His Bloody Project

Epilogue

The trial of Roderick Macrae ended on Thursday the 9th of September. The following morning Mr Sinclair sought out John Murdoch and presented him with Roddy’s manuscript. There was at this time no formal mechanism for appeal in Scots Law and the advocate hoped to enlist Murdoch’s assistance in mounting a campaign for the commutation of Roddy’s sentence. His logic appears to have been that the publication of Roddy’s memoir would lead to a wave of popular support for the condemned man.****

**** Forty years later, albeit in very different circumstances, a petition signed by 20,000 people was instrumental in the overturning of Oscar Slater’s death sentence.

Mr Murdoch was sceptical, though not unsympathetic to the advocate’s plan, and agreed to read the manuscript and approach the editor of the Inverness Courier with a view to printing a series of extracts in the newspaper or a ‘Special Edition’. Mr Sinclair left the matter in his hands and spent the weekend drafting a petition to the Lord Advocate, Lord Moncrieff, the highest legal authority in the land.

In his letter, Mr Sinclair made no attempt to claim that his client’s conviction was unsafe, or that there was anything improper in the conduct of the trial. Instead, his appeal for clemency was made on openly compassionate grounds. After a perfunctory summary of the particulars of the case, he made his plea:

As both the evidence heard at trial and the prisoner’s account attest, Roderick Macrae was driven to the acts of which he has been found guilty by the purposeful and determined persecution of the individual who was to become his principal victim. Sufficient evidence was heard at trial of the eccentric behaviour and mental defects of the accused, for the jury to deliberate into a second day; and the verdict, when it came was by majority, this in itself evidence that it is within the bounds of rationality for a reasonable man to take the view that the accused was not of sound mind. And this in the face of the repeated and self-damaging pronouncements made by the prisoner himself; pronouncements, I might add, which do not speak of a rational mind. For what sane man would freely make statements which, if accepted at face value, would consign him to the gallows? That such reasonable doubts about the sanity of my client exist in the minds of the jurymen surely militates against the imposition of the severest penalty of the Law.

During his incarceration, my client applied himself diligently to the production of an account on the events leading up to the crimes (a copy of which I submit for your consideration). In so doing he has demonstrated abilities and an intellectual capacity far in excess of what might be expected of an individual of his education and background. Mr J. Bruce Thomson, Resident Surgeon to the General Prison in Perth, stated in evidence that in his many years’ experience of dealing with convicts and madmen, he has never encountered a single prisoner capable of producing any work of literary merit, a judgement which underscores the exceptional nature of Mr Macrae’s memoir. To put to death an individual with the sensibility and intelligence to produce an extended literary work, would, I strongly aver, be a cruel and uncivilised act.

In addition, the prisoner’s age — a mere seventeen years — and his otherwise unstained character, may also be offered in mitigation. The acts for which Mr Macrae has been found guilty were quite out of character and there is every reason to suppose that, given his exceptional gifts, after a period of incarceration he might live a productive and fruitful life.

If we measure our society by the compassion we extend to all its members, then it must be admitted that in extending such compassion to the most wretched amongst us, we demonstrate our fidelity to the most civilised Christian values. It is in this spirit that I petition your Lordship to extend clemency to the person of Roderick John Macrae.

May it therefore please the Lord Advocate to take this Memorial into his most favourable consideration, and thereafter to advise Her Most Gracious Majesty to exercise her royal prerogative to the effect of commuting the sentence passed upon the prisoner.

[Signed] Mr Andrew Sinclair esq.

Solicitor to the prisoner.

The petition was submitted on Monday the 13th of September and on the same day, the Inverness Courier printed John Murdoch’s article, ‘What we have learned from this case’. Murdoch began by reflecting on his experience in the court-room, describing Roddy as ‘a forlorn individual, whom to look at one would suppose had no connection to the proceedings around him. Whether this was due to a callous indifference or an alienation of the mind; or whether this attitude was affected or real, I am not qualified to say. But neither am I convinced that entrusting the task of resolving this question to fifteen honest, but equally unqualified, jurors is the most prudent means to serve justice in a case of this character.’ Murdoch went on to discuss Roddy’s memoir. His account was, he wrote, ‘by turns both shocking and affecting, and certainly does not appear to have been written with a view to winning the prisoner’s release. Nevertheless, the eloquence and intellect it displays stand in stark contrast to the bloody deeds it ultimately describes; and if nothing else, there seems a madness in this.’ Murdoch fell short of directly appealing for the commutation of Roddy’s sentence, instead expressing in a general way that the law as it stood was ‘inadequate to deal with proceedings of this nature. Our highest legal minds should, with alacrity, reconsider our procedures in relation to cases which hinge on the sanity or otherwise of the accused, and until such a review can be conducted,’ he wrote, ‘it would be unseemly to send a man to the gallows.’

