The Real Mr Hyde
The incredible story that inspired a classic villainous character
As the 16th century ticked over into the 17th, the world was a place of suspicion and fear. The Age of Enlightenment had yet to dawn and just like the rest of the British Isles, Scotland was a place where the good feared God and cowered at the unseen wickedness that dwelt in the shadows, hoping to tempt the weak or greedy. It was a place where magic might just be real and witch trials convinced some people that witchcraft lurked in the most unexpected places, its practitioners scheming to snare even decent souls and drag them into the grip of evil and all the way down to hell itself. In the first half of the 17th century one man came to embody immorality, evil and the blackest magic imaginable to the residents of Edinburgh. He was Major Thomas Weir, the notorious Wizard of West Bow, practitioner of devilish arts, summoner of demons and notorious fornicator with his own sister and beasts alike. Major Thomas Weir died for his supposed crimes, but was he truly an emissary of the devil, or might he have been a mentally ill man who lost his life to a tragic miscarriage of justice? Perhaps there was a third possibility and Major Weir was actually the heartless brother who subjected his own sister to unimaginable torments for decades, driving her mad.
Thomas Weir was born in 1599 in Carluke, a town in the Scottish central Lowlands county of Lanarkshire. He was born to privilege as a descendent of the Weir-de Vere family, an influential and ancient family who had made their home at Stonebyres, an imposing Lanarkshire estate. Here they grew rich and powerful, presiding over the lands they ruled for generations. Thomas Weir’s father, also named Thomas Weir, was the Laird of Kirkton. The laird was married to Lady Jean Somerville,
“The notorious Wizard of West Bow, practitioner of devilish arts, summoner of demons and notorious fornicator”
Thomas Weir the younger’s mother, and Lady Jean had a few talents of her own. Regardless of how well she had married and how much power her family wielded, gossip about her was rife. Some whispered that she had clairvoyant powers, rumours that her own daughter would later swear to in the midst of her own rambling, hysterical confession.
The son, Thomas, however, made no such claims to other worldly powers, nor did he wish to. Instead he was raised as a strict Covenanter and Presbyterian, famed for the strength and passion not only of his unshakeable faith, but the long and fiery speeches he gave to his religious followers. So pious and godly was Weir that when he took up residence with his wife, Isobel, alongside other devout Presbyterians at the top of the West Bow, off Edinburgh’s Grassmarket, the group was given the nickname, the Bowhead Saints. They were morally unimpeachable, the godliest of the godly, and they were fiercely anti-royalist in their beliefs.
Weir enjoyed a celebrated and well-rewarded career as a soldier, serving in Ireland during the Irish Rebellion of 1641 before he returned to Scotland. As a committed and passionate anti-royalist, Weir proudly added his signature to the Solemn League and Covenant in 1643. This document was an agreement between the English Parliamentarians and the Scottish Covenanters in which each swore their allegiance to the other, creating a force that would eventually overwhelm the Royalist forces. Weir served in the Army of the Covenant under James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, where his loyalty to his land and people was unquestioning.
As he rose through the ranks of the army, so too did he rise in prominence amongst Edinburgh covenanters, who revelled in the passion and strength of his spoken prayers. In fact, so famed was Weir for his religious fervour that Presbyterians made pilgrimages to his home in the
West Bow from across Edinburgh and beyond, hoping to hear him speak.
When Weir’s military career reached its natural end with the Parliamentarian victory in the English Civil War, he returned home to Edinburgh permanently. By now a major, he was given command of the city guard of Edinburgh, a position to which a loyal, sober and serious man such as Thomas Weir seemed particularly well-suited. In fact, Weir’s loyalty to his anti-royalist beliefs was proven still further when his former commander, Montrose, was imprisoned in Edinburgh after he changed sides to fight for the monarchist cause. As Montrose languished in his cell awaiting his date with the executioner, a merciless Weir made his captive’s life miserable. To him, a traitor was the lowest of the low, but Major Thomas Weir was to fall further than even that.
