HEALTH: HELP ME SOLVE MYSTERY OF MAUREEN'S ILLNESS

PERCHED at the top of a steep staircase where it commanded a prime view across the hub of Tollcross, Goldbergs was an affordable store for Edinburgh shoppers with discerning tastes.

Within its glass-fronted five storeys was high fashion for the young woman about town and sensible outfits for the more mature. There was china and household essentials, menswear, children's clothes and a pleasant rooftop cafe with views across the town.

For seven years, Maureen Wood worked hard both on the shopfloor and behind the scenes. Pretty and vivacious, she loved music, adored showing off her trim legs in her favourite short skirts and had a natural knack for making people laugh.

The mum-of-two was a familiar face at Goldbergs years at a time when the Tollcross shop was among the busiest stores in the country.

When it closed in 1990, Maureen fondly recalled happy times there with colleagues and friends.

That should have brought to an end the mum's links with the bustling Edinburgh store. So how could it be possible that her time there may have condemned her to a terrible sentence, one which would come back to haunt her and her loving family 20 years later?

And did Maureen eventually lose her life because of where she worked?

Today, ask David Wood to sum up the loss of wife Maureen to an asbestos-related condition and he responds with a bitter shake of his head.

"I feel like someone's ripped out my heart and stamped on it," he says, eyes flashing with rage. When he stands up, his jacket hangs loose around his wasted frame: "Look at me," he adds, angrily tugging at it, "I've lost two stones. That's what this does to you.

"When people use the word 'devastation', invariably those are people who don't know what it means."

David has been painfully recalling the loss of the woman he met when she was just 16 and he was 19, and who went on to be his wife for 41 years.

He has patiently explained how, when she died on February 25 aged just 58, it was after a determined and brave fight that stretched across five difficult years. And how, when Maureen learned she had a life-threatening condition with a strange name, her response was typical for her: she cracked a joke and pointed out that mesothelioma sounded like some Greek holiday resort.

With the consultant's diagnosis still ringing in their ears, David remembers them both walking out of the hospital and, still numb, going for a pizza and then to the pictures. "We couldn't take it in," he says.

All the time Maureen's horoscope for the day was rattling around her head: "You will have mental moments of clarity," it had predicted.

Five years on and clarity is the one thing David yearns for. Questions over why his wife ended up with an illness more commonly connected with men working in heavy industry - mesothelioma tends to be associated with shipbuilding on the Clyde, plumbers and carpenters, not women in shops - gnaw at him so much that he is now determined to unravel them for himself.

The very nature of asbestos - the fact that it's hidden in so many places and that its deadly impact lies dormant for many years - makes his challenge desperately difficult. But as he's rewound Maureen's life and work, David now believes it's possible its root may lie behind the scenes at that Edinburgh shop.

Which is why today he's launched a personal appeal for anyone who worked at Goldbergs at Tollcross to come forward, whether they knew Maureen personally or simply recall work being carried out at the shop.

"I don't know where Maureen was exposed to asbestos," he stresses, "but I do believe the firmest evidence I've found points to Goldbergs."

His search for answers took him to old documents retained by Edinburgh City Council relating to the demolition of the Goldbergs building in Tollcross. There he found reference to various types of asbestos in the building, including Amosite, one of its most deadly forms.

"The report mentioned asbestos and all the precautions that the council was insisting on during the demolition, such as sealing off the whole area with a special type of material. They were concerned about the workmen and members of the public," he explains.

"But no-one was aware of the asbestos when Maureen was working there. She worked in the stockroom, which was in the basement. It was a dirty place to work, particularly the office. They were always moving things about too."

Asbestos was commonly used in the construction of many buildings until the late 1990s, when its use was finally outlawed. Its heat and fire resistant properties meant it was regularly used for ceiling tiles and wall panels.

Left alone and undisturbed, it is usually relatively safe. However, if asbestos particles are released and inhaled - perhaps during repair work or demolition - the impact can be deadly. Asbestos-related conditions often take decades to emerge, making it complicated and challenging to track down the source.

David, 60, believes someone might remember his wife at the shop and perhaps can help solve the mystery.

"Maureen worked there between 1981 and 1987. She was in the stockroom and the shoe department, the china department, and at Wrygges, the women's fashion department. She was a part-time model - she was gorgeous - 5ft 4in, brown hair that she changed all the time, sometimes long, sometimes curly.

"She had a friend, Doreen, and she was fond of the handyman there, Solly or Solomon, who was thought to be related to the Goldbergs family."

The couple lived in Gilmerton at the time with son Paul, now 40, and Karen, 38, later moving to East Calder while the children remained at Holyrood High School before the family eventually moved to Dunblane.

Maureen's health was fine until late 2004, when she developed problems with fluid gathering in the lining of her lung. That can be a classic symptom of asbestos-related cancer. It took several months to confirm largely because she did not fit the normal pattern for the disease. David is now working with a Glasgow law firm and his search for answers is being supported by Clydeside Action on Asbestos.

