A Good Hanging

This anonymous set of cassies is one of the three 'gibbet stanes' which stand at various points in the Castlegate of Aberdeen. This is the last and most famous site which gave rise to the expression 'Ye'll end up lookin doon Marischal Street!' that being the last view of the condemned individual.

The gibbet stane held the upright post of the gallows ready for the criminal to swing on. The last man hanged in public in Aberdeen was John Booth of Oldmeldrum, who killed his mother-in-law as she tried to protect her daughter against his drunken accusations of infidelity. John was 37, a hawker to trade, but his mother-in-law Janet was aye convinced her daughter could have done better. John absolved his wife of any wrongdoing on the scaffold, despite calling her a two-timing besom in court! In 1857, he was strung up for his crime.

The last hanging in Aberdeen, indeed in the whole of Scotland was 1964, the only one to take place at Craiginches, opened 34 years after Booth's execution. The man there was Henry Burnett, a youngster who had a fatal attraction to one Margaret Guyan nee Henderson. Fearing his bidie-in would leave him, he stole his brother's shotgun and blasted her husband in the face at her mother's house, 14 Jackson Terrace. Strange that another crime of passion should end capital punishment in the city...