The 10 murderers buried under a Scottish Government car park in Edinburgh

The very ordinary car park for the Scottish capital’s civil servants belies a darker history of this corner of Edinburgh.

Under part of the car park of St Andrew’s House lie the bodies of ten murderers executed at the old Calton Jail, which was demolished to make way for the key centre for Scottish Government business.

Calton Jail was pulled down from 1930, but for more than 100 years had been the setting for the executions of the capital’s worst offenders, with large crowds gathering to witness the convicted heading, with a white cap on their head, to the scaffold.

Among those buried below St Andrew’s House are a Frenchman and teacher who killed his wife using gas – and probably opium hidden in an orange – an Edinburgh ‘baby farmer’ who killed several unwanted children in her care and two poachers who killed a gamekeeper.

The old Calton Jail - described as one of the worst in Scotland given the harshness of conditions within its walls - was demolished in 1930 with prisoners instead being housed in Saughton. PIC: CC.

Eugene Chantrelle, born in Nantes in France, was convicted in 1878 for the murder of his wife Elizabeth, whom he met when she was 15 and a pupil at Newington Academy. Within the marriage was a pattern of beatings, threats and alcohol, with the trial of Chantrelle stirring sensation in the capital given the crimes committed by the outwardly respectable gentlemen.

Indeed, it has been reported that Chantrelle was the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The writer allegedly once met the teacher who took out a life insurance policy for £1,000 against the accidental death of his wife shortly before she was found dead in her bedroom, with opium on her nightgown and a smell of gas in the air, on an early January morning.

Newspaper reports detailed large public interest in the case, with crowds gathering at both the High Court for proceedings and then Calton Prison for his execution. An article on July 8 details Chantrelle’s final hours at Calton Jail.

St Andrew's House was built on the site of the jail with a graveyard of prisoners lying beneath its west car park. PIC: CC.

The report said: “He slept well from one till five o’clock and ate a hearty breakfast. After service by the chaplain of the prison, Mr Wilson asked Chantrelle if he had anything to say. He replied in the negative, walked with trim step and calm demeanor to the scaffold where he also behaved in a composed manner. Marwood drew the bolt.”

The report said Chantrelle’s last wish that he see his children before his death was rejected by his family.

Lying close to Chantrelle underneath the car park is Jessie King, the last woman hanged in Edinburgh. She was executed on March 11, 1889 after being found guilty of killing children in her care, with the charges stirring widespread public revulsion. She was arrested after a baby was found in a bundle in a Stockbridge street.

Eugene Chantrelle (left) is one of the 10 bodies buried under the car park at St Andrew's House in Edinburgh. which was built on the former site of Calton Prison. He was executed following the murder of his wife Elizabeth (right), who he killed by poisoning with gas or opium - or both. PIC: CC.

However, King also had her supporters, with a petition of more than 1,700 signatures seeking to win her a reprieve by claiming she was wrongly influenced to make a confession. She was considered to be of ‘weak mind’ and prone to periods of ‘hysteria and melancholia’. With the pleas ultimately rejected, public hangman James Berry recalled he had never seen anyone “behave so bravely” on the scaffold as King.

She was hanged holding a crucifix and her body buried in the shadows of Calton Jail with the Rites of the Catholic Church – she was visited three times a day by Canon Donlevy, the administrator for St Mary’s – in a “rough coffin and covered with quicklime”.

James Berry became well known across the country for his work as a public hangman, carrying out a total of 134 executions. His career began at Carlton Jail in 1884 and his first case was William Inness and Robert Vickers, two miners of Gorebridge who shot and killed a gamekeeper after being caught poaching on the Earl of Rosebery’s estate.

The pair also lie in graves under the government car park. They were hanged on March 31, 1884, with their deaths attracting a large number of spectators. From 6am,a crowd began to assemble on Calton Hil, with “its summit and terraces were fringed with men and women eagerly scanning the jail and its precincts", according to accounts.

The exercise yard at Calton Jail. PIC.CC

Others lying under the St Andrew’s House complex include Patrick Higgins, a labourer from Linlithgow who murdered his two sons and threw them into a quarry on October 2, 1913, and John Henry Savage who had quarrelled with a woman in a house in Bridge Street, Leith and cut her throat on June 11, 1923.

Philip Murray, the last person to face the hangman's drop on October 30, 1923 is also buried there. He pushed a man out of a top floor window of his flat in Jamaica Street after finding him in his wife’s bedroom

Cells from the jail survived for some years as part of the basement of St Andrew's House, with the door to “death cell”, where prisoners waited before their final calling – sometimes with nuns, priests and ministers – found in the Beehive pub in the Grassmarket.

Conditions at Calton Prison left a long imprint on inmates, with Willie Gallacher, who was imprisoned in Calton for sedition during World War One, writing of the place: “It was by far the worst prison in Scotland; cold, silent and repellent. Its discipline was extremely harsh, and the diet atrocious.

"The one hour's exercise in the morning was the sole opportunity we had of seeing each other, when desperate attempts were made to exchange a whisper or two. For breakfast, we had thick porridge and sour milk. For dinner, soup and a piece of dry bread. And for supper, thick porridge and sour milk.”

His fellow anti-war inmates included James Maxton and Arthur Woodburn, who described it as 'the poorhouse of all prisons with the cold chill of a grim fortress".

For Eugene Chantrelle, Jessie King and the others under the car park, they were not to leave alive.