John Fothergill Wilson: Admitted 1878. Arson

Home
Learning and events
Exhibition: Prisoners or Patients? Criminal Insanity in Victorian Scotland
John Fothergill Wilson: Admitted 1878. Arson

Share this page

Click here to share this page on Facebook. Click here to share this page on LinkedIn. Click here to share this page on X (formerly known as Twitter).

Aged 38 years when admitted, John is the oldest of the nine prisoner-patients. Seven were in their twenties. Two-fifths of all Victorian admissions were in that cohort, one quarter in their thirties; nearly a fifth were under twenty. John came from a good family, his father a Newcastle surgeon. The doctor at Perth in 1878 seems to have respected him, saying he could converse in an intelligent and educated fashion on many topics. In contrast, most of those committed to Perth Criminal Lunatic Department (CLD) had limited literacy; some had been excluded from school. But John also had a long history of insanity. A 'rolling stone', John had already abandoned an apprenticeship, a wife, and his post in the Royal Navy before he was committed to the Middlesex County Pauper Lunatic Asylum at Colney Hatch in December 1870. The captain of a merchant ship on which Wilson had served, said that for three months he had been 'very violent at times without provocation'. His father secured his release and cared for him until his death in 1874. John quickly spent his inheritance and went 'on the tramp', favouring the prosperous farming areas of south-east Scotland. He lived a hand-to-mouth existence, begging, trapping animals, and stealing.

Photograph of John Fothergill Wilson taken from the Criminal Lunatic Department Case Book. Crown copyright, NRS, HH21/48/2 p73.

John may have been violent, but his obsession was fire. In 1877, 1878, and 1883 he was tried for multiple counts of 'malicious mischief', specifically arson of hay stacks at several farms east of Edinburgh. Usually after being refused food, he lay in wait until dark, fired the stacks, and retreated to a safe distance to watch them burn - sometimes ten tons at a time. He then gave himself up to police so he could be fed and sheltered in gaol.

The first page of John Wilson Fothergill’s Declaration. He admits setting fire to hay stacks because ‘I had no means of subsistence and because I wanted to get back to prison’, 3 January 1883, p1-4. Crown copyright, NRS, JC26/1883/224.

At Haddington the third day
of January, Eighteen hundred
and eighty three years
By presence of John Ferml
Esquire, Sheriff Substitute of the
County of Haddington.

Compeared John Fothergill Wilson who being interrogated Declares, I am forty three years of age. I am married. I was tra[ine]d as a Lithographic Printer but did not follow that occupation. I belong to Newcastle on Tyne. I was an inmate of the Lunatic asylum attached to the General Prison at Perth from Eighteen hundred and seventy eight until april, Eighteen hundred and eighty two, when I was transferred to the prison at Haddington and was liberated. Since my liberation last April I have been mostly in Roxburghshire. I wasn’t engaged in any employment there I lived partly by poaching, ensaring rabbits and partly by gathering wool. I left Roxburghshire and after being in Edinburgh for ten days where I was employed snow clearing I came to East Lothian. I went through East Lothian and as far as Berwick on Tweed intending to go to Northumberland. I met a lady and gentleman driving in a carriage on the road who spoke to me. They advised me to go back to East Lothian, which I did.

I was at East Linton on the night of Sunday the thirty first December last. On the night of Monday first January current I slept in the Barn at the Home Farm of Gilmerton in the Parish of athelstaneford. The following day Tuesday second January current I was wandering about the neighbourhood. In the course of the Tuesday forenoon I called at the farm house of abbeymains and asked for some food but got none. I went down to the village of athelstaneford and on going there I passed a number of hay stacks not far from abbeymains farm house. They were situated at the side of the public road leading to athelstaneford. I thought I would come back one night and set those stacks on fire. I got a hit of tobacco and some matches in a shop in athelstaneford. I wandered about the neighbourhood until dark then I went to the hay stacks and set fire to two of them. When I saw they were fairly alight I walked to Haddington about two miles distant and gave myself up to the police as having set fire to the stacks. My only object in doing so was because I had no means of existence and because I wanted to back to prison. All which I declare to be truth. One word delete

John F. Wilson

The declaration written upon this and the three preceding pages by James Stuart Burnet Sheriff Clerk Depute of the County of Haddington, was of the date it bears freely and voluntarily emitted by the therein designed John Fothergill Wilson while in his sound and sober senses and the same having been read over to him he adhered thereto before and in presence of Thomas Todrick, Procurator Fiscal of said county, the said James Stuart Burnet, and Thomas Logan Keeper of the County Buildings Haddington.

Thomas Todrick
James S. Burnet
Tho. Logan

The admitting officer of the General Prison at Perth noted in 1877: 'He is a thin spare little man with a good face and head, but there is evidently a want about him.' Nobody thought anything more needed said. Voicing bluntly an axiom of Victorian society, the governor stated: 'All the criminal classes are more or less weak minded.' He did not mean intellectually disabled, but failing to conform to broad psychological and moral norms. John served a routine 12 month sentence and was released.

At his next appearance for wilful fire-raising before the High Court of Justiciary on 3 June 1878 he was found unfit for trial.

“He is insane. Believes he has a guardian angel: a woman who is always whispering in his ears to do something. He set fire to places, to commit rape etc. Has been previously in asylums. Hears other voices.”

When eventually able to plead he was sent to Perth CLD, which recorded him as particularly deranged during 1879:

“More demented. Says he has a number of steel springs in his abdomen attached to the ribs, and which may be wound up at will. Believes that everyone can read his thoughts, as he was told so by a Hindu conjuror when resident abroad. Requested me to circumcise him to prevent him from masturbating. Very delusive.”

The medical men classed John as a maniac, but in March 1882 he was certified sane and escorted to Haddington prison for liberation.

A Haddington doctor, who had assessed John in 1876/7, 1878, and 1882, described him in 1883 as 'quiet...Has no delusions or hallucinations', concluding: 'although not strong minded, he is not in any sense insane'. The same two prominent psychiatric specialists who certified him mad in 1878 also stated, before yet another trial for arson in February 1883, that he was quite sane.

Two Doctors certify that upon examining John ‘we are unable to discover any insane illusions in his mind’, 21 February 1883. Crown copyright, NRS, AD14/83/13.

We hereby certify on Soul and conscience that we examined John Fothergill Wilsons in the Prison of Edinburgh on the 14th and 17th of February 1883 and though his mental power is weakened from a previous attack of insanity – yet we are unable to discover any insane delusions in his mind at present or that any insane motive prompted his conduct at the time he is alleged to have committed the offence with which he is charged. We are unable to discover any fact that indicates he is unfit at present to instruct counsel.

J. Y. [M]onston M.D.
James A. Sidey M.D.

John did himself no favours. In his pre-trial statement, later retracted, he justified arson by farmers being insured and 'an occasional fire was an excellent advertisement for an insurance company'. Unsurprisingly, the court saw John as remorseless and spiteful: bad, not mad. Without the protection of insanity, he got a sentence of five years penal servitude in a general prison in the spring of 1883.

Was this page helpful? *

Yes

Yes, but

Your comments

Transcription of John Fothergill Wilson’s statement, 3 January 1883. NRS, JC26/1883/224

Transcription of the statement of two doctors, confirming that Wilson is sane. NRS, AD14/83/13