Peter Anderson - "It was drink that killed the woman and not the man"

Regrettably, domestic violence is as old as humanity itself, although thankfully there is far less acceptance of it as "just one of those things" than there once was. The connection between violent crime and alcohol is also well established: a defence of "the drink made me do it" is no defence at all, but that was not always the case.

In January 1889, Peter Anderson, a quarry worker who lived at Cluny, was accused of the murder of his wife, Ann Watt or Anderson, and he subsequently stood trial at the High Court of Justiciary in Aberdeen. The Aberdeen Free Press of the 23rd January 1889 reported the proceedings:

"He tendered a plea of culpable homicide, which the Court accepted. The Advocate Depute thought it right that he should state to the Court the reasons for accepting this plea. The prisoner committed this offence in the month of October [1888], and only married the deceased in the month of January last year. He was 33 years of age and the deceased was at her death 44. She had a croft at Ladymoss, Cluny, and the prisoner married her and moved into the croft along with her. On the day of the murder, the accused left home at nine o'clock in the morning, and went to a feeing market. He returned at nine o'clock in the evening and, undoubtedly, he was the worse for drink. His wife found fault with him and he seems to have struck her. Her son, a boy of twelve, interfered to protect his mother, and the accused struck him and pursued him through a field. He came back no doubt very much excited and plunged the knife into his wife's abdomen...Medical aid was procured, but in the unfortunate circumstances in which the woman was placed it was not possible to render such assistance as might otherwise have been available".

According to the newspaper report, the doctor who attended to Ann Anderson was "a man of great standing and experience". Nonetheless, his botched attempt to replace her intestines in the gloomy croft at four o'clock in the morning with only a paraffin lamp for illumination resulted in her death from obstruction of the bowels some three or four days later. The court went on to hear that the prisoner was given "the benefit of the doubt" because Ann Anderson would almost certainly have died from peritonitis, even if the procedure carried out by the doctor had been successful. 

In support of his good character, a number of positive references were read out in court from previous employers of Peter Anderson who had evidently spent a number of years in Dublin, probably between the late 1870s and mid-1880s. One of these testimonials read as follows:

"A commercial firm in Dublin certified that Anderson was employed by them for three or four years. They were pleased with his energy and honesty. He always conducted himself well and had a good deal of property under his charge. They trusted the judge would take into consideration that it was drink that killed the woman and not the man".

The counsel for the defence sought to apportion a hefty chunk of blame at the door of Ann Anderson herself, stating that: 

"On the day of this unfortunate occurrence, [Peter] Anderson had been at a feeing market, and returned home the worse for drink. His wife lectured him. He had nothing to say as to the terms she used, but taking what one knew of the habits of people in that class of life one could imagine that she probably used terms likely to irritate a man who was not in his sober senses. It appeared that he was cutting tobacco at the time, and in a moment of ungovernable passion, he struck her with the knife".

The use of the words "imagine", "probably" and "likely" convey just how much speculation surrounded the precise circumstances of Ann Anderson's death and the extent to which she was perceived to have been, at least in part, guilty of provoking her husband.

In his summing-up of the case, the presiding judge, Lord Kinnear, emphasised the lack of premeditation as a key factor, together with the difficult conditions in which the subsequent medical treatment had been performed in determining that Peter Anderson was guilty of the lesser charge of culpable homicide rather than murder. He was sentenced to seven years' penal servitude.

He served just over five years of this sentence at Peterhead Prison. He appears as an inmate there on the 1891 census, in which he is described as a widower and originally from the parish of Marnoch in what was then Banffshire. His mugshot (above) was taken inside the prison on the 29th March 1894. He was released on licence in May of that year, at which point his details would have been logged in the 'Register of Returned Convicts for Aberdeen' (below).

Between June 1894 and December 1895, Peter Anderson lived at various addresses in the city including Gerrard Street, Holburn Street and Nellfield Place. After a short spell living near Cove, he returned to Aberdeen, staying at 7 Rose Place, 4 Mannofield, 78 King Street, 5 Granton Place and 10 Mitchell Place.

Peter was to return to his roots in Banffshire: on the 1901 census he is to be found living with his brother and sister at 91 North Street, Aberchirder, in the parish of Marnoch.