John Proctor - A Criminal Record Stretching From Belhelvie to Dover

John Proctor was a Belhelvie lad, or "loon", as they say in the north east of Scotland. The parish of Belhelvie is situated less than ten miles north of Aberdeen and it was at the farm of Dykenook that John was born on the 15th August 1868. His father was a farm servant, also called John, while his mother was Elizabeth Proctor (née Emslie).

Come the 1881 census, John is to be found working as a farm servant, aged 13, on his uncle William's farm of Hillbrae, just a few miles away from his birthplace, in the parish of Udny. The farm was 165 acres in total, 150 of which was noted as arable. 

Reproduced by kind permission of the National Library of Scotland

https://maps.nls.uk/

Ordnance Survey sheet LVI, Aberdeenshire, includes Belhelvie, Foveran, New Machar, Udny

Survey date 1866, publication date 1870

John evidently knew his way around a farm from a young age. Indeed, it was for the crime of cattle stealing that he ended up in the newly opened Peterhead Prison in 1889. He was tried at the High Court in Edinburgh on the 30th August that year, with the Aberdeen Evening Express containing a brief report of the trial as follows:

"John Proctor (22) was to-day sentenced at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh to five years' penal servitude for having stolen, on the 15th inst., four cattle from a grass field in the parish of Belhelvie, occupied by Mr. Sheriffs, Kannahar".

A report of John's arrest in The Scotsman two weeks prior to his trial reveals that he had driven the cattle into Aberdeen and had tried to "dispose of them at Mr. Duncan's mart" after giving a fictitious story about their ownership. Another interesting nugget of information in the report is that, 

"Proctor only came from Dublin on Saturday last after having obtained his discharge from the army on account of ill health"

John served just over four years of his five year sentence: he appears as an inmate of Peterhead Prison on the 1891 census, which is where his mugshot was taken on the 4th September 1893. The Register of Returned Convicts for Aberdeen (see image at the foot of this page) records that he was discharged from prison just over a month later, on the 6th October. 

For a short while he lived at 204 George Street, Aberdeen, where his landlady was a Mrs. Adams. However, after his release he failed to report to the police. The next note in the register, dated July 1894, states that he was "apprehended at Dover on charges of theft" and subsequently tried at the Dover Quarter Sessions. The Dover Express of 3rd August 1894 carried a report of the trial under the headline, "The Robbery at the Castle", which reveals that John had not only been a servant in the army to a Lieutenant Davies, but that he was also using a pseudonym:

"James Reed, otherwise James [sic] Proctor was indicted with feloniously stealing one gold watch and chain, with a charm attached, one silver cigarette case, one oxidized watch guard, two pairs of scissors, one silk scarf, one metal box etc...The prisoner pleaded guilty...Lieutenant Davies said that the prisoner entered the army in the February of this year under the name of James Reed. He had been his servant for a fortnight previous to the robbery. His character in the army had been exemplary. They, of course, knew nothing of the prisoner's previous career...An officer who attended from Scotland proved the previous convictions...The Recorder ordered the prisoner to be kept in hard labour for 15 calendar months on each charge, the sentences to run concurrently".