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Record #16413
Name :
: William CUMMING (1899 - )


Father
:
Mother
:
BMD and other details
Date of Birth
: 9 Aug 1899

Marriage (1)
:
Marriage (2)
:

Date of Death
:
Abode (1) : Place of BirthScotland, Banff, Aberlour

27 High Street
Abode (2) : Place of Death / Burial
Sailing Information
Date of Arrival
: 31 Mar 1913
Country
: Canada

Ship
: Scotian

Placement Family
:
Homes / Agencys
Institution (GB)
: Quarriers Orphan Homes

Agency
: Quarriers
NotesA birth registration was found for Date: August 9, 1899, 12:45 A.M.; Place: 27 High Street, Abeslaur, Banff, Scotland; Parents: William Cumming, general labourer and Helen Simpson, married June 15, 1895, Cairney, Aberdeenshire, Scotland.

From the book "Adventurers & Exiles: The Great Scottish Exodus":

In the same area, four brothers from Cairnie, aged between on and eleven, were sent to Quarriers in 1911 after their father was sentenced to ten years imprisonment for the culpable homicide o fhis wife. At 2:30 am on 20 December 1910 William Cumming (eleven) and his mother had come home after searching fruitlesslly for the father, who had not returned from a trip to Huntly. On finding him in the house in a drunken state, a quarrel arose between the parents, and when William Cumming senior began to attack his wife, young William escaped with his brother George (nine), who had already suffered a head injury at the hands of his father. They boys ran to the police office in Huntly to get help, but by the time officers went to the household, it was too late:

A shudder swept the court when....Sergant Scott described his visit to the cottage. There on the floor lay the body of Mrs. Cumming. Near at hand lay a pair of tongs, a ladle, and a poker - all blood stained. On the bed, as soundly asleep as an innocent child, was William Cumming. Rousing the man the seized him, and soon the suspect was securely housed in the police station. Here his two little sons...were soundly asleep before the fire. "Cummings took no notice of them" concluded the sergant.

By the time the case came to court it had already been decided that the boys should be sent to Quarrier's not least because the parish council thought it was wise to remove them from the "gruesome associations" of their father's crime. William and George were sent to Canada in 1913, their younger brothers in 1921.

From ({website}mustrad.org.uk/articles/cumming.htm) The Ballad of Willie Cumming:

1. The Murder

The community of Huntly and district was shocked on Tuesday by news of a terrible domestic tragedy that had occurred in the early hours of the morning at a lonely cottage about three miles from the town, and the horror of the people grew as the details developed in sequence. The victim is Helen Simpson or Cumming, a woman of 33 years of age, and wife of William Cumming, labourer, residing at Inchtammack Cottage, who has been arrested on a charge of murder. Mrs Cumming, who was a native of the district, was found dead in the kitchen by the police, with her head battered in, and almost beyond recognition, there being ample evidence all round the apartment of a terrible struggle. Meantime, the husband was found asleep in the next room and, when charged, was perfectly calm, an quietly accompanied the police to Huntly, whence he was removed to Aberdeen later in the day, to be examined in chambers before the Sheriff.

The Huntly Express. 23rd December, 1910.

'Twas on December 20th,
The year was 1910,
Then Willie Cummin killed his wife
In Cairnie's lonely glen.

O Cummin, Willie Cummin,
You've proved a sad disgrace,
Wi the murderin o yer bonny wife
Afore yer bairnies' face.

O cruel and bloody was the fray
Between that man and wife.
The woman fought in self-defence
But lost her precious life.

So begins the ballad Willie Cumming, sung to the Gaelic tune Ho r? mo nighean donn bh?idheach by Jean Elvin, a housewife of Turriff, Aberdeenshire, to the collector Hamish Henderson in 1952.The recording is now housed in the School of Scottish Studies under their reference SA 1952/13 (B11). I am indebted to Dr Margaret Mackay for allowing me unlimited access to the School's Archive. The recording is also available on the CD Hamish Henderson Collects (Kyloe 107). I also wish to thank David Cato of Old Meldrum who, as Aberdeenshire Archivist, kindly supplied me with copies of The Huntly Express and other local newspapers.1

The Huntly Express article continued with details of what also happened to two of Willie and Helen's children.

