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This article was written by Anna Bennett WS in 2012 and featured in a special issue of Signet Magazine commemorating the 60th anniversary of the donation of the Roughead Collection to the Signet Library.

The Commissioners’ Room in the Signet Library has an atmosphere all of its own. Its oak lined bookcases, open fireplace and view over the illuminated desks in the Advocates’ Library create a special sense of Scottish legal heritage. But it is the unique collection of books on the Commissioners’ Room shelves, donated by the late William Roughead WS, which weaves the most fascinating of personal histories. The WS Society’s “Roughead Collection” has international importance, for Roughead was a pioneer of modern crime literature, recognised across the world. May 2012 marks the 60th anniversary of his death.

Roughead’s entrance to the legal professional was quite traditional. After early studies at Edinburgh University he was an apprentice to T.S. Maclaren and William Traquair. He was admitted as a WS in July 1893.

That same year Roughead used family inheritance (his father owned an outfitter and draper’s shop on Princes Street) to set himself up as a lawyer in premises at 122 George Street, Edinburgh. Roughead’s independent wealth was pivotal to his future. Without the pressures of looking after clients and seeking out new work, he was able to devote his time to his true interest. Roughead was afforded the opportunity to begin on a new path, as a writer and editor of studies in crime.

There were early signs of this alternative career in 1889, when, at the age of 19, he skipped apprentice duties to attend the trial of Jessie King, the “baby farmer” of Stockbridge. For the next 60 years Roughead attended almost every murder trial of significance at the High Court of Justiciary. Essays by Roughead on these experiences were first published in the Juridical Review.

The essays and commentaries quickly evolved into wider studies of crime, which were printed in overlapping anthologies, each including the word “murder” in their title. In fact, Roughead regretted not using this reference in the title to his first book, which he simply called Twelve Scots Trials. He later expressed his disappointment:

I have always considered that my venture suffered in its baptism… of those three fateful words two at least were unhappily chosen. ‘Scots’ tended to arouse hereditary prejudice… ‘Trials’ suggested to the lay mind either the bloomless technicalities of law reports or the raw and ribald obscenities of the baser press… Had there been a ‘baker’s dozen’ the game would have been up indeed.

A lifetime’s work in literature followed, which gained Roughead the accolade of “recording angel of Scottish matters criminous”. His skill lay in his ability to convey the content of the criminal mind to the reader. His accounts of the dark and sinister intentions of the accused, who by all other appearances were ordinary people, represented a new way of commenting on murder and crime.

Roughead edited nine volumes in the Notable Scottish Trials series. His books allowed the entire case to be put before the reader, resulting in a feeling of being present in the courtroom as the proceedings took place. Roughead enjoyed a special relationship with court officials and staff. He had his own reserved place and desk in the High Court and consulted official records freely. His writing was thorough and detailed, but his were not books for lawyers, they were for everyone.

Roughead’s editions in the Notable Trials series included accounts of some of the most notorious criminal cases both old and new, including such household names as The Trial of Burke and Hare (1828), The Trial of Captain Porteous (1736) and The Trial of Deacon Brodie (1788). However, it is widely accepted that his greatest achievement was his analysis of the trial of Oscar Slater and his integral part in the appeal process, the topic of a separate article in this magazine.

Although his work always concerned crimes committed in Scotland, his appeal was much wider, crossing nations and continents. He had popular success in the US, where the American audience relished his dry sense of humour and inimitable style. President Franklin D Roosevelt kept a complete set of Roughead books in his personal collection, on a shelf outside the Oval Office. American culture was embracing pulp fiction, the new style of the detective novels by Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and James M Cain. Film noir was emerging and Roughead’s dramatic and engrossing accounts of pre-meditated crime fitted in well.

Roughead gained praise from his contemporaries and peers. His friend Henry James talked of his “witty scepticism, and a flair for old-fashioned storytelling and moralising” whilst Dorothy Sayers described him as “the best showman who ever stood before the door of the chamber of horrors”.

These comments perhaps do not portray the man behind the writing. He was described as “kindly”, even “cherubic” in an article which appears in the Sunday Post in December 1939. He had a retiring disposition and was sensitive to any reference to his baldness (pictured with a hat and glasses most often). In the Sunday Post interview he admitted:

I have a pretty soft heart and time and time again, when the judge has put on the black cap and the condemned man or woman has howled in terror, I have felt almost sick. I have sworn at these times I had never attend another trial. But well, something draws me back.

It is this human response coupled with his critical legal ability which makes Roughead’s writing so rich, influential and still relevant today.