A spokesperson for the campaign group says: "Mesothelioma is an incredibly painful experience for victims and their families. Finding the root cause and who was responsible for asbestos exposure can go a long way to helping victims and their families deal with the illness and get justice.

"People who used to work at Goldbergs could hold answers to Maureen Wood's mesothelioma, so if anyone was working there at the same time and can remember any possibility of being exposed to asbestos then it's important they get in touch."

Can you help? Contact Thompsons Solicitors on 0800 801 299.

Killer disease

Asbestos-related cancer kills around one person every four hours in the UK. And more than 1.8 million people are exposed to deadly asbestos every year.

According to the Health and Safety Executive, at least 5000 deaths from mesothelioma a year are expected by 2015 - but that, say some experts, is a conservative estimate. Almost every building constructed before 1999 will have asbestos used in its construction, often in insulated boards and ceiling tiles.

Tom Marshall, a lawyer specialising in asbestos-related conditions working with Glasgow-based Thomson Solicitors says it's often difficult to identify where female mesothelioma patients first came into contact with the substance. "They do not historically carry out the types of work that would automatically come into contact with asbestos, such as engineering or building. Because of that, they are also less likely to be aware of the risks."

Edinburgh Evening News July 19, 2011

THE MOTHER OF ALL DILEMMAS

IT'S an exhausting time for teacher Diane Robertson. She's busy clearing out her classroom before the end of term, juggling last-minute tasks around her expanding bump, dashing to antenatal classes and trying to find precious time to relax and do some yoga.

"I'm 33 weeks pregnant now," she says. "I'm looking forward to the school breaking up for summer and just having some quiet time before it all starts."

Her baby is due to arrive in early August, a first child that Diane and partner David Turnbull had often wondered they'd have.

At 37 years old and having tried for three years to become pregnant, Diane found herself branded "too old" to have a baby.

"I couldn't believe it," she says. "I'm fit and healthy. The only problem was that we were trying for a baby and it wasn't happening. But to be told at that age that you're too old . . ."

Diane's road to motherhood is a cautionary tale for young women confronted with the dilemma of choosing career or children.

Like many of her generation, Diane poured her energy into putting her university education to use - in an ironic twist, she works as a health and welfare teacher at a secondary school - then setting up her home and spending time with her partner.

However, as her attention shifted to having a family, precious time was running out.

Just as her body clock began to tick at its loudest, she found herself falling into the same "parent trap" that many smart, educated women like her are discovering to their cost.

When, after months of trying and failing to conceive, Diane and David sought help from their local NHS hospital, they found long waiting lists for treatment that meant by the time they reached the top, Diane would be over the age limit to have that treatment.

"I underwent tests that showed there was no obvious reason why we couldn't conceive," Diane explains. "So we couldn't believe when they said 'sorry, you're going to be too old'. It was shocking."

According to Gwenda Burns of Infertility Network UK, Diane's story isn't particularly unusual.

Indeed, it's an increasingly common complaint among couples in their mid-30s who, as their desperation to start a family reaches a peak, contact the organisation for support.

"There is a problem at the moment in Scotland because the waiting lists are growing all the time," Gwenda says.

"In some respects, Scotland is better than England because of the types of treatment available, but the waiting lists are causing huge problems.

"If you are 35 or 36 years old and you go on a waiting list that can stretch to three-and-a-half years, you might manage to get one cycle of treatment before hitting the cut-off age.

"But will one cycle be enough to get you a baby?"

With no NHS options, the pair realised their only hope for a family would be to raid their savings and go private.

They approached IVF Scotland, Edinburgh's only private in vitro fertilisation facility, where, after just one cycle of treatment, Diane's pregnancy was confirmed.

However, it's a journey towards parenthood that has cost them almost GBP5000 and has tested their relationship.

"I know that Diane feels quite strongly that having worked all her life, paid taxes and having gone on to build a career as principal teacher of health and wellbeing in the school that she teaches, that it's unfair to be penalised by not being allowed to try IVF on the NHS," says David, 32, a business development executive at Walker Street market research firm, Lynn Jones Research.

"Diane's not that old. Essentially, you are being penalised for making sure you have the means to provide a good life for yourself and your family.

"With more women establishing a career first these days, this means more women are being cut off from the chance of having free IVF treatment," he adds.

"I suppose the counter argument would be, therefore, that you can afford private IVF but that's not really the point."

Their experience shows how easily couples can slide into a fertility nightmare.

Like many of her generation, former Firrhill High School pupil Diane had been determined to forge a career.

She studied at Queen Margaret University, completed her teaching degree at Moray House, then in her mid-20s sought a teaching job. She met David, a George Watson's College former pupil who studied at both Heriot-Watt and Napier universities, and decided to set up home in Dunfermline.

