Thomas Hunter was the tutor to the two sons of Mr. Gordon, an Edinburgh merchant and baillie. Before dinner, he was accustomed to lead them out into the fields for a walk; their sister generally accompanied them. The chapter written by Camden Pelham recounts how an excursion of this ordinary nature culminated in a double murder. This retrospective narrative traces the origin of the crime to a thirst for vengeance conceived within the very household wherein Hunter had been charged with the children's instruction.
According to this work, the tutor was the son of a substantial farmer in the county of Fife. Having studied at the University of St. Andrews, he attained the degree of Master of Arts and subsequently applied himself to divinity. His studies completed, he entered Mr. Gordon’s service as domestic chaplain, and the education of the two boys, aged eight and ten years, was committed to his care. He lodged with the family, which comprised the parents, the three children, a housemaid, and several domestics. His office afforded him daily access to the two pupils; it was likewise his duty to conduct them beyond the house. Pelham lays stress upon the contrast between this office of chaplain, devoted to religious instruction, and the crime that was to bring Hunter to the gibbet. From the opening passages, he holds up the condemned tutor as an example of moral degradation; the affair is thus related both as an atrocious murder and as a terrible contradiction between religious profession and actual conduct.
Pelham attributes the birth of Hunter’s malice to the discovery of an intrigue between him and the housemaid. One day, the pair had retired to the tutor’s chamber without securing the door. The children entered and saw enough to excite their childish wonder; at table, their artless remarks convinced their parents. The young woman was forthwith dismissed. Hunter, whom Pelham describes as having been theretofore mild and engaging in his manners, retained his position after offering humble apologies and making such reparation as lay within his power. It was following upon this very indulgence, the author affirms, that he harboured his design of vengeance against the children. Pelham gives no direct voice to the boys: it is he who connects the discovery of the intrigue with the murderous design.
Upon the appointed day, the parents received an invitation to dine in Edinburgh. Mrs. Gordon wished to take all the children with them; her husband objected, and their daughter alone accompanied them. The two boys remained at the seat near the city, under Hunter’s charge. On this occasion, the habitual walk lacked the complete company that customarily attended it. Though his design of murdering the young girl as well was thereby frustrated, Pelham writes that Hunter persisted in his purpose against the two sons of his benefactor.
They walked into the fields and presently sat down to rest. The boys strayed a short distance off to catch butterflies and gather the wild flowers that grew in profusion around them. Hunter then made ready a pocket-knife. Calling them back, he upbraided them for having disclosed to their parents what they had witnessed, and declared that he would take their lives. Seized with terror, they fled; he pursued and overtook them. Pelham relates that he threw one of the boys down and placed his knee upon the child's breast. He first murdered the brother of the child thus pinned to the earth by severing his throat with the knife; he then despatched the boy he already held in his power. The author does not describe this final act.
The scene was enacted in broad daylight, within less than half a mile of Edinburgh. A gentleman walking upon the Castle Hill observed what was passing and ran toward the children, raising the alarm that the murderer might be apprehended. Hunter then made toward the river, intending, according to Pelham, to drown himself. He was prevented, seized, and placed under close custody; the tidings were carried to the parents. Thus was broken the routine that had permitted the tutor to remain alone with the boys: a passer-by had witnessed the assault, and his outcry prevented Hunter from perishing in the water.
The chapter passes swiftly from the arrest to the trial. Pelham cites an ancient Scottish statute under which a murderer apprehended with the blood of his victim upon his apparel was to be prosecuted before the sheriff's court and executed within three days. He writes that a jury was empanelled and that Hunter pleaded guilty. To this plea he attaches a remark concerning the sister: the prisoner is said to have declared his regret that Miss Gordon had escaped his vengeance. In Pelham’s construction, these words confirm the original design of slaughtering all three children. The judicial proceedings, however, are compressed into a few lines: neither depositions nor pleadings are reproduced.
The sheriff pronounced sentence of death. Pelham details the terms: the culprit's right hand was to be struck off, he was then to be drawn up to the gallows by a rope, and his body hung in chains between Edinburgh and Leith; the knife was to be thrust through the severed hand, which was to be raised above his head and affixed to the gibbet. He states that the sentence was carried into full execution on the 22nd of August, 1700, near the scene of the murder. He further records that upon mounting the scaffold, Hunter uttered a defiance of the Almighty: “There is no God—or if there be, I hold him in defiance.” This utterance brings to a close the biographer's moral portrait, underlining the contrast between the man who had taught the Gospel and the condemned felon whom he presents as an atheist.
The body remained exposed for some time pursuant to the terms of the sentence. At the intercession of Mr. Gordon, it was subsequently taken down and conveyed to the environs of the village of Broughton, near Edinburgh. The chapter opened with the education entrusted to Hunter and the credit accorded him by his patron; it closes upon the public aftermath of his condemnation. In the interval, the walk of the two boys, the eye of a distant passer-by, and the plea recorded by Pelham form the thread of the narrative. The conviction and its date are clearly set down; the motive and the legal particulars remain the assertions of a later chronicler, delivering a moral tale rather than the recorded documents of a court of law.
Documentary Note: Camden Pelham, The Chronicles of Crime; or, The New Newgate Calendar, Vol. I, London, T. Miles & Co., 1887, chapter “The Rev. Thomas Hunter. Executed for the Murder of His Pupils”; prefatory notice dated July 1, 1840. Transcription confined to the chapter, from its title to the removal of the body to Broughton. A secondary and retrospective account: the motive, the trial, the cited Scottish statute, and the dying words are attributed to Pelham; no contemporary court records are reproduced in this passage.