These extracts from the Dundee Courier tell the tale of a horrid murder in West Port, in Dundee’s West End, in 1892. Dundee Courier, Monday 14th November 1892 HORRIBLE MURDER IN DUNDEE. A WOMAN KILLED. HER ASSAILANT IN CUSTODY. SCENE OF THE ATROCITY. INTERVIEWS WITH NEIGHBOURS. PRISONER’S ANTECEDENTS. For a considerable time, Dundee has been […]
When an on-duty constable patrolling the harbour on 11th March 1894 noticed something in the water at King William Dock, he quickly called for assistance in dragging it out of the water. When the object was lifted to shore, they quickly realised that what they had pulled out of the Dock was a human body […]
If you have read our previous post on the Dundee Health Report of 1896 into zymotic diseases, you’ll already know that disease was prevalent in our city – just like in any other – with all sorts of nasties just waiting to bump you off without so much as a warning. The Health Report also […]
In March of 1897, the Public Health Department, which at that time was situated in West Bell Street, issued the ‘Vital Statistics’ report for Dundee for the previous year to the town Council’s sanitary committee. In 1896, the population was estimated at 161,620 (in 2014, the estimate was 141,870), with the number of registered deaths […]
Cholera caused more deaths, more quickly, than any other epidemic disease in the 19th century and in Dundee, with no clean water and no real means of sanitation, many people fell gravely ill and died.
If you’ve seen any really old maps of Dundee, you might notice that there’s no mention of the Overgate as we know it, or indeed, the Nethergate. Known back then as Argyllsgait (Argyllgait) and Flukergait respectively, it wasn’t until the latter part of the 1500’s that the new names came into play, not long after […]
William Bury presented an alarming story concerning the death of his wife to local police in Dundee on 10th February 1889, but was he the infamous Jack the Ripper?
George Wishart was born in 1513 and became one of the earliest Scottish religious reformers. Wishart is widely recognised as a martyr for his Protestant beliefs and was burned at the stake because of them in St Andrews on the orders of Cardinal David Beaton under accusations of heresy in 1546. George Wishart is best […]
On November 9th, 1889, the Dundee Courier And Argus ran a very strange story indeed – one we found had not only a bizarre set of circumstances, but also an odd ending: “A mill foreman was fined in the Dundee Police Court the other day for assaulting a youthful worker. Time was when assaults on […]
In Dundee, body snatchers, graverobbers, or “Resurrection Men” turned over a considerable amount of business. When Cholera struck in 1832, the memories of Burke and Hare’s atrocities were still very much at the forefront of people’s minds. Even though Burke had been executed in 1829 (whilst Hare spent the rest of his years in relative […]