Area is backdrop for one of Scotland’s largest manhunts

Stirlingshire and the county of Perth was the backdrop in November, 1961, for one of the largest police manhunts seen in Scotland for many years.

It was sparked after three prisoners – John `Cat’s Eye’s Johnstone, 26, 35-year-old John `Gypsy’ Winning and Gilbert

McCawley, 24 – escaped from Peterhead Jail.

The three, described as `dangerous’, used stolen cars to drive through the countryside prompting an alert across several counties.

In Stirlingshire, the Dunblane and Doune area and other parts of Perthshire, roadblocks were set up, drivers questioned and vehicles checked.

The police dragnet was rewarded when `Cats Eyes’ Johnstone was snared as he was crossing Stirling’s Old Bridge.

Two days later the other fugitives were caught in a field at Orchard Farm, Cambus.

Police had received information one of the men had been seen in the area and rushed to the scene, McCawley was found walking in a hay field while Winning was hiding in a haystack.

`Both men were in poor physical condition and offered no resistance,” said the Observer.

Police had set up `concentrated road blocks’ on the banks of the Forth between Aberfoyle and Grangemouth. The men, thought to have been making for Glasgow, found it impossible to cross the river. Johnstone, serving an eightyear sentence for his part in a bank robbery, was stopped and questioned by Constables Colin Thomson and Robert Paterson.

He was taken to Stirling Police Station for further questioning and at first tried to bluff police by saying he was a farm labourer from Ireland and had been working in Perthshire.

He was wearing overalls, a green pullover and a blue tunic which he said he had taken from a scarecrow.

Johnstone had relatives in Stirling district and it was thought at the time he was stopped he was trying to make for home.

When he walked from Stirling Police Station to a waiting car to be taken up to Aberdeen and back to jail, he was bare footed. He complained that having been on the run for three days, his feet were sore.

Both men were in poor physical condition and offered no resistance, said the Observer