"We had some time together as couple and then started thinking about a family," says Diane. "But it was a year before alarm bells really started to ring."

The route to getting help, however, turned out to be painfully slow.

"I went to my GP and he said to come back after six months if nothing had happened and that I should try to relax. By the time I was referred to our local NHS Fife IVF hospital and tests started, it was two years down the line.

"I was 37 years old by then. There were no real factors to prevent me falling pregnant - ours was 'unexplained' infertility.

"Then I was told the waiting time was so long that I wouldn't get to the top of the list in time. It was devastating."

When Spire Healthcare opened its GBP25 million fertility unit, Shawfair Park Hospital, near Danderhall, in April last year, it confirmed it would not bar any patients because of age. Diane and David were among its first patients.

Figures for its first year show it is achieving above national average successes, with pregnancy rates for patients under 35 running at 48 per cent compared with 33 per cent.

Lead consultant at the clinic, Dr Joo Thong, says the figures give hope to patients who find themselves having to consider private treatment: "The figures are incredibly promising. IVF treatment isn't cheap, so it's important that every single patient has the best chances possible to become pregnant."

Ticking Clock

WHILE government in vitro fertilisation guidelines call for hospitals to treat women up to the age of 40, NHS Fife's criteria for assisted conception states that women should be under 38.

Gwenda Burns of Infertility Network UK says the waiting list for treatment in the area is three-and-a-half years.

"As far as Fife goes, you have to be fairly young to get the maximum treatment of three cycles - particularly as you have to drop to the end of the list should treatment fail."

It means that three failed attempts at IVF could take as long as ten years.

NHS Lothian, meanwhile, offers IVF treatment to women up to the age of 40. The waiting time is two years.

Private IVF treatment typically costs around GBP5000 per cycle. Spire Healthcare treats approximately 40 patients every month.


Edinburgh Evening News 24 June 2011

CRIMINAL PAST SERIES

Below are five spreads which made up the Criminal Past Series that appeared in the Edinburgh Evening News in April 2011. A main crime from each decade from start of the 20th century to the middle. Stories that deserve to be retold, most completely lost in time til now. A lot of hard word trying to find them, decipher what happened and get it into story form. But I like to think it worked out okay. Sorry about the running order... for some reason Day Two was missing when I searched originally. Glad it turned up, it's a real 'of its time' tale.

