Lighthouse island idyll and its grisly secret past
How a picnic on Little Ross became a horror story with a gruesome murder, a madman on the loose...and a death sentence in court
THE late August sunshine glinted off the shallows as the elderly dinghy pulled ashore on the small east jetty at Little Ross island. Its crew of two, then-teenage student David Collin and his father, Thomas, disembarked swiftly, eager to enjoy a picnic together on the craggy beauty spot which guards the mouth of Kirkcudbright Bay.
After lunch, the pair walked up to the Stevenson-built lighthouse which dominates the seascape for miles around, intending to politely alert the keepers to their presence.
Recalling the scene 57 years later, Mr Collin felt the place seemed strangely deserted and there was no response to their loud knocking on the doors of either of the two keeper’s cottages. Only the insistent ring of a telephone could be heard from within. An excitable dog, which stuck rigidly to the men’s sides from then on, appeared the only visible sign of life.
Something felt decidedly odd. They didn’t know it then, but father and son had stumbled upon what would soon become one of the most notorious murders in Scottish criminal history, casting a pall across Little Ross from which the island has struggled to emerge.
Indeed, when the island was recently put up for sale, the glossy brochure advertising its many charms for the bargain price of £325,000 – equivalent to a two-bedroom flat in central Edinburgh – not surprisingly omitted to mention its grisly past.
Nor did it detail the sensational trial which followed the brutal killing of relief keeper Hugh Clark, who was shot in the face by his young assistant keeper, Robert Dickson.
Mr Collin and his father became caught up in the storm of publicity which blew up around the case, which even briefly cast them in the light of possible suspects. He has never forgotten the events of August 18, 1960, when that family picnic turned to dread. The now retired architect remembered how, as the day wore on and it came time to pack up and leave, his father finally plucked up the courage to enter the houses.
Much to his son’s embarrassment – after all, the keepers might simply be asleep after a long night shift manning the lighthouse – Mr Collin senior entered the head keeper’s house. All seemed in order, but no sooner had his father stepped inside the assistant keeper’s house than he emerged looking flustered and announced that he had found something.
Mr Collin, now aged 76, said: ‘There was an elderly man lying in his bed, everything looked normal. But moving closer to him my father could see there was a towel wrapped on his head. There was some blood near his head, and rather oddly, some lengths of rope lay on the bed. We thought he was dead, but having no experience of such matters, our priority was to seek medical help.’
Mr Collin senior, a bank manager, phoned for the police and a doctor – but the pair then faced a three-hour wait before they arrived at 7pm. Disturbed by what they had found, the men wandered around the lighthouse buildings. ‘We were not quite sure what we were looking for but felt vaguely ill at ease,’ said Mr Collin.
Possible scenarios flowed through their heads about what might have befallen the man: ‘Our assumption was that he had fallen down the lighthouse stairs and the other keeper had left to get help, but we couldn’t understand why he hadn’t come back.
‘It never crossed our mind that we had discovered a murder – you don’t think of murder on an August day on a remote island, it’s the last thing that would enter your head.’
The principal keeper’s house was spotless and a budgie chirruped contentedly in a cage by the window. In the lighthouse tower, the logbook showed that the last entry had been made at 3am. In the workshop at the base of the tower, the pair made their most worrying discovery – the vice on the workbench gripped the sawn-off barrel of a rifle.
‘Although it was the height of summer, we began to feel cold and we climbed to the top of the lighthouse tower where we could sit in the lantern room in the warm sunshine with a spectacular view all around us,’ said Mr Collin. Eventually, they saw a Northern Lighthouse Commission launch creep past St Mary’s Isle Point, off the Kirkcudbrightshire coast, and they headed down to meet the police and a Dr Rutherford.
ALSO on board, with no little irony, was an official of the Northern Lighthouse Commission who had been on his way to inform the keepers on Little Ross that the station was about to become automated and would no longer have to be manned.
When Mr Clark’s body was finally examined, a bullet fell out of the man’s left eye-socket. He had been shot a close range by a .22 rifle.
The Collins showed officers what they had found, included the shorn rifle barrel.
After giving statements to the police, the Collins finally made it off the island late that night but found themselves ambushed by photographers camped on the quayside at Kirkcudbright.
‘It transpired that my father’s conversations with the police and the doctor were overheard by linesmen who were checking the telephone line to Little Ross for faults because of the lack of response to a routine daily call. The story had spread rapidly,’ said Mr Collin.
‘Kirkcudbright was seething with press people and our house was besieged all night and all of the next day. I suppose, we were the prime suspects in a sense. We were left very shocked by the sudden infamy and all the publicity.’
At that very early stage, the Collins still did not realise that police back on the island had already launched a murder hunt, and were fairly certain that the weapon used to kill Mr Clark was wielded by Robert Dickson.
