Old Argyll crime: The Benderloch psycho killer
AN ABRIDGED extract from Now Prisoner Within, murder, riot and crime in old Argyll’ by Lindsay Campbell, published November 28.
The man came from the north of the county, a little place called Ferlochan, a peaceful site, hidden from what is now the main road and above a twisting, tumbling burn. There must have been a thriving wee community here in 1741 and amongst them was Archibald MacCallum and his wife Euphemia.
One night in March, Archibald is recorded as having an axe indoors; he may have brought it in to cut the morning’s firewood, drying overnight by the fire. Fair enough. But he also brought the axe into the tiny chamber next to the main room, and set it at the side of the bed he shared with his wife before they both settled down for sleep. Come the morning, what the neighbours heard must have chilled them to the bone.
The wee farmstead of Ferlochan was suddenly shattered by blood-curdling screams and thudding noises. The neighbours rushed in to see Effy MacCallum lying on the floor, covered in her own blood and gore. She may have still been conscious, as the records relate how someone described her husband calmly rising out of bed, before raising the axe to her. Effy had tried to flee, but couldn’t escape a rain of hits to her head, back and shoulder.
When the neighbours went into the adjoining bedroom, Archibald MacCallum was sitting on the couple’s bed, calmly putting on his day clothes, the bloody axe at his side. One can’t imagine that some of the menfolk didn’t fetter him there and then and bundle him off to the byre, just yards away. Poor Effy died in her own bed a few hours later, undoubtedly from tremendous blood loss and shock, and the floor of the cottage may have borne the stain for years.
The following day, Archibald MacCallum was in the Inveraray court confessing the whole thing, doubtless taken by boat the same day as the murder and perhaps with the assistance of his laird, Campbell of Loch Nell.
Studies in modern times indicate that around 27 per cent of convicted murderers are psychopaths. In early 18th century Argyll, 25 per cent of the murderers in the justice records show psychopathic traits, and one of these was Archibald MacCallum in Ferlochan. His calm, fearless attitude immediately after such a cruel murder and his forward planning with the axe, go strikingly against almost all other murders in this era, fitting disturbingly the actions of a classic psychopath. He’d probably been making poor Effy’s life hell for years and wouldn’t have made life comfortable for his fellow inmates at Inveraray gaol.
The jury in court that day (there can rarely have been a more powerful one serving at Inveraray) subsequently gave in a ‘proven’ verdict on Archibald MacCallum and he was sentenced to hang.
On the afternoon of Wednesday June 16 1742, the prisoner was brought out of the gaol. His fate, however, wasn’t straightforward. Waiting for him at the foot of the gibbet was an axe (one can’t help wondering if it was the murder weapon itself) and there, his right hand was taken off before he became the last criminal to be hung on the spot in the history of Inveraray and one of the last to be ‘now prisoner within’ the old tolbooth.
People convicted of capital crimes would still be hanged at Inveraray in future decades, for although the last remnants of the feudal system in Argyll died with the end of the Justice Courts in 1748, the Sheriff courts took over the work.
Hangings, however, took place at the other end of town, beyond the burgh limits at Cromalt, and no gibbet would spoil the Duke’s lochside vista from his new castle.