THE MYSTERY OF THE PEARL NECKLACE: Criminal Past Series Day TWO

HE was a dashing young lieutenant whose father’s brave attack on rebels during the Indian Mutiny earned him the Victoria Cross. Fine and upstanding, devastatingly smart, there would come a time when he, too, would become a remarkable figure in military circles.
And she was his wife, a stunning Irish colleen beautifully attired in her sealskin coat trimmed with fox fur wrapped over her opulent black velvet jacket and skirt, finished off with a necklace of rare pearls held together by a stunning diamond clasp.
Surely this striking couple from Heriot Row would be the last people the good citizens of Edinburgh would ever suspect of attempting to pull off an audacious and cunning crime…
It was early evening on Wednesday, 8 February, 1911, and Lt Cecil Aylmer Cameron, 28, and his pretty wife Ruby were making their way home along a bustling West End at Shandwick Place.
The Lieutenant needed to drop into the newly opened branch of Boots to buy, of all things, a hypodermic syringe. His wife, in need of fresh air, stayed outside.
He’d barely entered the shop when Ruby felt a hand from behind grasp at her throat and another pull at the back of her neck. There was a tug from the rough hands and the sudden sensation of her precious pearls slipping away.
Hands reached too for her pearl earrings but somehow, despite her shock, she managed to swipe the probing fingers away before swooning forward in a breathless faint to rest on the shop’s plate glass window, managing only a glance at her attacker as he raced off towards Canning Street, clutching her pearls.
The theft was so daring and swift that no-one in the bustling street seemed aware of what had happened. So stunned was Mrs Cameron that she had not even been able to raise the merest sound of alarm.
Thank goodness the couple had had the foresight to insure the precious jewels - worth around half a million pounds by today’s standards - just two months earlier…
At the nearest police station details of the stolen jewellery - a double row of 116 pearls held by a diamond snap clasp, worth a staggering £6500 - were taken and quickly sent to the insurance company, Lloyds of London.
As news emerged of the robbery of a defenceless woman’s jewels, Edwardian Edinburgh was stunned.
How could such a thing happen to this fine couple amid the evening thrum of Shandwick Place and no-one see a thing?
Mrs Cameron took to her bed, so shocked was she by the assault and theft of this precious necklace, bequeathed to her on the understanding she always wore it.
She spoke to police of her suspicions that she had been followed in the days prior to the crime. And then there was the oddball character who’d suddenly appeared staring through an open door at the couple’s Heriot Row home before claiming he was simply looking for a room to rent.
But police were not convinced. No witnesses from a busy street was one thing.
The fact that the couple had insured the pearls just two months earlier was either amazingly prudent or very fishy.
They opted for the latter. On Monday, 27 February, news emerged that Lt Cameron of 37th Battalion, Royal Field Artillary, and wife Ruby, had been arrested, suspected of attempted to defraud insurance firm Lloyds.
The trial attracted so much interest that only those with tickets were allowed to enter the High Court, leaving crowds to wait outside.
The striking couple - he in a grey suit, she in blue with a sprig of lily of the valley in her buttonhole - stood side by side in the dock to hear claims that they had made up the entire story as part of a hamfisted attempt to defraud the insurers.
The packed courtroom heard no trace had been found of the man said to have given Mrs Cameron the pearls, that letters said to confirm their existence appeared to be false and of a dire lack of witnesses to a robbery in a busy Edinburgh thoroughfare.
Then came details of Lt. Cameron’s poor finances and damning evidence that he’d enquired about how to invest £6000 just days prior to the ‘robbery’. The glittering couple’s fate was sealed - they were found guilty, both to serve three years’ in penal servitude.
But the story did not end there….
Ruby served just a few months of her sentence before being released on the grounds of her ill health. During that time, she confessed to having carried out the fraud alone and insisted her husband’s role had been merely to protect her.
Her husband served his full sentence but on his release a petition for pardon signed by, among many others, five dukes and more than 100 army generals was granted, enabling him to return to his rank of Lieutenant.
A fluent Russian speaker, he went on to serve in France during the First World War, being mentioned in dispatches four times and awarded the Distinguished Service Order.
He took the key role of a spymaster codenamed Evelyn - also known simply as ‘B‘ - in control of a massive spy ring that covered swathes of occupied Europe.
He was later made Chief Intelligence Officer with the British Military Mission to Siberia during the Russian Civil War and rose to the rank of Major in the Royal Artillery.
Quite what happened in the days leading up to 18 August 1924 is not entirely clear. There was talk of further financial problems…hopes of a Military Attaché role which hadn’t materialised… a general air of depression…
Or perhaps someone from his secretive military past, some enemy, had come to exact their revenge…
Major Cameron was found dying, slumped in a chair at his Hillsborough Barracks in Sheffield, on 18 August, 1924, a wound on either side of his head, a gun on the floor.
+++++
The scandal surrounding Lt Cameron and his wife Ruby did not deter Jane Alice Clifford from attempting her own bare-faced fraud just weeks after their court case ended.
Finely dressed and well spoken she fitted in perfectly among the ladies who shopped at Charles Jenner & Company at 48 Princes Street in October 1911.
She calmly ordered an impressive list of goods: a sable cape, matching sable muff, two bracelets, a brooch, a pearl rope, a lace scarf and 10 yards of silk to be paid for by cheque on delivery to 58 Manor Place.
And at jewellers James Ritchie & Son, 118 Princes Street, she picked out a fine stone ring and chain purse worth around £14, again, to be paid on delivery.
Unfortunately Clifford had only five shillings in the bank. When the shop staff attempted to clarify the situation, the finely dressed woman had fled Manor Place.
She got as far as Newcastle, where police opened her suitcase to find the Jenners’ goods - and a receipt for them hidden in, bizarrely, her hair.
In court it transpired Clifford had a string of convictions and, in all, a decade of prison behind her. The judge in the case opted to present her with more - another five years.


*****

The dramatic suicide of a medical student at the South African Students’ Union in Buccleuch Place in 1915 was shocking enough, but police sent to break the news to his family were met by an even more startling scene.
There they found William Juta‘s mother in law lying dead in bed, a bullet hole through her head. In another room it became clear that the same fate had befallen the man‘s wife, Muriel, 31, and their young child.
The triple murders and suicide shocked the city. Thousands lined the streets to watch the solemn funeral cortege pass by - victims and murderer on their final journey together.
The four coffins were buried in the same plot at Morningside Cemetery.
Sadly, murder within families was not an unfamiliar crime. In 1917 Joseph Wilmot took the lives of his wife, Annie and his two young sons, William, four, and baby Charles, five months, at their Rose Street South Lane home.
He did it, he later told police, because his wife had been ‘nagging’ him.

