little better in the twentieth century. William Roughead wrote about him. The distinguished novelist Allan Massie published an essay. American film director John Huston made a film. The Dictionary of National Biography included him.^ None of it won him celebrity. Haggart’s failure to achieve a lasting place in popular culture is not the most compelling aspect of his story, however. The most important thing he did was to use the short, foui' week interval between being sentenced and being hanged to write an account of his life.^ This, and the many published responses it generated, did much more than tell the story of a ‘nearly famous’ criminal. Everybody, it seemed, had an opinion about this young man. Lawyers, clergymen, outraged citizens, the literati, broadside hacks and newspaper editors put their versions of Davey Haggart into the public forum. When the leading phrenologist of the day, George Combe, visited Haggart in his jail cell, examined his head and published his findings, it unleashed a ^ English rogues have attracted much more academic attention than Scottish ones. Of a considerable literature see Philip Rawlings, Drunks, Whores and Idle Apprentices .'Criminal Biographies of the Eighteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1992).