Sandyford Place, Sauchiehall Street was designed by Brown & Carrick (1842-1852)
John Carrick (1819-90) was Glasgow's first City architect and with Sir Charles Barry, assessed the entries in the competition for the design of the City Chambers in 1882.
On the 17 September 1862 in Glasgow, the trial began for the murder of Jess McPherson of 17 Sandyford Place Glasgow. The accused was Mrs Jessie McLachlan, age 28. She was a close friend of Jess McPherson and a former servant at 17 Sandyford Place.
It took the jury only 15 minutes to find Jessie McLachlan guilty and Judge Lord Deas pronounced the death penalty. Jessie McLachlan was sentenced to be hanged on 11 October 1862.
However, 50,000 Glaswegians signed a petition requesting a delay in the sentence being carried out until more investigations could be made.
So what made 12 Glasgow jurors lose no time in finding Jessie McLachlan guilty, and yet 50,000 of their fellow citizens disagreed? It was mainly due to conflicting evidence, evidence witheld, contradicting statements, and a strong belief by some quarters, including a newspaper, that someone else carried out this horrific murder.
At about 4am on the morning of Saturday 5 July 1862, 3 young ladies were returning home from a party and were walking along Sauchiehall Road, which is now Sauchiehall Street.
Sandyford Place runs alongside Sauchiehall Street and is entered by a side road now. The houses can clearly be seen from Sauchiehall Street.
At that time though, all that separated the houses at Sandyford Place from the then Sauchiehall Road was a row of trees and shrubberies.
As they passed number 17 Sandyford Place, they heard a terrible moaning sound which seemed to come from the basement of the house. Other people who were about that morning also heard the moaning, but no one dared venture towards Number 17 to find what was causing it.
The house belonged to the well respected accountant, John Fleming. His father lived there with the trustworthy servant, Jess McPherson.
On Monday 7 July 1862, John Fleming and his family returned from their holiday home in Dunoon and were greeted by Old Fleming at the door. John Fleming enquired where Jess was and Old Fleming said he hadn't seen her since Friday night.
When they went to Jess's room, the door was locked. Finding the spare key, John Fleming opened the door and found Jess McPherson's half naked body beside the bed. She had been brutally hacked about the head and blood was everywhere. Jess McPherson was only 35.
The police first arrested Old Fleming on suspicion of murder, but he was released after questioning. They then arrested Mr & Mrs McLachlan, but ruled out Mr Mclachlan, as he had just returned from sea, being a ship's mate.
In court, evidence was produced showing that bloodstained clothes belonging to Jess McPherson were found at Jessie McLachlan's house in Hamilton, and that Jess had pawned some silverware belonging to 17 Sandyford Place.
Many suspected that Old Fleming (who was either age 78 or 87, no one knows for sure) was to blame, but there was no evidence to that effect. Jessie McLachlan had stated that the victim had told her that he'd asked her to marry him, and had made advances on several occasions. Jessie McLachlan also made a statement that Old Fleming had committed the murder and that he had offered to pay her to keep silent.
But this was only revealed after Jessie McLachlan was sentenced to hang. Her agent read a statement out in court in which she had admitted she had gone to 17 Sandyford Place on the night of the murder (previously, she had denied she was there that night). When she went in the house, she found Jess McPherson badly injured but alive. She helped Old Fleming lay Jess on the bed, and had stayed up all night to comfort her. Jessie then stated that she left the room for a while and came back to find Old Fleming hacking away at Jess McPherson with a cleaver.
The Sheriff of Haddington held an official enquiry and the sentence was reduced. Jess McLachlan was sent to Perth Prison and served 15 years. Her husband, who had also been accused but then acquitted, went back to sea and never saw his wife again.
She was released from prison on 5 October 1877, and after a brief stay in Greenock, she and her son went to the United States of America, where she remarried.
Jess McLachlan died in Port Huron, Michigan in 1899.
In the Strathclyde Police Museum, Pitt Street Glasgow, there's a very strange piece of evidence relating to this case - a wooden plank found at the scene of the crime, with a footprint in blood.
That footprint belonged to Jessie McLachlan.
Derek Bond (1919-2006) the actor and trade unionist was born in that very house.
Here's The Guardian's obituary to Derek Bond..... CLICK HERE
No one saw the smartly dressed old lady walking along Sandyford Lane. It was daylight, so the old lady felt more comfortable even though the lane was quiet. It was Sunday, so the offices in the adjacent Sandyford Place were all closed.
She reached the backyard of Number 17 and quickly walked towards the steps leading to the back door, ignoring the graffiti plastered all over the side walls of the backyard.
Glancing around to see if anyone was looking, she removed her white gloves, put them in her handbag and then placed both her hands on the wall between the back door and the barred window. Closing her eyes, she felt the wall's vibrations travelling through her hands. The wall seemed to whisper to her, revealing the dark secrets it held within.
The whispers became more audible. "Tell me whit happened - I demand tae know!" she heard plainly. She saw swirling dark grey clouds through her closed eyelids and then they became moving pictures forming in her head. She saw a plank of wood, and the imprint of a lady's foot in blood.
The whispering wall was about to reveal more to her. She surrendered her conscious will and let the story unfold...
