On this day in 1724

Maggie Dickson was sent to the gallows in Edinburgh on 2 September 1724. She’d had a hard life already, having been left by her husband, then becoming pregnant by her employer. This would have been a scandal in the 18th century.

Whether the child was stillborn, or Maggie really did kill it – as was alleged – she disposed of its body in the River Tweed. Unfortunately for her, she did a poor job of hiding it, and when it was found and examined, Maggie was accused of having killed the child. She was taken to Edinburgh and locked up in the Old Tollbooth.

Maggie Dickson’s trial and execution

Maggie was charged with murder, tried, and found guilty. Despite her plea of innocence, which she maintained throughout, she was sentenced to be hanged. A crowd assembled in the Grassmarket to watch her die and, when the deed had been done, a physician pronounced her dead.

Normally, that would have been the end of the matter – but not where Maggie is concerned.

Her family collected her body and placed it in a coffin, after which several different accounts variously state that she was woken by the rough passage of the cart carrying it over some cobbles, she started knocking on the lid, or a family member looked inside during her wake. Either way, it was immediately obvious that the physician had made a mistake: Maggie was still alive, and had merely lost consciousness on the gallows.

Half Hangit Maggie lives on

The physician’s mistake was to Maggie’s benefit, for it left the court in a quandary. Here was a woman, still alive, who had been convicted of a capital crime, yet the sentence had already been carried out. Ultimately, the court decided that, as she’d been declared legally dead she couldn’t be hanged again, and thus she was allowed to live. She eventually died 40 years later.

There is much speculation as to why Maggie wasn’t killed on the gallows, and suggestion that she may have made a deal with the hangman or even the ropemaker to ensure she escaped. This long after the event, we will never know for sure.

 

...and on this day in 1812

Bicycles were once pedal-free devices consisting of two wheels, a saddle, and a frame. The rider would straddle the saddle and push the bike along with their feet on the ground – effectively running, but a little faster thanks to assistance they were receiving from the wheels.

That changed in the 1830s when Dumfries and Galloway-born Kirkpatrick Macmillan was credited with inventing the pedal cycle. It certainly wouldn’t have been a comfortable ride, being made of wood and with iron surrounds to each wheel where today we’d have an air-filled tyre, which was invented by another Scot, Robert Thomson.

The BBC noted that Macmillan’s bicycle was “extremely heavy and the physical effort required to ride it must have been considerable. Nevertheless, Macmillan quickly mastered the art of riding it on the rough country roads and was soon accustomed to making the fourteen-mile journey to Dumfries in less than an hour.”