Major Weir eventually retired from his position and devoted himself full time to his religious preachings, by now regarded by his followers as something close to a saint. When his wife passed away he was joined in West Bow home by his unmarried sister, Jane, or Jean, who was known to her friends as Grizel, who became her brother’s housekeeper and, as was later revealed, much more besides. Major Thomas Weir was a striking figure when glimpsed about the city, always dressed in black and carrying an imposing black staff that was topped by the carving of a fearsome human head. The staff was one of the most important props of his preaching and he brandished it during his blood and thunder prayers, striking fear into the hearts of sinners. The life of the Weir siblings should have been one of respectable and genteel retirement, uneventful days interspersed with the prayers that had become so renowned, but it was not to be.
In 1670, a lady was walking past Weir’s home with her maid when she was alerted to some strange goings on by the sound of shouting and cackling from inside. This wasn’t exactly what one expected to hear when one passed the home of a Presbyterian so-called Bowhead Saint and as the women picked up their pace, things got even stranger. An immensely tall woman burst from within, hooting with laughter and twisting her body into hideous shapes. The hellish figure pushed roughly past the women and disappeared down Anderson’s Close, where she apparently disappeared into thin air.
Days later, Major Weir took the stand at a packed Presbyterian meeting and quite suddenly, with no prompting, made an unexpected confession. He and his sister were lovers, he claimed, and they practised bestiality too. He went on to confess that he had sexual relations with innumerable servants and his own stepdaughter, as well as all sorts of other ungodly acts.
Attendees at the prayer meeting who had been expecting prayers and breast-beating were shocked by Weir’s outburst and blamed the confession on ill health. They put it down to mental strain and tried to hush it up, fearing the irreparable damage it might do to the church. For some time they were successful, but Weir wouldn’t be silenced no matter how hard his followers tried. He took his bed with ill health and there continued to confess to incest and bestiality until the story, inevitably, got out.
At first the authorities quite understandably dismissed Weir’s ravings as those of a madman. Sir Andrew Ramsay, Lord Abbotshall, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh was keen to let the old major, by now 70 years old, live out the rest of his life at home, ranting and raving as much as he wished. This was a victim of mental illness, declared the Lord Provost, and needed no punishment. It was decided to take no further action but it was Weir himself who forced their hand. When Lord Abbotshall sent doctors to examine the patient, Weir declared himself sane and the doctors agreed with him. The only thing wrong with the old man, said the physicians, was a guilty conscience. He needed to unburden himself and be punished in order to find peace.
“When the fearsome black staff was hurled into the fire, it twisted and writhed like a serpent”
“Some claimed to have seen the ghost of Weir himself, leaving a trail of flame in his wake”
Weir refused to accept that he would face no punishment for his sins and told them that he didn’t want a pardon, he wanted to be punished. Eventually both Weir and Grizel were taken into custody at the Edinburgh Tolbooth and there, to everyone’s surprise, it was found that Thomas wasn’t alone in his confessions of sin.
Grizel admitted that, years before, a stranger in a coach made of fire had taken Weir to Dalkeith and there he had been given supernatural knowledge of the Scottish defeat by the English that had happened that day and had yet to be made known. She told them that she had been having sexual relations with her brother from her teens and had, in the decades that followed, practised all manner of sexual deviancy at his command. When they asked for evidence she showed them the horseshoe-shaped mark on her brow, a witch mark she had inherited from their mother, so she claimed. The source of Weir’s power was the staff he always carried, claimed the terrified woman. Unless the authorities wanted him to cast evil spells on them, they had better take the staff from him. Not wanting to take any chances, they did just that.
Grizel and Weir confessed to meetings with the devil himself and refused to see any priest or other member of the clergy. When their house was searched large sums of money were found wrapped in cloth and accompanied by an unknown root. When the cloth was thrown on the fire it exploded and the magistrate given responsibility for the money claimed, rather unbelievably, that the notes themselves were bewitched and flew about his house in a manner so ferocious that he feared they might damage the fabric of the building!