CRIME FILES
1915: Back street abortion was a bloody business. Having been told that her lover would never marry her, pregnant Margaret Anderson agreed to a visit from herbalist Charles Alder, aka Dr Temple, of West Register Street. Two visits later having undergone his £5 ‘procedures’ the pregnancy was terminated, but, tragically Anderson was in the grip of blood poisoning. Her deathbed statement pointed the finger at ’Dr Temple’, yet the jury found the charge of murder not proven.
****
1911: The after dinner coffee at a Dalkeith dinner party tasted strange - and no wonder, it was laced with arsenic. Hard up John Hutchison had his eyes on his father Charles’ life insurance. He slipped arsenic into the coffee pot, killing his father and another guest, poisoning others. He was finally traced to a hotel in England where he took his own life moments before police could arrest him.
****
1919: Street performer William Lamb was an unlikely killer, after all, he had no arms - both limbs severed in an accident. Yet he still managed to batter a woman to death at his Candlemaker Row home. Four days before he was due to hang for murder, he was reprieved and given life.
****
1913: The murder of two little boys, found roped together in the stagnant water of Hopeton Quarry, was all the more shocking because the killer was none other than their father. Patrick Higgins went to the gallows for his vile crime.
****
1911: Joan Black had met the man she wanted to marry, just one thing stood in her way - her illegitimate son. Finding someone to look after the four year old was expensive - £1 a month or a one off payment of £25. So Black took the blue eyed auburn haired James to Newhaven Pier, and threw him into the water where he drowned.
Edinburgh Evening News April 13, 2011

LESBIAN LOVE LED TO FATAL STABBING: Criminal Past Series: Part Five

SOLDIER Montague Cyril Williams had met the woman he wanted to spend his life with. West Lothian girl Margaret Laughlin was a fine figure of a young woman, strong, athletic, fun-loving.

She was a Private in the WRAC and he was a Squadron Sgt. Major in the Royal Corps of Signals. And he was madly, passionately in love with her from the very moment they met.

Sadly for Montague, however, his young wife did not quite feel the same for him.

She, after all, preferred the company of her own sex.

Margaret, just 21, had wrestled with her feelings - this, after all, was post-war Europe and lesbian relationships were hardly de rigueur. In a moment of confusion and drunken impulse, she had agreed to become the 35-year-old's wife.

As the wedding date loomed, she set down one major condition: that they would not have sexual intercourse until such time as she felt those same flames of passion for him, as he so clearly felt for her.

It was a delicately balanced arrangement that was doomed to fail on many levels. And when it did, it destroyed both their lives.

Margaret and Montague, whom she called "Slim", were based together in married quarters at Klagenfurt, Austria, in June, 1949.

Eighty days they had been married, and still Margaret's resolve - much to her groom's frustration - had not wavered.

A gala dance had been organised at nearby Annanheim for locals and the soldiers from the nearby billet. There was dancing and drinks and Margaret was having fun. Too much fun, it seemed, for her frustrated husband.

He'd had even his slightest advance repulsed by his wife. While he yearned for her undivided attention, she was said to have shown the complete opposite feelings towards him. And now she was having fun, slightly drunk and enjoying the company of at least one Austrian man who - unaware of her marital status or her lesbian leanings - had even tried to fix a date with her.

Monatague, frustrated lover and jealous husband that he was, had had enough: tonight he planned to, if not ensure his bizarre wedding arrangement became a proper marriage, at least show his wife who was boss.

Margaret was leaving the gala, tipsy, when two men roughly bundled her into a coal truck before driving her back to the billet - all at her husband's request.

Inside the truck, Margaret struggled only to be shoved on to the floor, face down, arms pinned behind her back, while "Slim" instructed the two men to press them harder or ease off as the pain became too much.

By the time they had arrived at their married billet, Margaret was enraged.

They rowed, his insults aimed at her and at her family at home in Bathgate stung. As Margaret made up a bed for herself on the sofa, she finally told her husband their marriage was over.

"You've jolly well asked for this," he declared angrily as he struck her across the face.

A camper's knife lay on a table nearby, suddenly it was in Margaret's hands.

"I raised it and said, you big pig, I'll knife you if you come anywhere near me again," she recalled.

The next slap across Margaret's face was all it took. Suddenly "Slim" was bleeding from the wound left as the knife slipped between two ribs and pierced his heart.

He staggered to a chair, ashen faced, where his horrified wife tried desperately to stem the flow and begged for his forgiveness.

Her Old Bailey trial was sensational - particularly when a Scotland Yard detective told the hushed court how Margaret had admitted to him: "I have always been attracted to women more so than men. But I did not know there was anything wrong in it until a girl I fell in love with told me all about it.

"I have tried hard to fight against it. That was another reason why I got married."

Margaret was found guilty of her husband's murder. The jury made a particular point of asking Justice Streatfeild to show mercy, but this was murder and that usually carried the ultimate sentence.

Margaret stood in the dock, according to reports at the time, her "youthful looking tousled mop of straw coloured hair contrasting strangely with her worn, lined face," and women jurors wept as the death sentence was pronounced.

Her fate ringing in her ears, Margaret tottered and, near collapse, was almost carried to the cells.

She was in her cell at Holloway Prison in London two weeks later when news came through that the law had been merciful. She was told she would be imprisoned for life.

There would be no justice, however, for the life of tragic 15-year-old Edinburgh schoolgirl Margaret Beagley.

She was just 100 yards from her West End home in February 1950, when she was attacked, battered on the head with a 75lb stone and left for dead.