First knowledge of the tragedy was conveyed to the police at Huntley about three o'clock in the morning by two of the boys of the family - William, aged eleven, and George, aged nine - who had escaped from the house, clad only in their shirts, and had run all the way to Huntly for assistance. It was a terrible ordeal for the boys, the younger of whom was suffering from severe wounds to the head. The tragedy is stated to be the outcome of jealousy, inflamed by drink.

Their twa wee bairnies, panic-struck,
To see their mither lie
Crept oot at a back windae
And for Huntly toon did fly.

Three miles they ran on muddy road
Withoot a hose or shee, [shoe]
Wi' nothing but their sarkies on, [shirts]
Heroic deed tae dee.

When at the Police Station
They tole their gruesome tale,
Nae winner though the lads were faint, [wonder]
And baith looked rather pale.

A Police-Sergeant Scott interviewed the 'mud-bespattered children' at Huntly Police Station, before quickly travelling to the Cumming household with an unnamed constable.

On arrival at the cottage, which is situated in a lonely spot, and flanked by the Drumdelgie Wood, at once proceeded inside, and no sooner had they opened the door than they realised that something untoward had happened. There was a large quantity of blood in the passage, and in the kitchen they found the body of the murdered woman, her head being under a table and her feet in the fireplace. It only required a cursory glance at the mutilated corpse to acquaint the police officers of what had happened and the cause of death. The spectacle that greeted their gaze was a shocking one, but it was obvious that they could do nothing for the unfortunate woman.

The police men they took the road
To Cairnie wi all speed,
But not to save the woman's life
For she was past remeid. [remedy/redress]

Proceeding to the bedroom, they found Cumming, fully dressed and besplattered with his wife's blood, asleep in bed. His slumber appeared to be quite natural and calm, and, on being roused, he offered no violence or opposition. The police at once took the man into custody, and he proceeded quietly with the officers to Huntly, where he was locked up and subsequently removed to Aberdeen.

O Cummin, Willie Cummin,
A clood o'er-shadows you: [cloud]
The brightest rays o' sunshine
Will never pierce it through.

T'will hover roon your bairnie's heids
Like mist afore a rain;
Think wretched man on your misdeeds
And her whom you have slain.

Willie, unlike his wife, was not native to Cairnie. He was born in Elgin, and had spent much of his early life in Dufftown and Aberlour before moving to Cairnie to seek work as a labourer. He met, and married, his wife about fifteen years before killing her, the couple living in the small cottage that had previously been the home of his wife's parents. At the time of the murder the Cummings' had four sons living with them (two other children having died young). Clearly the marriage was struggling and Willie had previously left his wife for a period of nine months. Shortly after his return he assaulted Helen, claiming that she had been unfaithful to him. He was sentenced to thirty days in prison.

Cumming was a heavy drinker and had been on a spree that commenced on the Thursday of the preceding week. On the Monday night he was in Huntly. He was acting violently and was overheard to complain about his wife's conduct. At midnight Cumming arrived outside the home of a Mr Thomson, a mole-catcher who lived close to the Cumming's home. Mr Thomson was awakened by Cumming singing outside his window. Invited inside, Cumming continued to sing before showing Thomson a number of presents that he had bought for his wife. These included a pair of shoes, a piece of cheese and a quantity of biscuits. Cumming then set off to his cottage. Helen, in the meantime, had been away from the cottage, looking for Willie with their eldest son, William. It seems that Willie was upset at Helen's absence and took his anger out on his three other children, then aged two, four and nine years respectively. George, the eldest of the trio, suffered the worst, receiving a number of deep cuts to the head. When Helen arrived home Willie killed her by striking her repeatedly with a pair of fire-tongs.

