Scotland Then From Housebreaking to Homicide: Scotland's Crime Wave of 1970

This episode of Scotland Then explores various news stories from 1970, including a clairvoyant's involvement in a missing person case, rising hooliganism in St. Andrews, and several criminal cases resulting in prison sentences.
We examine the disappearance of Pat McAdam, discuss street violence and vandalism that led to the suspension of town hall dances, and recount notable crimes such as home invasions and assaults. 
The episode also covers an intriguing car theft incident and concludes with population statistics for Scotland in 1969. Throughout, Dawn provides historical context and personal reflections, offering listeners a glimpse into Scottish society and crime in the early 1970s.

SOURCES:
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CREDITS:
Scottish Murders is a production of Cluarantonn
Hosted by Dawn Young
Researched, Written and Edited by Dawn Young
Production Company Name by Granny Robertson

MUSIC:
ES_Tudor - Bonnie Grace - epidemicsound

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to another Scotland Then episode. In this episode, we're
highlighting newspaper stories from February and May nineteen seventy at
the time of taxi driver George Martin's murder and trial.
Before we get started, I'd just love to give a
shout out to our newest Patreon members Today's Tiger, Shelly

(00:21):
m James Murdock and Kimberly Ross. Thank you. We really
do appreciate you and all of our Patreon members for
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to capture the recording that we recently did at Airdrea Library,

(00:43):
or various subscriptions or experts which all helps me release
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would like to become a Scottish Borders patron number two
when the link will be in the show notes. Okay,

(01:05):
let's go back to nineteen seventy Scotland. So the first

(01:40):
article that I noticed in The Scotsman on the seventeenth
of February nineteen seventy was headed Detectives follow up clue
from Clairvoyant. This caught my eye for a couple of reasons,
one being because I remembered having read about this somewhere before,
and secondly when I noticed the name Pat McAdam. Back

(02:00):
in June twenty twenty two we released our Linked or
Not Linked episodes. If you've not listened to them already,
didn't go and check them out, but in part one
we mentioned a man called Thomas Ross Young who in
nineteen sixty seven had not only received an eighteen month
prison sentence, but had also been questioned by police following

(02:20):
the disappearance of a seventeen year old girl. Now, as
the Linked or Not Linked episodes were to highlight Angus
Sinkler's known and potential other victims, I didn't go into
detail about the disappearance of the seventeen year old girl
in nineteen sixty seven, but her name was Pat McCadam,
so when I saw her name again in this article,

(02:41):
it triggered a memory. Pat mccadam's disappearance is actually a
case I've been meaning to cover for some time, but
i just hadn't got around to it. So I'm not
going to go into too much detail here, as I
plan on covering the disappearance of Pat McCadam before the
end of August, but briefly. The article in February nineteen six,
three years after Pat had disappeared, said that Dutch clairvoyant

(03:05):
Gerard Quasi had forecast that a dress would be found
on a banking by the River Milk near Dotton in Dumfriesshire,
and despite this being an area that had previously been
combed by police and dogs in the time since Pat
had gone missing, upon a search taking place, the police
did in fact find a tattered, long sleeved gray cotton dress,

(03:27):
a stocking and what could have been the remains of
a handbag. However, any hope that this was an important
clue in Pat mcadam's case was soon dashed when Pat's mum,
Mary was asked if she could identify the dress as
having been worn by Pet at the time of her disappearance,
as her mom said absolutely not, as the last time

(03:48):
her daughter had been seen alive. She'd been wearing a
short sleeved black cocktail dress. Now this case doesn't end there.
There is a lot more to it, and like I said,
I hope to have this episode out by the end
of August. Now I've heard a lot of people saying
in my time, how it wasn't like that in my day. While,

(04:10):
according to an article in the Saint Andrew's Citizen on
the twenty eighth of February nineteen seventy, even back in
that day they were having problems, with the article headings
being town hall dances suspended, terror on streets on Saturdays,
and hooliganism reaches new peaks. So I guess it turns
out every era has its problems. So let me tell