Auburn haired Margaret, of Stanhope Place, had been seen earlier with an older man. Did the teenager - said to look older than her 15 years - have some connection with him?

Police launched a major investigation, interviewing 3000 people and finally arresting Alexander Short.

Short had been held in connection with a small money fraud in Glasgow. He had a mental age of only eight, yet officers began to quiz him not on the fraud, but on Margaret's murder.

By the time the case came to court a few months later, it was clear that police procedure in the case had been inappropriate. Short had been a victim of a police attempt at entrapment.

He was cleared of the charge of murder - and fraud. As for Margaret's killer - the case was never solved.

ICE-CREAM WAR IN PORTOBELLO

The war in Europe had ended just weeks earlier, but were emotions still running high in summer 1945 when an Italian ice cream shopkeeper became the tragic victim of a terrible assault?

The Italian community across the UK had already found themselves victims of Churchill's sweeping dictate to "round them up", prompted by Mussolini's 1940 decision to enter the war.

Italian-run businesses and shops had come under attack from fearful citizens, emotions ran high as Italian men of all ages were dragged from their homes, some sent abroad, others to prison.

It was June, and Guiseppe and Maria Demarco's ice cream parlour on Portobello's High Street, pictured above, had enjoyed a roaring day's trade, indeed, the shopkeeper's till contained just over GBP100.

The only blight on the day were the two young men who'd entered their shop and shouted vile threats.

Robert Robertson and Timothy Donoghue had been told to leave by the 82-year-old owner. But soon they were back, and this time they wanted the contents of the till.

A violent struggle ensued - ageing Mr Demarco and his distraught wife against two strapping men recently discharged from the Army. Suddenly, Robertson grabbed a lemonade bottle and brought it crashing on to the elderly man's head. As Mr Demarco reeled back, injured, Donoghue grabbed the till's contents. When Mrs Demarco tried desperately to intervene, she, too, was hit by a bottle.

The shock of it all was too much for the Italian gent's frail heart. Having come to Edinburgh in 1914 seeking a better life, he now lay on his shop floor, dead.

Robertson appeared in court claiming he had acted in self-defence. He and Donoghue denied theft.

A jury wasn't completely convinced. They convicted Robertson of culpable homicide and he was sentenced to seven years. In spite of witnesses' evidence, Donoghue, walked free, the charges against him not proven.

1940 A sub-postmistress was rendered unconscious with an ether-soaked handkerchief before thieves raided the takings. Miss Niven, 33, was unconscious for up to ten minutes while two men stole GBP130 from the shop near Bristo Place.

1941 Violet Potter made Edinburgh legal history when she became the first woman in the city to appear in court charged with defrauding the Ministry of Food. She had claimed she'd lost two ration books to obtain two new ones which she then used to claim extra food rations. She was jailed for a month.

1946 Concern was growing over a spate of senseless vandalism throughout the city. Five schools were attacked and classrooms wrecked during the summer of 1946, while newly- built homes in West Pilton were damaged, with around 1000 windows smashed, delaying families waiting to move in.

1947 Margaret Farmer, of Keir Street, believed she had a gift - she could tell fortunes. And when two undercover detectives arrived at her home, she happily read their fortunes using a pearl necklace and a ring which she pressed to her forehead. However, she failed to see into her own future - she was arrested for fraud. She was fined GBP10, but refused to accept the finding, appealed the case and eventually had it overturned.

1949 The killing of a Boer War veteran in his home in Temple, Midlothian (pictured), landed his murderer with the death sentence. But Andrew Donaldson escaped the gallows with a life sentence reprieve - only to abscond from jail. He was later recaptured
Edinburgh Evening News, April 16, 2011.

MAN OF CLOTH WHO TURNED TO MURDER: Criminal Past Series Part FOUR

THE Lord works in mysterious ways. But the notion that God sent a lightning bolt message to a former Leith minister to kill an innocent man perhaps stretches Christian belief too far.

Yet that was the claim made by Church of Scotland minister Reverend Peter Marr, as he appeared in court in his coat of clerical grey and stiff white dog collar to answer charges that he had shot and killed a stalwart of the Leith community in cold blood.

It was August 1930 and respectable businessman James Dalgleish was on his way to open his shop for business.

The 63-year-old Salvation Army officer and high-ranking Freemason had a lot on his mind - for a start he'd been busy arranging his brother's funeral.

No doubt the fact that he was crossing a stretch of Stanley Road in Leith (pictured)close to where his own son lost his life in a tramcar accident eight years ago to that very day preyed on his thoughts.

He probably didn't even notice the strange man dressed all in black, watching him.

Rev Marr, 41, had lived in the Trinity area before moving to a new parish outside the city.

But he harboured a deep-rooted grudge against Dalgleish, holding him firmly responsible in a property dispute that involved the businessman and the minister's 83-year-old ailing father.

