On this day in 1689

Margaret Nicholson took her husband, John Chieslie of Dalry, to court. She wanted him to pay maintenance for their 10 children and argued her case in front of Judge George Lockhart. Lockhart ruled in her favour, which naturally left Chieslie (sometimes written Chiesly) upset. However, rather than simply appeal the ruling, as might have been reasonable, he intercepted Lockhart on his way home from church, and shot him in the back, then stood around waiting to be arrested.

Arrested, tortured, and condemned

The Glasgow Herald of 30 December 1850 recounted what happened next. “The assassin was taken ‘red hand’, and after undergoing torture was condemned. The Lord Provost and Baillies of Edinburgh sentenced him to be carried on a hurdle from the Tolbooth to the Market Cross on Wednesday following, and there to have his right hand cut off, and then to be hanged upon a gibbet, with the pistol about his neck, with which he committed the murder, and they appointed his body to be hung in chains between Leith and Edinburgh, his right hand to be fixed on the West Port.”

Five years later, on 12 March 1855, the Glasgow Herald added a little more to the story, noting that “ten days after his trial, the estates of Parliament declared the use of torture illegal”.

A slow death

It’s not clear how long it would have taken him to die while hanging in the gibbet, but it seems likely that the ultimate cause of death would have been loss of blood from the truncated arm.

The Caledonian Mercury of 31 January 1829 published an account of the fourth meeting of the Societies of Antiquaries of Scotland at which “Mr Drummond Hay, the Secretary, read letters he had received from Sir Walter Scott and Mr Walker Drummond, regarding the discovery made a good many years ago, during some alterations in the House of Dalry, of a skeleton, which was fairly presumed, from a variety of circumstances, to be that of Chiesly, the murderer of President Lockhart”.

 

...and on this day in 1839

Paris has Haussmann; Edinburgh has Robert Morham. He laid out Princes Street Gardens, remodelled the interior of St Giles’ Cathedral and Edinburgh City Chambers; built markets at Fountainbridge and Waverley; built Dalry, Portobello and Infirmary Street baths; and remodelled the observatory on Calton Hill, among many other works. He died in June 1912 and is buried at Edinburgh’s Morningside Cemetery.

 

...and on this day in 1971

Ewan McGregor was born in Perth and came to public attention when he took the lead in Channel 4 drama Lipstick on Your Collar. Two film roles followed soon after, but it was arguably his portrayal of Mark Renton in 1996 film Trainspotting, adapted from the novel of the same name by Irvine Welsh, that made him an internationally recognised star. He won the BAFTA for Best Actor for his work in Trainspotting.

He played the younger Obi-Wan Kenobi in three Star Wars prequels, and starred opposite Nicole Kidman in the 2001 Baz Luhrmann musical, Moulin Rouge.

As well as acting, McGregor has fronted several documentaries, including three extended travelogues in which he crossed continents by motorbike with long-time friend Charley Boorman. The second of these, The Long Way Down, saw the duo travel from John O’Groats to Cape Town in South Africa over the course of three months.