(04:33):
you what happened on the streets. In February nineteen seventy.
The town hall dances in Saint Andrew's were suspended for
four weeks after a wave of hooliganism and vandalism plagued
the streets on Saturday nights. Despite the well behaved crowds
inside the hall, incidents escalated outside, culminating in smashed windows

(04:54):
at MacArthur's Cafe, damaged to public lavatories, milk bottles being
thrown through house windo windows, and violent street fights that
left at least one youth seriously injured. Police did make
several arrests, including at the bus station and guard bridge,
with fines been handed out for a breach of the peace.
Weapons were also confiscated, such as a wheel brass, and

(05:17):
young girls that were intoxicated before eight pm were a
phused entry to the dances. Much of the trouble apparently
stemmed from outsiders arriving by bus, particularly youths coming from
Dundee or from met Hell after football matches, and bus
crews clashed with dancers trying to reach trains from Luker's Junction.

(05:37):
Local officials debated the future of the dances, with some
urging cancelation to prevent further harm, while others insisted that
they shouldn't surrender to the rowdy few. Ultimately, though, the
council agreed to halt the dances temporarily for four weeks
and re evaluate the situation. Then it's always those few

(05:58):
who spoil it for their rest okay. So it would
also appear that housebreaking and home invasions, particularly in Dundee
was on the rise, and it would appear that twenty
four year old John Hutton was to be made an
example of. According to an article in The Scotsman. On
the twentieth of May, twenty four year old John Hutton

(06:21):
of Perth Road and Dundee was sentenced to seven years
in prison at the High Court in Dundee after being
found guilty of assault and robbery, his twentieth conviction. The
attack took place on the fifteenth of February when John
Hutton forced his way into the home of pensioners Ian
and Isabelle Miani of Forge Lane, Dundee, assaulting them and

(06:42):
robbing Missus Maanie of one pound and twelve shillings. Two
other men charged alongside John Hutton failed to appear in
court and warrants were issued for their arrest. Lord Robertson,
delivering the sentence, condemned the violent home invasion as outrageous,
stressing that such crimes have become alarmingly common and must

(07:04):
be stamped out. Despite John Hutton's claim that he was
merely walking nearby when he was apprehended, witness accounts and
police intervention led to his conviction. In a separate case
heard the same day, also at the High court and Dundee,
twenty seven year old David Leslie was given a two
year prison sentence for attempted housebreaking, which he admitted to

(07:26):
in court, and the prison sentences continued when, according to
an article in The Breaking Advertiser, on the nineteenth of
February nineteen seventy, twenty two year old to Brian Gilhooley,
who was a waiter at the glen Esse Hotel, was
sentenced to three months in prison after he pleaded guilty

(07:47):
to a violent assault on sixteen year old receptionist Joyce Keller.
The incident occurred in the hotel's staff room when an
intoxicated Brian Gilhooley accused colleagues of stealing a beer he
himself had taken. In the confrontation, he smashed a pipe
tumbler and struck Joyce Keller on the neck with a
broken glass. At the forefest share of court, it was

(08:10):
described how the glass pierced Joyce Keller's neck, narrowly missing
her jugular vein, leaving her covered in blood and with
a severe wound. Brian Gilhooley, who had won previous conviction,
claimed that the act stemmed from a deep sense of loneliness.
Sheriffford expressed hope that the custodial sentence, backdated to the

(08:32):
thirty first of January, would help Brian Gilhooley learn self control.
Another prison sentence being handed out, according to an article
in The Scotsman on the twentieth of May, was the
twenty eight year old George Jamison of Johnston Terrace in Edinburgh,
when he admitted at the High Court in Edinburgh to

(08:53):
the murder of nineteen year old Phyllis Telford. The court
heard how on the night of the sixth or seventh
of February, George Jamison violently assaulted Phyllis Telford, who was
described as a woman of easy virtue, during a night out,
where he had grabbed her by the throat, forciably removed
her clothing, kicked and stamped on her, before strangling her

(09:15):
with a pullover. Phyllis's body was found on waste ground
below Castle Rock, having been left there to die after
being attacked. George Jamison's trial date had been set, however,
at the last minute he changed his plea to guilty
and subsequently only made a brief four minute court appearance
where he was sentenced to life imprisonment. This next story