Though Major Weir’s lone confession had been dismissed as the ranting of a madman,
when taken in concert with that of his sister, the Edinburgh authorities decided that there must be something in it. They put the siblings on trial on 9 April 1670. Major Weir was charged with incest and bestiality, whilst Grizel was charged with witchcraft. With no lawyer willing to defend the siblings, a guilty verdict was swiftly handed down. Weir was to be strangled and his body burned whilst Grizel would be hanged.
When the noose was put around Major Thomas Weir’s neck and he was told to repent, he refused. Instead he claimed, “I have lived as a beast and must die like a beast,” resisting all efforts to pray. His body was cut down into the fire and the fearsome black staff hurled in after him where, according to terrified witnesses, it twisted and writhed like a serpent. Both Weir and the staff took an uncommonly long time to be reduced to ashes. In her cell, Grizel wouldn’t believe that her brother was truly dead until she was assured that the staff had been burned with him. It was this staff, she said, that gave Weir his hellish power. Only when she knew that it was no more did she confess that their mother had been a witch who had taught her children black magic. She claimed that she and her brother shared the mark of the devil with their mother and that it was this mark, shaped like a horseshoe, that allowed them to see the future. When Grizel was taken to the place of execution on the Grassmarket she became hysterical, screaming of her shame and tearing at her clothes. She slapped the face of her executioner and fought fiercely, spitting and cursing all the way. The remains of Major Weir and Grizel were buried at the base of the Shrub Hill Gallows, but they were far from forgotten.
Though the Weirs were dead, their spirits lived on in Edinburgh, according to witnesses who lived near the house where they had resided. For years the building remained uninhabited and reports were made of mysterious lights and the sound of screams and laughter. Some even claimed to have seen the major himself, the black staff in his hand as he galloped through the city on a black horse, leaving a trail of flame in his wake. On other occasions a coach was heard to thunder up and down the road outside Weir’s home after dark but when his neighbours dared to peer around their shutters, the street was empty and no such coach was in sight.
The house stood empty for nearly a century until a former soldier rented it at a bargain price. He stayed there for just one night before he packed up and left, claiming to have been tormented by the strange vision of a calf that rose up on its hind legs. The house was demolished during improvement works during the 1870s but to this day, ghostly happenings are occasionally reported on the site where it once stood.
But what was the truth behind the strange case of Major Thomas Weir and his sister,
Grizel? At first glance it appears to be a story of mental illness and delusion that, amidst the 17th century fervour for witchcraft trials, led an innocent brother and sister to their deaths. Yet what are we to make of Grizel’s claims that she had been her brother’s lover for years? Was Thomas Weir’s guilty conscience caused not by his dealings with the devil, but his guilt at the abuse of his own sister? Might this, after all, be why he was so keen to blame his sexual misconduct on Satanic influences rather than himself? Of course this doesn’t explain Grizel’s own confession, but years of abuse or shared delusion might well have played its part. The truth of the strange case of the Weirs appears to have perished with them.
When Robert Louis Stevenson was growing up in Edinburgh, the local tale of Major Weir was one of the most popular of all the city’s many legends. In fact Stevenson’s own father had been urged by his parents to avoid the neighbourhood in which the empty Weir house still stood, lest they encounter the spirit of the major on his devilish steed. In the tale of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde we see the ghost of Thomas Weir again, the pious man of God who lives a secret life of debauchery and deviance.
To the people who knew him, Major Thomas Weir was a warlock and his sister a witch, but to modern eyes, both were suffering from mental illness and in need not of the noose, but treatment. To Robert Louis Stevenson, Weir was one of several inspirations for his most famed creation and he remains fascinating to this day, his story one that chills as much as it intrigues. What Major Thomas Weir would have made of that is anybody’s guess.