"Tell me whit happened - I demand tae know!", shouted Mrs Walker to the policeman guarding the back door.
Mrs Walker was standing at the bottom of the steps, angry at the policeman's refusal to let her enter number 17 Sandyford Place.
"You hiv nae right tae bar me from here. I am a friend of the family and a well-respected lady of this district. Let me speak tae Mr Fleming - or at least tell him that Mrs Walker is here tae offer any assistance."
Mr and Mrs Walker owned a grocery shop in Sandyford Lane. Mrs Walker had been looking out her window on Monday 7 July 1862 at 7pm, when she saw two uniformed policemen and two plain clothed men walk briskly down the lane. She sent one of the grocery boys down to find out what was happening, and he returned breathless to announce that there had been a terrible murder at the Fleming's house.
Mrs Walker had put on her shawl and quickly marched down the lane to number 17. Now she was waiting patiently for the policeman to come back to find out if she could enter.
She felt it her duty to help in any way she could - with the added bonus that she would have some really hot gossip to tell her fellow ladies group members who as it happened were meeting that night in her parlour. So the chances were that Mrs Walker would be able to tell her version of events with her usual dramatic style and poetic license, before the morning newspapers printed the story.
Her perseverance paid off and John Fleming came to the back door, walked down the steps and took Mrs Walker's arm, leading her away from the steps into the backyard.
"Before I tell you anything, you must agree no tae spread any rumours. Let the police dae their work and complete their investigation."
Mrs Walker solemnly swore that she would not divulge to a living soul, as God was her judge, anything that John Fleming said to her today. At that moment in time, even she believed she would keep that promise.
Clearly upset, John Fleming sighed deeply and in a quiet voice, almost in a whisper, he related the events of the afternoon to Mrs Walker.
"We had just come back from Dunoon, and had stopped off at my office to do some work. As it was raining, we took a hansom and arrived home about an hour ago. My faither answered the door just as I turned the key in the lock.
We got in the house and I asked where Jess was. Faither said he didnae know, he thought she was oot. And he thought the last time he saw her was Friday. We went to her room which was locked. Faither got a spare key and we opened the door."
John Fleming paused, and sighed deeply. Mrs Walker curbed her impatience and waited.
"We found Jess laying in a pool of blood, half naked."
Mrs Walker gasped and staggered back, genuinely overcome with emotion. John Fleming grabbed her before she had a chance to fall, and the policeman guarding the back door came over and assisted him as he guided Mrs Walker to an old wooden chair at the corner of the wall.
"I canny believe it!", she cried, genuine tears filling her eyes, "I was just talking to her on Friday there. I just canny believe it!".
Mrs Walker sat with John Fleming for half an hour in the backyard of Number 17. The police finally left and she was allowed in. She lost no time in asking questions, and she immediately interrogated Old Fleming, John Fleming's father.
She suspected Old Fleming had something to to with it. Jess had often mentioned that he was smitten with her and had asked her to marry him. Jess and Mrs Walker had laughed at this. Jess could always be relied upon as a source of gossip, and like most storytellers, emblished them somewhat, before Mrs Walker added her own trimmings.
Old Fleming refused to answer any more questions from Mrs Walker, saying that she was not a policeman and to mind her own business. But still Mrs Walker pressed him for more information, until finally John Fleming suggested that she leave, as she was clearly causing his father some distress.
Mrs Walker was not to set foot in that house again until after the Flemings moved out. The following weeks brought more revelations in the newspapers about the murder of Jess McPherson, and Mrs Walker was shocked to learn that Jessie McLachan would be charged with her murder. She knew Jessie too, but they were only on nodding terms. Mrs Walker was very particular with whom she classed as her friends. Jess McPherson had been accepted in her group early on, because she was willing to tell tell tales about her masters in Sandyford Place.
The newspapers printed more revelations, and told of the damning evidence that police found Jess McPherson's bloodstained clothes at Jessie's house - and the most incriminatiog evidence of all - the footprint of blood imprinted on a plank of wood in Jess McPherson's room.
For years, Mrs Walker often thought of Jess when she passed Number 17 Sandyford Place. Without fail, a chill would run down her spine every time she looked at the front door. Even when she was invited in by the new occupants (presumably they had heard that Mrs Walker was an 'expert' regarding the murder), she always shivered. The very walls seem to have soaked up the fear and then the terror that Jess McPherson must have felt that fatal morning in 1862.
.....The old lady removed her hands from the wall. The oak door that she saw was now being replaced by the modern black door, as she slowly came back to the present time. But still the image of the plank of wood, and its footprint in blood was before her. She waited a few moments, until it too faded away.
Walking down the back door steps, she passed the walls of graffiti and back into Sandyford Lane.
As always, it took some time before the old lady could shake off the visions that she had just witnessed. She still felt a sense of foreboding, even as she was walking down Sauchiehall Street towards Charing Cross.
Soon though, her full attention was on negotiating the traffic heading towards the M8 motorway and she carefully continued her journey along the other side of Sauchiehall Street. Settling done, she began to enjoy her walk, and the visions witnessed at Number 17 Sandyford Place were cosigned to her long-term memory.
Finally, the modern day Glasgow washed away any residual feelings of dread. Just like any other old lady, she enjoyed the Sunday afternoon sun as she mingled with the shoppers.