A bloody business
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A conducted bus tour of Glasgow is a bloody bupiness. It takes in 17 Sandyford Place, where, according to the guide, Dr Pritchard — "The Human Crocodile" — poisoned his mother-in-law arid then his wife. His execution on July 28, 1865, was the last public hanging in Glasgow.
Neil S. M. Owen, who takes a keen interest in Glaswegian affairs, disagrees with the courier. He says the infamous doctor did not live at Sandyford Place but at a nearby address where he was believed to have been responsible for the death of a servant girl in a fire. According to Mr Owen the murders for which Dr Pritchard was hanged were committed in a house in Sauchiehall Street.
He says it was Jess MacPherson who was murdered at 17 Sandyford Place. She was hacked to death with a meat cleaver, allegedly by Jessie McLachlan, a young woman friend, whose sentence of death, after a public outcry, was commuted to life imprisonment. Mr Owen thinks an old man named James Fleming did it.
Who's for a nice bus ride?