The reverend was convinced his father had been "grievously wronged" by the Leith businessman, and the fact that Mr Dalgleish had gone unpunished rankled in his warped mind.

All he needed was a sign from God, and that punishment could finally take place.

As chance had it, a thunderstorm erupted over the skies of Leith that Saturday morning as Mr Dalgleish strolled to work.

The roar of thunder and the flash of lightning was, Rev Marr said later, the act of providence he had been waiting for.

It was as if the heavens were opening to tell him it was time.

Poor Mr Dalgleish didn't know what hit him. Three shots rang out and as he felt the bullets pierce his back, he staggered over the road, his hat falling to the ground by his side.

The man in black held his revolver steady, firing a further four times at his already bloodied, defenceless victim.

As confusion reigned, locals ran to help the dying man.

Rev Marr simply turned on his heels and calmly walked off. When he was finally caught, he was not exactly repentant - indeed, he claimed that the fact he had killed in cold blood made him an even better man.

In letters sent to the Lord Advocate while he awaited trial, he protested: "I am entirely blameless in this matter. I can resume my duties with a still greater devotion and, as I think, with deeper fervour and spiritual understanding born of the terrible experience through which I have passed."

The High Court that November, however, thought quite differently. Branded insane and unfit to plead, Rev Marr, the murdering minister, was ordered to be detained in strict custody "until His Majesty's Pleasure be known".

It was a message of a different kind that drove a Dunbar husband to kill.

Alexander McWilliam had been playing his part for King and country, serving as a soldier in the early part of 1940, when his brief home leave that September was shattered by a discovery that tipped his mind over the edge.

There, in a handbag, he found intimate letters to his wife Betty, addressed to "My Darling" and detailing where and when to meet, signed "Alf" and smothered in lines of kisses.

They had been sent by a Sergeant Sharp. Based alongside McWilliam at barracks in Dunbar, he had clearly taken advantage of McWilliam's army service absences to "traffick" the man's wife.

The father-of-three later told the High Court that uncovering evidence of his wife's affair with the officer sent him "about off my head".

In a fit of rage, he grabbed a hatchet and swung at his wife Betty's head. Five blows rained down on her skull. The result was inevitable and bloody.

The High Court in Edinburgh heard McWilliam had been a loving husband and father who had been under the impression his was a happy marriage.

And the Lord Justice-Clerk on the bench had no doubt over who was at least partly responsible for Betty McWilliam's tragic death. "That another man should have been taking advantage of the accused's absence on military service to indulge in an illicit relationship with his wife was a dastardly thing to do," he declared.

The jury appears to have agreed, and found him guilty of a reduced charge of culpable homicide. He was sentenced to seven years.

1930

Justice was harsh for youngsters who fell foul of the law. Harry Brock, of Abbeyhill, appeared in court to answer five charges of theft.

He was just 13 and the money he stole was squandered on chocolate, cinema and trips to the public baths. To teach him a lesson, he received "nine stripes of the birch rod".

1931

Joyriders drove police and their victims to fury in 1931, as figures for car thefts soared.

During the year, 258 cars were stolen, almost all being recovered within 24 hours, suggesting they had been taken simply for fun, prompting police to consider some form of burglar alarm for cars.

1932

Motherhood was too much for Mary Marjoribanks to bear. Just 30, she'd already been married 11 years and borne nine children - five of whom had died. Now pregnant again, she clearly could take no more. She lifted a knife and pierced the gas pipes of her Arthur Street home, allowing the toxic fumes to flow into the room occupied by her youngest children, aged three and two. Thankfully they survived, but she faced a charge of attempted murder.

1936

Just four weeks separated the terrible deaths of two innocent children.

Christine McAfee assaulted her newborn baby girl so badly that she died in the Western General in November 1936. And Mary McGregor opted for a bloody end to her daughter Doreen's life - she slit the two-year-old's throat at their Moat Street home that December.

Edinburgh Evening News April 15, 2011

THE DEAD MAN TALKING RIDDLE: CRIMINAL PAST SERIES PART THREE

THE saying goes that dead men tell no lies. Indeed, how on earth could a man shot through the temple at close range, the bullet passing through his brain from one side through the other, possibly be able to talk?

Yet a double shooting that left a newlywed couple dead certainly led to medical experts debating whether, indeed, a dead man might still be capable of speech.

It was two days before Christmas 1923, and Clara Allen, 23, said to be a "pleasant and cultivated person of thoroughly good character", had just made her way back to the lodgings in Heriothill Terrace (pictured) she shared with her 21-year-old electrical engineer husband Frederick.

The couple had married just three months earlier and this was to be their first Christmas together as husband and wife, spent quietly in their small furnished rooms amid working-class tenements in Broughton.

It was Saturday and fair-haired Clara had been out shopping; among her purchases an extravagant roast that she planned to cook for their Christmas dinner.

