The Case of Kitty Ogilvie — Jean Stubbs

The marriage contract between Thomas Ogilvie, laird of East Mill, and Katherine Nairne, daughter of the late Sir Thomas Nairne, was signed at Glenkilry on 29 January 1765. As they penned their signatures-his a little cramped and ailing, hers dashing and careless-they might just as well have set their names to the foot of a death warrant.

The lively Kitty expressed herself dashingly on the marriage contract, but as a bride at East Mill her spirits soon fall. The family estate is dreary and her husband proves to be a hypochondriac father figure, incredibly innocent in affairs of the heart. A few months after the wedding she is in love with Thomas's attractive brother, Patrick. Only a few more months and Patrick is hanged for his alleged part in his brother's murder, and Kitty herself, tried and found guilty, nurses her illegitimate baby in jail.

In her convincing retelling of this real life tragedy, Jean Stubbs has re-created the atmosphere of eighteenth-century Scotland from the windswept moors to the Edinburgh taverns. She understands Kitty's desperation at finding herself virtually abandoned in remote and impoverished East Mill- a desperation that drove her to love, but not to murder. Just who did commit the murder, how, and why are but one aspect of this compelling tale.