Dickson had fled the island and attempted to make his getaway in Mr Clark’s car. Following a huge manhunt, he was eventually captured by police in Yorkshire.
The murder and subsequent court case grabbed the attention of the national media, generating lurid headlines and much misinformed speculation. ‘We saw nothing gory or macabre – there were some bloodstains on the towel but nothing like the stories people in Kirkcudbright tell you,’ said Mr Collin.
‘I have been reliably informed he was stabbed seven times in the chest, his throat was cut from ear to ear and that his face had been blown away by a shotgun. All of this is complete fabrication, but these stories caught everybody’s attention and still do to this day.’
Both Mr Collin and his father appeared as witnesses at Dickson’s trial for murder and theft at the High Court in Dumfries in November 1960. Mr Collin found the process troubling: ‘I sat through the whole court proceedings. The result of the case was never really in any doubt as the evidence against Dickson was overwhelming.
‘His mental fitness to be accountable for his actions, however, was another matter and it seemed to me and to many other people, both then and now, that there was no doubt he suffered from some form of mental illness.
‘He had a history of mental illness and the defence was insanity but the judge’s direction to the jury, on legal grounds, was that he was guilty.’
The accused was found guilty on all charges which, in those days, still carried the threat of capital punishment. As Lord Cameron donned his black cap and prepared to pass a sentence of death by hanging, the trial produced one final, dramatic flourish.
A brewing storm caused the courtroom to grow darker and darker until, coinciding with the judge’s sentence the courtroom was shaken by an enormous flash of lightning and a colossal peal of thunder.
‘Nobody who was present will ever forget that terrifying moment,’ recalled Mr Collin.
In the event, Dickson escaped the hangman’s noose after he was
reprieved just five days before the execution planned for December 21, 1960. Nevertheless, the story did not end well for this tormented soul, after he took his own life in prison two years later by an overdose of drugs.
The case has since passed into local folklore and the island’s lighthouse blinks away to this day as a beacon of seafaring safety. The tower, designed by Alan Stevenson – uncle to writer Robert Louis Stevenson – was built in 1843 to close the gap between other lighthouses at the Mull of Galloway and Southerness.
Fully automated since 1961, it remains under the control of the Northern Lighthouse Commission, while the rest of the 29-acre island has sold for ‘significantly more’ than its asking price after generating international interest and a dozen offers. David Corrie, senior associate at selling agents Galbraith, said that buyers were attracted by Little Ross’s ‘fantastic development potential’.
The property runs to a sixbedroom, B-listed cottage and courtyard and three B-listed, ‘ruinous’ barns and is completely off grid with power drawn from solar panels and a small wind turbine. The new owners will only be able to access the island via private boat or helicopter.
Mr Corrie said: ‘Back in the 1900s, the island was home to the head lighthouse keeper, underkeepers and their families, extending to 16 people, with a small dairy and piggery to provide subsistence for this family community.
‘With a bit of TLC, the properties on the island could be turned into something truly stunning, with Little Ross island once again being the perfect island retreat for future generations to enjoy. Private islands rarely come up for sale at an affordable price and particularly one with a habitable house and additional properties.’
MR COLLIN said Kirkcudbright was agog with speculation over the new owner’s identity: ‘Nobody knows who has bought the island, but we understand it is someone from London with Wigtownshire connections. I’d like it to find a caring owner who wouldn’t alter very much.’
His own deep fascination with the island remains undiminished, so much so that he has just completed a comprehensive history of it stretching back its first Bronze Age settlers. Entitled Life and Death on Little Ross and published by Whittles, it is due to hit bookshops next month.
Still a keen sailor, he remains a regular visitor to Little Ross. ‘I think it means a lot to everybody in Kirkcudbright, really, because we think of it as our island – we don’t own it but it is our view,’ he said. ‘I see the island every day from my house on the mainland. It sits at the mouth of the bay in a very commanding position.
‘In good weather it looks very tempting and in bad weather it’s a shelter for visiting vessels and anybody entering the bay that anchors behind it. So it is important on many different levels.’
He added: ‘I have occasionally enjoyed a cup of tea in the very room where the murder took place. There are no ghosts and there is no feeling of dread. Sadness does linger, but it is chiefly regret that a life was lost and another initially ruined and ultimately lost.
‘The greater regret is the loss of the wonderful traditions of the Northern Lighthouse Commission’s resident keepers, and their dedicated professional vigilance on behalf of all seamen. You have to remember that over a period of 117 years, Little Ross was home to a total of 60-odd keepers and their families, who lived there peacefully. Many children were born and educated there and it remains a much-loved local beauty spot.
‘It is terrible really that such a beautiful place, whose lighthouse was built to save lives, should now be known as Death Island because of one tragedy which caught the international headlines. It deserves better.’