Murder, it has to be said, is often mundane. Willie and Helen Cumming had lived together in near poverty, struggling to find work and the money needed to raise their young family. The murder shocked the neighbourhood but seems to have been soon forgotten. Willie appeared at the Aberdeen High Court on Tuesday, 17th January, 1911, where he pleaded guilty to 'culpable homicide'. He was sentenced to ten years 'penal servitude'. His children were then being looked after by a Mrs Stewart of Bleachfield Street, Huntly.

It is now realised to the full how hard has been the lot of these little ones, reared in an atmosphere of perpetual poverty and misery, not unattended by privation and physical suffering.

And that seems to be that. There was no further mention of the murder in the local press and the Cumming's murder appears to have quickly been forgotten by people in the North-East of Scotland. But did it? Let's look at an aspect of the murder that failed to be mentioned in the press.

2. The Ballad

We do not know who composed the words to the ballad, although the text does show some similarity to accounts of the murder that appeared in local newspapers. Consider, for example, how the location of the Cumming's home - a lonely cottage - is echoed in line 4 of verse 1:

'Twas on December 20th,
The year was 1910,
Then Willie Cummin killed his wife
In Cairnie's lonely glen.

Verse 3 describes the fight between Willie and Helen:

O cruel and bloody was the fray
Between that man and wife.
The woman fought in self-defence
But lost her precious life.

This is similar to a description of events that also appeared in the Huntley Express:

Angry words ensued, and Cumming, seizing the tongs from the fireplace, proceeded, it is stated, to aim murderous blows at his wife's head. The woman, in desperation, seized a poker and a ladle, with which she attempted to protect herself from the onslaught of her now furious husband. A desperate struggle took place, and William, the oldest boy, tried to interpose on behalf of his mother. Ceasing the attack for the moment Cumming thrust the two older boys into the other apartment of the house, locking the door upon them. This accomplished, he renewed the attack and Mrs Cummings, realising that her husband had completely lost control of himself, screamed for assistance and made strenuous effort to ward off the murderous blows aimed at her. The state of the kitchen when entered by the police showed that the woman had offered strenuous resistance, and also that the assault had been of a most determined and brutal character.

Finally, note the similarity between the newspaper's account of the two children fleeing their home - clad only in their shirts - with that shown in verse 5 of the ballad:

Three miles they ran on muddy road
Withoot a hose or shee,
Wi' nothing but their sarkies on,
Heroic deed tae dee.

The ballad ends with two moralizing verses of a type frequently encountered in broadside ballads of this nature.

Jean Elvin told Hamish Henderson that she had learnt the song c.1941 from her elder sister, although she had no idea where the sister had first heard the song. This means that the song had only been around for some thirty years prior to Jean learning it.

Notes:

The recording is now housed in the School of Scottish Studies under their reference SA 1952/13 (B11). The recording is also available on the CD Hamish Henderson Collects (Kyloe 107. Issued 2005).

Mike Yates


In 1913, William Cumming, 13, arrived at Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, in a group of 94 Quarrier children en route to Brockville, Ontario, Canada.

On November 25, 1915, at Perth, Ontario, Canada, William Cumming, 18, enlisted in the Canadian Armed Forces. He declared that he was born in Aberdeen, Scotland; that his next of kin was his brother, George Cummings, c/o Thomas Acres, Esq., Carpt, Ontario; that his date of birth was August 9th, 1899; that he was a farmer and that he was not married. He was described as 5 foot 5 inches in height; fair complexion; blue eyes; black hair. He was a member of the Presbyterian faith. He had 1 vaccination mark on his left arm. 
ContributorsCreated : 2012-07-09 08:52:04 / From original database

Last Updated : 2012-07-10 17:07:35 /

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IDNameDOBPlace of birthArrivals & ShipsDest.AgencyFamily links
Page: [1] 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 881 Entries        
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