Dr. Jekyll And Major Weir

By all accounts Major Thomas Weir and his sister Jean were lovely people if, perhaps, just a tad on the overly pious side. Born in 1599 he had a significant military record as Covenanting soldier and he was captain of the town guard until 1650. Devout Presbyterians, Weir was preacher at his local church and he and his sister lived on Edinburgh’s West Bow, a street full of so many devout Presbyterians that those who lived there were known as the “Bowhead Saints”. In fact, Weir was known as being one of the purest and most active in his community, which he was seen frequently patrolling, his ever present black thornwood staff in hand.

He lived to the ripe old age of 70, when, in 1670, he was executed. You see there was only one problem with Major Thomas Weir: he had been leading a double life as a warlock and serial pervert.

It seems that in 1670 Weir was apparently stricken with a “strange illness” and began to exhibit terror at the mention of the word “burn”. Not long after, he began to confess to a string of unspeakable crimes including fornication with numerous women, incest, and bestiality. Thinking he was insane, authorities had him examined by physicians who found that he was, actually, quite sane. Any doubts of his sincerity were dispelled when Jean came forward to testify that they had had an intermittent incestuous relationship for years, beginning when she was 10. His sister, Margaret, confirmed having caught them in the act in the 1620s. As well as his sister, Weir also had a relationship with his stepdaughter, Margaret Bourdoun.

Along with this were the accusations of bestiality and witchcraft. There was testimony to a rendezvous with a mare in 1651 as well as lying with “Cows and other beasts”. At Weir’s trial, which began on April 9, 1670, Jean told how his talent for witchcraft had been inherited from their mother. She also revealed that Thomas bore the mark of the devil on his body and that they frequently traipsed through the countryside in a fiery chariot, perhaps in search of additional four legged lovers. She also warned of Weir’s well known staff, with it’s carved satyr heads, saying it was the source of his power and a gift from Satan himself.

The court wasted no time in convicting Weir of witchcraft. On April 11 Weir, “not being able to travell for age, was dragg’d on a sled” to the Gallowlee, between Edinburgh and Leith, where he was strangled at the stake and then burnt. It is said that, when requested to utter the words “Lord be merciful to me,” he instead replied: “Let me alone, I will not. I have lived as a beast, and I must die as a beast.”

Major Thomas Weir was the last man executed for witchcraft in Scotland. As his body burned his staff was thrown into the fire. Witnesses said that it took an unusually long time to burn and made strange turning movements as it did.

Jean was convicted of incest and sorcery, to which she had confessed, and was hanged in the Grassmarket the day after, April 12. As she was being hanged she attempted to tear her clothes off so “she might die with all the shame she could.”

The tale of Major Weir has become the subject of numerous ghostly tales, tales that terrified one child, Robert Louis Stevenson, when it was told to him by his nanny. It has been theorized that Weir may have been the inspiration for Stevenson’s book The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. While the theory has some merit, the apparent critique of polite, Victorian society and its hidden perversions seems to undermine the idea of Weir being the sole source of inspiration. Certainly, though, one cannot dismiss all influence that the tales of “The Wizard of the West Bow” would have had on such an impressionable young mind.

Photo: Richard Mansfield, actor and producer who played the lead role in the first stage production of “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”.

Was A Scottish Warlock the Inspiration for Mr. Hyde? [The Victorian Peeper] : scotCLANS : Krown & Spellman