She was an apparently conscientious wife: by all accounts Frederick's meal was on the table when he arrived home from work that afternoon, around 1pm. But at 1.40pm, the peace and quiet was shattered by the distinctive and shocking sound of two shots ringing out.

The landlady dashed to the couple's room calling: "What's wrong Mrs Allen?"

Inside she saw Clara's husband bleeding profusely from a wound in the head.

"For God's sake," he told the startled landlady. "Fetch a policeman and a doctor, I am bleeding to death."

She had barely reached the end of the landing, when another shot rang out.

By the time a local police officer arrived, accompanied by an ambulance, Frederick was dead.

A search of the room revealed a staggering collection of weaponry: four revolvers - two of them heavy calibre service guns - and 200 rounds of ammunition.

The couple were buried together at Piershill Cemetery on Christmas Day, the general consensus being that Frederick had shot and killed his wife using one of the heavy calibre revolvers, before turning the other weapon on himself.

In the immediate aftermath, the biggest mystery seemed to be what on earth had caused this charming couple to take such extreme action. There had been no significant rows, the rent was paid on time, indeed, nothing out of the ordinary.

But as investigators probed deeper, an even bigger question mark appeared over the tragedy.

By Boxing Day, medical experts had ascertained that Frederick's head wound was so severe that his brain would have been instantly put out of action. They found the bullet had passed straight through his skull, ripped through his brain and lodged in a wall directly in line with where he would have been standing.

The third shot, they concluded, had missed entirely - the bullet was found in the ceiling.

Which could only mean that when the landlady dashed to the scene to find Frederick pleading for help, he was speaking after he had died.

Experts argued his voice and muscles were merely obeying commands sent from the brain seconds earlier. The third shot, they suggested, must either have been the result of a reflex action or the pistol fired when Mr Allen fell.

There was a more likely explanation for what may have prompted the tragedy. Frederick, they found, was a heavy drug user who had always been interested in research into chemicals, probably those with a highly hallucinogenic effect.

That along with a fascination for firearms - explaining the stock of weapons found in the house - turned into a lethal combination.

The state of motorist Alexander Munro's mind when he mowed down two pedestrians, leaving one fatally injured, was also of great debate among medical experts.

Witnesses claimed Munro had been driving along Shandwick Place at excessive speed on January 25, 1930 when his car struck a Mrs Hectorina Kinnaird, killing her, and leaving pedestrian David Wood injured.

Munro, 22, drove off and police later charged him with driving while drunk.

But in a three-day trial that gripped the city, defence lawyers used medical experts to argue that Munro wasn't drunk, instead he had entered a bizarre trance-like state, similar to sleepwalking, at the time of the accident.

In spite of his claims, he was still found guilty of killing Mrs Kinnaird, jailed for 15 months and fined GBP750.

Certainly there were questions over the fragile state of Neil Quinn's mind when he claimed the life of his unfortunate wife Elizabeth before taking his own.

The 30-year-old had seen action in France in 1915 and then in Mesopotamia - no doubt bloody and brutal experiences that left a festering wound on the young Black Watch soldier.

He had been wounded in France, barely recovering from his injuries before joining the 2nd Battalion Black Watch in the furnace of a war against the Turks.

There the battalion endured a 20-mile march across part of what is now modern-day Iraq, before being virtually wiped out by Turkish fire - just 99 officers and men left from a battalion 900 strong.

Nevertheless, he served until 1919. The five months following his return to his fourth-floor tenement in Cowgate - already condemned for demolition - must have meant a difficult period of readjustment for him and his wife.

A meal of sausages and onions was half cooked on the stove when a row broke out. When neighbours went to investigate, they found two bodies lying in the lobby, and a blood- stained razor inside their home.

Quinn had slashed his wife's throat before drawing the blade over his own, slicing so deeply that reports commented on how he had almost severed his own head from his body.

1922

The debate about the availability of cheap alcohol was as alive in the 1920s as today. The Chief Constable's report for 1922 pointed out that cheap methylated spirit was encouraging people to drink. One shilling and threepenny worth of the spirit - the same price as a tot of whisky - was enough, when diluted, to make half a dozen people drunk.

1928

The Commercial Hotel on Sandport Street, Leith, pictured below, was a hive of activity. Sadly for Italian-born owner Paul Naef, it was the wrong kind. Women and men - possibly foreign-looking and maybe seamen - were seen coming and going at all hours. He was found guilty of keeping a brothel in November 1928 and paid highly for his crime as he was ordered to be deported back to Italy.

1928

Stalking seems a modern offence, but in November 1928, Mary Mills, 34, became so upset by her married workmate's constant attention - following her and spying on her - that she began to talk of leaving for London. It was to tip obsessed James Marr over the edge. He picked up a knife at the picture framers where they both worked and killed her with it. He was sentenced to 12 years.

Edinburgh Evening News April 14, 2011