In 1881, Paisley man James Rennie was blind drunk at Barassie Junction defiantly walking on the tracks when he was flattened by the 1030 express to Ayr. When the train moved off him the stationmaster picked him up and found him to be completely unharmed.
Ardrossan and Saltcoats Herald. 9th July 1881. pg. 5.
In November 1810, Alexander Gillan was hanged for the rape and murder of Elspet Lamb. The judge ordered his body be hung in chains at the site of the murder on Spynie Muir, near Hill of Garmouth. He was the last person to be gibbeted in Scotland.
The judge declared that Gillan’s body would hang “until the fowls of the air pick the flesh of your body and your bones bleach and whiten in the winds of Heaven!”
It’s noteworthy also that the second to last gibbeting was 31 years previously in 1779. Scotland had given up hanging corpses in chains but special exception was made for Gillan.
Gillan’s body was cut down and buried fairly quickly, unlike David Edwards, who was hanged in Ayr in 1758. His body was gibbeted for so long (at least 20 years) that it became part of the landscape and made it onto maps!
The first iron vessel to “sail” on the Firth of Clyde was a soap boiler ordered by an Ayr man named Bonaparte in 1813. It wouldn’t fit down the vennel off High Street to his shop (where Poundland is now), so took a bet to “sail” it up the R. Ayr from the Clyde.
In 1935, someone in Ayr bought a horse from Alloway but had no way to collect it. The seller in Alloway stuck a label on the horse and handed it into the Post Office who duly “carried” it to Ayr. The postage cost one shilling.
