Jean’s husband had been skimming through Volume VI of the mid-nineteenth-century Scottish Law Reporter, which consists of brief outlines of the facts in many of the legally interesting cases of the day, with a few notes on the judgments and their significance.
The title of one particular case quite unrelated to his own research just happened to catch his eye.
He glanced over the case and immediately realized its potential significance for Jean. So he photocopied the pages in question and brought them home to her. I’ve recopied the salient pages for you here. I suggest you refer to them now before reading the rest of this letter.
This sounded so exciting, I immediately did as he said. The photocopied pages were a little smeared and blurry, being copies of copies of a much-handled and ancient tome. But their contents were vivid and startling.
2
THE CROWN V ISABEL MACBANE AND ROBERT LEANIE
At the session of the Edinburgh Assizes held in the summer of 1866, Isabel Macbane (née Leanie) and Robert Leanie, her brother, were arraigned for the domestic murder of Macbane’s husband, Revon Kenelm Macbane.
The Attorney General, who prosecuted the case himself, was satisfied from the evidence laid before him that he should prefer differing charges for the respective roles the accused played in the murder. Robert Leanie was therefore charged with the act of delivering the mortal
wounds with a carving knife. Isabel Macbane, who was at the scene, was charged with “art and part,” known in English law as “aiding and abetting.”
Upon their arraignment, the prisoners refused to plead.
The trial proceeded before a jury, with Justice Alexander Weir as presiding judge. He entered a plea of not guilty on behalf of the prisoners, as is customary when accused persons refrain from cooperating.
Various witnesses were called to give evidence. It was established that the victim of the crime, Revon Kenelm Macbane, who had been educated in the parish school, was a clerk in the office of the Kilcorran coal mine. Isabel Macbane, to whom he was married for five years, was a farmer’s daughter.
On the evening of June 12, the aforesaid Isabel Macbane entered her domicile in the company of her brother, Robert Leanie, a farm hand. They approached her husband, Revon Kenelm Macbane, who was writing in his papers at the parlour table, whereupon Leanie did intend to stab him to his death, in an act of murder with the assistance of Isabel Macbane. Which murder they duly did perform. The corpse having been mutilated further, the two accused did set about to burn all books and papers in the domicile. Thereafter they fled to England where they were arrested as they attempted to board the Dover packet for Calais.
Thus, the case against Robert Leanie and Isabel Macbane having been presented, Justice Weir attempted to question
the accused. They did remain silent, jointly refusing a response.
Justice Weir then directed the jury, lacking any reason to do otherwise, to return a verdict of guilty: Robert Leanie of murder, Isabel Macbane of art and part, as being his accomplice and inciter in the act. The verdict having been so returned, Justice Weir subsequently donned the black cap and pronounced sentence of death by hanging. The prisoners were to be held for one week then to be executed upon a gallows erected in the town centre of Kilcorran, near the domicile where the crime occurred.
…
At the 1866 Michaelmas Assembly of Justices held in Edinburgh at the Chief Justice’s chambers, consideration was being given by the Assembly to the better preventing of the horrid crime of husband-murder.
The Chief Justice alluded to the prevalent and traditional method used by Scottish wives in husband-murder, viz. the administering by said wives of covert doses of strychnine, causing the victims’ certain deaths, slow and painful. The Chief Justice recalled that in previous eras, judges were given latitude in imposing penalties suited to crimes in order for the deterrence of similar offences by others.
In the instance of husband-murder, dissection after hanging or public gibbeting were the most common sentences imposed upon such wives. The Chief Justice averred that the sight of ravens feeding upon a gibbeted corpse in the Grassmarket was not easily forgotten by the populace. He regretted the diminishment of Scottish law
through the subsequent abolition of such penalties by the Parliament in London in the Act of 1834.
Justice Alexander Weir now spoke. He adverted to the recent trial of Isabel Macbane and Robert Leanie over which he had presided. He revealed that in the women’s cell of the Calton Hill prison on the day before her removal to the place of execution, Isabel Macbane discovered to him, in the presence of his secretary, the reasons and manner of her actions towards her husband, the cruelly murdered Revon Kenelm Macbane. For accuracy, Justice Weir read from his secretary’s transcription as follows:
JUSTICE WEIR:
Why did you request this interview?
ISABEL MACBANE:
Because my death is near, I wish the full truth to be known.
JUSTICE WEIR:
Proceed.
ISABEL MACBANE
: My marriage to Rev Macbane was arranged through my father by means of a dowry. But Macbane was not a good husband to me. Within a year of our marriage, when he came home from work, he spent his time at his writing table. All the energy left in him was drained into his pen. Though he shared the same bed with me, he was infertile in it and I was thereby doomed never to bear offspring. But he was fertile enough with the other woman.
JUSTICE WEIR:
To whom do you refer?
ISABEL MACBANE:
The woman was she who tends the Kilcorran subscription library where he went many times. She could read his own writings. I did not learn to
read for as a child I must tend the pigs on the farm of my father, so Rev Macbane had contempt for me.
JUSTICE WEIR:
Was there adultery between your husband and this woman?
ISABEL MACBANE:
Yes. My brother Robert Leanie at my request spied on them and witnessed the adultery through the window of her own dwelling. That woman was already much swollen in the belly as my brother did see with his own eyes. When Rev Macbane came home from her, we seized his arms at his back and fastened them with a rope. He admitted the adultery and I told him he would die for it as he only married me for the dowry for the printing of his books and that he planted his seeds elsewhere. He said he might have loved me if I was able to read. I promised him that I would burn every last one of his obsidian clouds and all his papers. He begged me to spare them for they were innocent of any offence.
JUSTICE WEIR:
What are these obsidian clouds to which you refer?
ISABEL MACBANE:
They were his books of which he had printed fifty copies by the use of my dowry.
JUSTICE WEIR
: Describe the murder and the mutilation of the body.
ISABEL MACBANE:
I brought the carving knife from the kitchen and gave the knife to my brother who stabbed Rev Macbane through the ribs five times, once for each year of our marriage. He was still alive and begged to be spared. From his desk I took his jar of ink and his pen with the steel nib. My brother held him by the jaw and I poured the ink down his throat and with the pen I cut open his throat like a Spring hog. Then the ink mixed