Daily Archives: 7 June, 2011

1811: George Watson, the last horse thief hanged in Scotland

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Earlier this year, a gentleman named John Nelson made the news for a 150-mile horse ride in Scotland — tracing the route his great-great-great-grandfather had taken in 1811 on a legendarily Javert-like pursuit of a horse thief.

“I didn’t expect to see you, Knockburnie” a surprised George Watson is supposed to have said to that relentless ancestor, naming place where farmer John Kerr had given the itinerant tinker shelter.

“I didn’t expect you would steal my horse,” Kerr replied.

He’d had a full week in the saddle to think of the right action-hero one-liner for this moment, ever since spontaneously setting out in pursuit of the absconded equine on the morning of the theft.

On this date in 1811 at Ayr, said George Watson paid with his neck for abusing the hospitality of such an implacable victim. He was the last man executed for horse theft in Scotland.

The stolen mare came home with its rightful owner, and an appropriate new name: Tinker.

(The date of the hanging is provided here, and in this broadside catalogue of Scottish executions.)

On this day..