The Stockbridge Baby Farmer by Molly Whittington-Egan

Author:Molly Whittington-Egan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781906476465
Publisher: Neil Wilson Publishing
Published: 2011-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

BRUTALITY

‘Tarzan’ was what they called James Keenan around the streets of Lanark in 1969. It must have been said ironically, because, although he went in for weight-lifting and was presumably strong and muscled, he was a small man, about five feet tall. One feels that his size was a formative element of his personality, as evidenced by his choice of a compensatory hobby. In his photograph, which is very striking, he does not look like a murderer, his face fine and thin, his eyes very dark, melancholy, a Chatterton one could have believed, without knowledge.

His relatives, as reported, all concurred on the harmony of his marriage. At the time of the tragedy, people who knew the couple seemed to be reluctant to speak out. Someone must have been aware that they were disagreeing over the upbringing of their child – if that, offered by Keenan, were the real source of trouble – and someone must have suspected that he had a short fuse. Not that anyone outside the vortex could have prevented the outcome. The crime was said to have been out of character but that is the nature of matrimonial murder! ‘The privacy of marriage is a shocking thing. We try to present our own, particularly if we are women, in a good light, or, if men, in no light at all. We struggle not to listen to the secrets of other people’s marriages. Thus marriages live in isolation, sometimes becoming, for want of compassion and criticism, more bizarre, more cruel, more wild or more eccentric, than any of us can possibly imagine.’ (In Hilary Bailey’s Mrs Mulvaney.) There does seem to be a measurable period of premeditation in fetching an axe and killing your wife with it. An argument over the correct way to bath the baby scarcely seems provocation for such a brutal murder.

The small family lived in a council house at 40 Wellwood Avenue, Lanark. Keenan was 35 years old, and his wife, Elizabeth, was 29. They had been married for some 11 years. Elizabeth had had to endure an ovarian operation in order to conceive a child. Having such a procedure in the 1960s must be an indication of how much the wife, and perhaps the husband, wanted a baby. A 14-month-old girl had not brought the happiness that had been expected. Her name was published at the time, but it is kinder not to perpetuate the sadness. James Keenan had not, of late, been doing very well: he had been out of work for several months, and he had been losing money on the horses. Finance was, therefore, another source of stress at home. He liked a drink, but was not an alcoholic.

He attacked his wife on the night of Wednesday, March 19th, 1969. Elizabeth was last seen alive at home that evening, when her brother had called to ask if James would mind running his wife to hospital the next morning, to have a minor operation, since he was unemployed. Who knows if this rankled, but James agreed, and the brother-in-law left at about 7.

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