Recalling the terror of Loch Aweside
IN APRIL 1911, an ostentatious imported car with a chauffeur at the wheel and two passengers in the back turned into the garage in Combie Street, Oban. The vehicle didn’t require mechanical attention.
The Loch Aweside laird, Esdaile Campbell Muir, aged 37, had come to get married to Miss May (Laura Madeleine) Montgomery, aged 18, residing with Mrs Stewart, her aunt, at Soroba House, Oban.
The ceremony, witnessed by Esdaile’s chauffeur and another chauffeur, was of the pagan handfasting type, with the couple’s hands bound together with a cord. When the knot was untied, the couple were driven off.
The romantic story appealed to the press, with the Oban garage referred to as the ‘new Gretna Green’.
Ah, but a boy in Oban knew the true story behind the garage betrothal.
Donald Sutherland was the son of John Sutherland, partner in the legal firm of Hosack and Sutherland. The Sutherlands were part of the high society of the town and environs, and the solicitor brought home to the dinner table stories about Esdaile Campbell Muir, known as ‘the Terror of Loch Aweside’.
Young Donald was fascinated, and, years later, recorded his memories in a delightful book called Butt and Ben (reprinted by Birlinn).
Donald recalled: ‘Mrs Stewart and Miss Montgomery were taking a leisurely trot in their one-horse Victoria when they met Campbell Muir’s large car. He stopped in mid-road, climbed out and went to speak with mama [the aunt]. To her, he apologised most profusely for any trouble he might have caused, assured her that his intentions were wholly honourable, and offered, as his suit [to marry May] had apparently so distressed her [Mrs Stewart], to withdraw it altogether.
‘The lady made the mistake of taking him at his face value. She descended from the Victoria to explain to him just why the match he proposed would be quite unsuitable. For one thing, she and her daughter [niece] were Roman Catholics and he ... she got no further.
‘Campbell Muir put an open hand under her jaw, and pushed hard. She fell into a deep bramble-filled ditch as he had intended her to. He then grabbed the not unwilling daughter, threw her into the car and was away like Young Lochinvar but much faster. And in those days the police were not motorised.’
Esdaile and Mary Madeleine reached the Oban garage for the handfasting wedding, and Mrs Stewart’s hot pursuit thereafter was futile.
Was Esdaile’s choice of bride due to his belief that May was an heiress with expectations of a large income when she came of age?
Esdaile had inherited the Inistrynich estate on Loch Aweside in 1900 at the age of 27, through the will of his wealthy grandfather, William Muir, proprietor of a whisky bond in Leith, Edinburgh, among other investments.
Esdaile was clever, having studied electrical engineering at Cambridge University, and was a rowing ‘blue’. From the day he took over Inistrynich, he made himself objectionable. Visitors were met, not with a handshake, but with stones flung from the library window.
A gifted engineer, Esdaile installed an electrical system in the mansion house, destroying it to force his widowed mother to move out, which she wisely did.
A lover of Esdaile’s of whom he had wearied ended up in the snow outside Inistrynich, minus her shoes and stockings, and her purse. The cook saw her and came out to rescue her, warming her frozen feet at the kitchen stove.
Esdaile, pioneering motorist, began to go through his inheritance at an alarming speed, importing a series of large, expensive cars which terrorised horse-drawn traffic on the road between Loch Awe and Oban. On one reckless occasion, he knocked a holidaying mademoiselle and her Peugeot into the shallows of Loch Awe, without stopping to rescue the distressed but unscathed maiden.
When a local farmer dared to argue with him, one of his cows was delivered to him by rail ... a bullet in its head.
Esdaile seemed to think that Loch Awe belonged to him. In May 1906, Scotland’s newspapers (including The Oban Times) carried details of the sensational ‘Loch Awe shooting case’ trial being held in Oban. Four Glasgow anglers, including a city baillie, were fired at by Esdaile, described by a Peterhead newspaper on his court appearance as ‘a smart looking young man in a kilt and shooting jacket’.
Sentence: a fine of £5 or 30 days’ imprisonment.
His fellow Argyll landowners were horrified by his behaviour.
In February 1909, Campbell Muir’s steam launch sank in Loch Awe. He sued an insurance underwriter for the cost of the vessel and denied a charge that he had disconnected two injection pipes to scuttle the launch in order to collect the insurance. He lost the case and, in May 1911, he was declared bankrupt, a month after his garage wedding.
His bride’s expected annual income of four figures was not due until she was 21. What was left of his estate was sold, and he and his wife disappeared, only to wash up in Florida, where he was fined $50,000 for slandering a man. He absconded without paying, but to where?
Donald Sutherland of Oban wrote of the fugitive: ‘The last thing I heard was that he had been driving a car for a Chicago citizen called Al Capone. On the whole it did not sound improbable. But we missed him.’
Actually Esdaile went to sea as a ship’s engineer. He died in a nursing home in London at the age of 77 in June 1951 with very little money and is buried in an unmarked grave in Streatham Park Cemetery in London.
His memory as a rogue endures on Loch Aweside. It is claimed that, having set fire to Hayfield House for the insurance money, he swam round to Inistrynich to raise the alarm, so as to avoid being seen on the road.
Thanks to Janet White of British Columbia, a Campbell Muir descendant, for assistance and photographs; and also to Emma Fellowes, one of the family who currently live at Inistrynich.
He put an open hand under her jaw and pushed”