(digitised 1880’s map from The National Library of Scotland)

When I went down an internet rabbit hole about crime and nineteenth century railway carriages, I mentioned that I had come across a report of an incident on the Montrose to Bervie line in 1886.

I was interested in the case because of my family connections to the area, and the use they may have made of the line.

Researching the story was a pain. Britain of course has no equivalent of Trove or PapersPast – you have to pay to search newspaper archives, or more accurately the British Newspaper Archive lets you search for free but you have to pay to download the article.

All I had at the start of the exercise was a name and a rough date, but I managed to find a snippet on the BNA that gave me a firm date for the first newspaper report of the incident.

Fortunately the State Library in Melbourne has a subscription to the Gale Newsvault and I was able to find a copy of the report of the incident from the Dundee Courier

The case was obviously taken seriously by the authorities with the accused being held in jail pending a full trial.

Another Newsvault search and I was able to track down a report of the trial from the Aberdeen Journal.

The accused had opted for a jury trial, which at that time in Scotland meant that the victim had to appear in court and be questioned by the accused’s lawyers. It also meant that the victim’s deposition (formal statement of the crime committed) was read out in open court.

I am purposely not going to give the victim’s name or the name of the farm where she was employed because, as I said, my family come from the area and some families have been in the area for generations.

The deposition is quite graphic with the victim describing how the accused put his hand up her skirt and then tried to wrestle her to the ground. There is also a description of how her clothing was torn and how her knees and body and neck were bruised.

Not nice.

Reading the trial transcript in the paper what struck me was how sensitive the trial judge was. After character witnesses confirmed the victim’s good character he shut down any further attempts to malign the victim.

The accused admitted putting his hand up her skirt but claimed he did nothing else, perhaps hoping that a partial admission of guilt would result in a lighter sentence.

It didn’t. The judge sentenced him to six months hard labour with a warning that if he had been older he would have received a sentence of several years …