Mr Murdoch also wrote the same day to Lord Moncrieff and, although the letter has been lost, it is reasonable to assume that it expressed similar sentiments.

On receipt of Mr Sinclair’s appeal, the Lord Advocate would have been obliged to communicate with the trial judges and with the General Registrar for Scotland, William Pitt Dundas, but whatever the contents of their correspondence, events quickly took over.

John Murdoch had lodged Roddy’s manuscript with a local printer, Alexander Clarke. What appeared, however, was not a complete printing of the 50,000-word document, but a twenty-four-page chapbook comprising the most gruesome and sensational passages. Within days, scores of other, greatly bastardised, versions were printed up and down the country. The most notorious of these was entitled HIS BLOODY PROJECT: the RAVINGS of a MURDERER, printed by William Grieve of Glasgow. His Bloody Project ran to a mere sixteen pages and consisted of little more than Roddy’s description of the murders; his killing of Lachlan Mackenzie’s sheep (followed by the line, ‘It was at this moment I discovered my taste for cracking skulls, and resolved that I would not be long in indulging it again.’); together with a wholly fictional passage in which Roddy ‘wickedly defiled’ a twelve-year-old Flora Broad. The pamphlet sold tens of thousands of copies in a matter of days. Various gruesome cartoons, etchings and ballads (most notably On This Fine Morning, I Killed Three by Thomas Porter) followed, and rather than becoming a cause célèbre, Roddy became a national bogeyman. The irony that all these productions portrayed Roddy as being quite out of his mind must have been entirely lost on those who devoured them.

In all likelihood, Mr Sinclair’s scheme never had any chance of success. There were no legal failings to which he could point, nor could he reasonably argue that the conviction was unsafe in evidence. His hope that the publication of Roddy’s memoir would lead to a surge of popular support for his petition was, it must be said, hopelessly naïve. Nonetheless, there was no other course of action open to him and it speaks well of him that he supposed that the public would embrace Roddy as he had.

In any case, the following week, Mr Sinclair received a courteous, but perfunctory reply from Lord Moncrieff stating that ‘there being nothing amiss either in evidence or in the conduct of the trial’, he was under no obligation to consider an appeal for clemency. ‘Such talents that you claim for the accused, whether real or not, can play no part in the consideration of the Law.’ And, thus, the capital sentence was confirmed.

Mr Sinclair continued to visit Roddy on a daily basis. He found him in a general state of torpor, with ‘no appetite either for food or conversation’. At no point did Roddy bemoan his situation or express any fear about his approaching fate. Nor did he accept the ministrations of the prison chaplain, who entreated him to use the time left to him to reconcile himself to his creator. Despite having the necessary materials available to him, Roddy wrote nothing else, save the following brief letter to his father:

Dear Father,

I am writing in the hope that this letter will find your situation improved. I myself have but a brief time left and do not crave longer in this world than that which is allotted to me. The walls of my cell make for a dreary vista and though I would dearly love to see Culduie once more, if I could hasten my execution I would gladly do so. For the time being, however, I am quite comfortable and you must not concern yourself about my wellbeing, nor lament my passing.

I wish to say that I am sorry for the trouble I have caused, and that I earnestly wish you might have been blessed with a more worthy son.

[Signed]

Roderick John Macrae

The letter was delivered to Culduie on the afternoon of the 22nd of September, but John Macrae never read it, having been found that morning dead in his chair by Carmina Smoke. He was interred next to his wife in the burial ground at Camusterrach. The house and its outbuildings were allowed to fall into a state of disrepair and the land was distributed among the remaining residents of the village. The role of constable was assumed by Peter Mackenzie.

On the 24th of September, the morning of his execution, Roddy’s only request was that he might take a turn around the prison yard. This was allowed to him, and, according to Mr Sinclair, he completed his circuits ‘quite as if he was entirely elsewhere’. He was then accompanied from his cell by his advocate, a minister of the Church of Scotland and two gaolers. As the party approached the chamber where the execution was to take place, Roddy’s legs gave way beneath him and he had to be dragged the remaining yards by the warders. All necessary preparations had been made and, aside from the hangman, Dr Hector Munro and the Prison Governor were also present. As the hood was pulled over his head, tears streamed from Roddy’s eyes. Mr Sinclair hid his face in his hands. Roderick Macrae was pronounced dead at twenty-four minutes past eight o’clock. ‘The hanging,’ stated the doctor’s report, ‘was conducted in an exemplary fashion, and no undue suffering was caused to the prisoner.’