(09:41):
got me thinking of a couple of things. One would
I even recognize my own car if I wasn't driving it?
Bear with me? And Two what would I do if
I did see my car being driven by someone I
didn't know? Well, here's what a young Edinburgh woman did
when she saw her car being driven along the street
by someone that she didn't know. It was a typical

(10:01):
Tuesday morning in early March nineteen seventy for twenty five
year old Irene Dixon. She left her home in Warrender
Park Road, south of Edinburgh and made the sixteen minute
drive to Regent Terrace, where she perked her car and
walked a short distance to her work. A lunch time,
she headed out for a walk and to get something
to eat, and she was happily walking in Waterloo Place

(10:24):
when she saw her own car being driven past her
by a stranger. Noticing that the traffic lights were turning
red and the car was slowing down, Irene ran towards
the car and she jumped in front of it before
it could be driven away. She then noticed that the
driver was trying to get out of the car, and
so while calling for help from passers by, she got

(10:44):
to the driver's door and prevented the driver from getting out,
while others stopped and driving away and till the police
arrived and the car thief was arrested. Irene later said
that up until she had seen her own car driving
past her, she had absolutely no idea that it had
even been stolen. At Edinburgh Sheriff Court, John Stuart of

(11:05):
Newton Grange pleaded guilty to stealing the car, driving without
insurance and the reset of a vehicle license plate, but
his agent went on to say that the accused's own
car had been in a crash and that he thought
that he must have been drunk when he took the car.
They went on to say that the accused car was
the same make as the car he had stolen, and

(11:27):
that he had apparently got access to and had been
able to drive Irene's car away by using his own
car keys. It was noted that John Stuart had no
previous convictions and his sentencing was deferred for a year.
I'm not sure why it was deferred for so long.
Maybe to see if he committed any further offenses before
he was sentenced. I'm not sure so. If you had

(11:50):
been Irene would you have recognized your own car and
would you have acted so quickly and been able to
prevent your car actually being stolen? I think I'd have
to answer no to both questions, but you just never know.
And finally, some statistics with a heading from The Scotsman

(12:11):
on the seventeenth of February nineteen seventy rouding biggest rise
in population since nineteen sixty two slash nineteen sixty three.
According to the Registrar General for Scotland's annual estimates, Scotland's
population rose by seven thousand, two hundred in the year
leading up to June nineteen sixty nine, reaching five million,

(12:33):
one hundred ninety four thousand, seven hundred, which was the
highest annual increase since nineteen sixty two slash sixty three.
Despite this overall growth, the four major cities Glasgow, Edinburgh,
Dundee and Aberdeen collectively lost eighteen thousand, eight hundred residents
due to planning overspill movements on new towns and suburban migration,

(12:57):
and according to the County Medical Officer of Health, Shetland
saw a slight decline to seventeen thousand, one hundred and
twenty two, but the decrease was less than previous years.
Large and small boroughs also saw gains, with Paisley topping
the large boroughs at ninety five thousand, one hundred and
eighty two and Cumbernaude leading among small boroughs at twenty

(13:20):
six thousand, six hundred and seventy eight. Meanwhile, County Landward
areas experienced a net gain of five thousand, seven hundred,
and new town populations continued to grow steadily, with east
Combe Bride at sixty two thousand, nine hundred and Irvin
at thirty eight thousand, two hundred. The population breakdown showed

(13:40):
two point seven million females and two point four nine
million males, and the under fifteen age group amounted to
one point thirty six million. And that's it. I hope
you enjoyed this episode of Scotland Then. I certainly love
researching the newspaper stories for back then for each episode.

(14:02):
Next week will be another Scotland Then episode, this time
from nineteen eighty one, around the time Alien Printy was murdered,
and the following week I hope to release the Pat
McCadam episode. If you have enjoyed this episode and do
enjoy listening to Scottish murders. It would mean so much
if you could please rate or review. It really does
help others find Scottish murders. So until next time, I've

(14:26):
been your host, Don Scottish murdersh is a prediction of

(14:55):
chlorine toine