Deranged family murders are right up Joanne's street

The double murder of Marion and Elizabeth Hunter led Dalrymple Crescent resident Joanne Lamb to research the street's history, which ranged from everyday goings-on to horrific killings

Over her stood her son, his long hair flowing past his shoulders, his eyes wild and his body emaciated and pitiful after years kept penned indoors. In his hands he gripped a foot-and-a-half-long, inch-thick iron bar.

Poor Elizabeth, his sister, was next. Running to her mother's aid, she fell clumsily over her stricken, apparently lifeless body, the cue for John Hunter, wild and uncouth, mind driven to insanity, to raise high the bar and clatter it down on her too.

Blow after blow rained down on the stricken women and life in a quiet and largely unremarkable Victorian Edinburgh street became significantly more remarkable.

The year was 1865 and the double murder at the hands of a deranged relative in the road outside their Dalrymple Crescent home in the Grange left Edinburgh - indeed, the whole of Scotland - reeling.

Evidence of the crime is, of course, long gone. Yet 150 years on and people living in the Victorian homes that line the street still speak in vague terms of the dastardly and vile deed that had been played out yards from their front gardens.

Newcomer Joanne Lamb heard talk of it as she prepared to move into number 9 Dalrymple Crescent. It didn't take long for her to realise that the horror of the killings on that fateful October day had seeped into the very fabric of the road to become as much a part of it as the fine Victorian architecture, the pleasing mix of detached and semi-detached houses and cottages with their bow, bay and sash windows, large gardens and imposing doorways.

That, and the unusually fine detail on the deeds to her new home, teased her enquiring university researcher's mind, and soon she was wondering what other quirks and curiosities Dalrymple Crescent may have witnessed.

High drama of bloody murder aside, what about the ordinary lives of this Victorian street?

Now she's reached the climax of a four-year journey back in time, during which she's meticulously unpicked the multi-layered tapestry that made up the day-to-day lives and times of those first Victorian occupants.

The result is a fascinating history of her street - a real-life soap opera of life and death, love and grief, day-to-day life and, of course, murder - now finally published in her book, Dalrymple Crescent: A Snapshot of Victorian Edinburgh.

"I started off very gradually," she admits, "by just being interested in finding out more about my own house.

"It was then I realised my house had connections with other houses in the street."

Her search took her to the fateful Hunter family - first Samuel, who had built her own property at number nine and the two on either side of it, and then to his father, Robert, whose wife, Marion, and daughter, Elizabeth, would die such grim deaths outside the house he built, at number six.

She also discovered another brother, James, who built the house next door, at number five.

But if the family's presence in the street appeared content and ordinary to their Victorian neighbours, a sinister and dark presence was festering behind the door of number six.

Robert and Marion's son, John, at one time a promising sculptor, had been struck down with a mental illness in an age when professional support, care and considerate treatment were rarities. Perhaps meaning well by their son, Robert and Marion tried desperately to care for him at home, lavishing him with kindness and indulging his every wish.

Unknown to neighbours, for six long years John was kept at home. Until the fateful day he was never violent, instead described in reports at the time as "sad, depressed and studious, occasionally sullen in disposition", spending most of his time locked in the house reading Scripture passages.

But John's illness could not be cured by the love of his family alone. His mind unravelled and on that awful day in October, his uncut hair flowing down to his shoulders and, according to The Scotsman at the time "a rather excited look about his eyes", he snapped and lashed out at the two women who'd tried so hard to care for him.

The double murder caused reverberations throughout Dalrymple Crescent and well beyond. "I found a report of the murder in a newspaper in Brisbane, Australia," says Joanne. "It must have been reported around the world."

The murders brought tragedy to the doorsteps of the crescent's families, but Joanne's meticulous research - using census papers, birth, death and marriage certificates, valuation rolls and other long forgotten documents - revealed a myriad of life in that single street.

Among them were builders and professionals, medics - among them, ironically, one whom would go on to pioneer treatment of the mentally ill - and an educationalist whose brave visions would help mould the future of Edinburgh schools.

There were other sad events too, such as the heartache that befell chemist Robert Dick, who witnessed the death of his 18-month-old daughter, Johanna, from scarlatina, just three weeks after the birth of his son.

Sadly, his wife, Jane, would also lose her life to kidney failure just two days later, followed by the couple's newborn son another two days later.

"Then there appeared an advert in The Scotsman which he'd placed looking for an experienced servant to 'cook, wash and dress', obviously someone to take his wife's role at the house," says Joanne. "It's very sad."

Researching the book has, she adds, given her a new perspective on the Victorian street she's made her home.

"I do walk down the road now, thinking to myself 'that's where so and so lived'," she says.

"This has made me look at the street in a different way.

"It's as if the people who lived here's essence is still here. I don't always picture them in houses going about their Victorian business, I see them more as they might be now.

"I wish I could get a bit closer to them and know more about what they were thinking. I'd love to know more about their children and where they went to school, how they met husbands and wives and where they ended up."

She believes that while Dalrymple Crescent has its fair share of interesting characters and events, it's probably far from alone.

"My guess is there's probably a lot of streets in Edinburgh where you would find interesting people, maybe not people who are household names today, but who would have been known in their time," she says.

"Edinburgh is surrounded by these wonderful Victorian suburbs. I'm sure you could probably find similar stories in most of them."

Dalrymple Crescent: A Snapshot of Victorian Edinburgh by Joanne Lamb is published by www.dcedin.co.uk, priced 15.99.

EMINENT VICTORIANS

JOANNE Lamb discovered a fascinating mix of Victorians who made Dalrymple Crescent their home.

Among them was Sir John Sibbald, top, who rented number 16, who became Commissioner for Lunacy in Scotland and who helped pioneer the care and treatment of the mentally ill.

Donald MacKinnon, bottom, lived at number 14. A humble crofter's son from Colonsay, he worked with the first Edinburgh School Board, overseeing control of schools from churches to the state. He went on to become the first Professor of Celtic at Edinburgh University.

The book, which looks at residents who lived in the crescent's 27 houses during its first 40 years, covers more than 140 families. They include one of the crescent's first residents, William Gorrie, who moved into number one in the early 1860s when his clothing business appeared to be prospering. By 1869, however, he was bankrupt and planning to emigrate to Canada.

His home was then occupied by George Sibley Hicks, who brought shame to the house he shared with his uncle Wallace when he was arrested in 1883 after causing uproar at the Theatre Royal when, along with fellow students, he sang, shouted and threw gravel and peas on the heads of the people below.