AT 7.40pm on an otherwise perfectly ordinary Sunday – May 11, 1958 – people began to form a queue outside the High Court in Glasgow. By midnight, there were six men and three women in the queue. Two of the women had come from Edinburgh. Their aim was to secure some of the best public seats at the trial of Peter Manuel, which was to begin the following morning.
Manuel was charged with the murder of eight people: Anne Kneilands, Marion Watt, Margaret Brown, Vivienne Watt, Isabelle Cooke, Peter Smart, Doris Smart and Michael Smart. Their ages ranged from 11 to 45. The murders had gripped all of Scotland.
The extent of press coverage in the trial was unprecedented in Scottish legal history. Seats had been reserved for 68 reporters, some of them from overseas.
At 10.36am Manuel, 31, took his seat in the dock behind a long bench that stretched across the court and on which lay a clutter of clothing to be used in evidence. It looked like, a Glasgow Herald reporter wrote, “the debris from an unsuccessful jumble-sale”.
Manuel pleaded not guilty, and a special defence of impeachment and alibi was now intimated on his behalf, though the declaration was robbed of its drama by poor courtroom acoustics. He accused Glasgow bakery owner William Watt of murdering his wife Marion, daughter Vivienne and sister-in-law Margaret Brown in September 1956.
Ten days after those murders, Mr Watt had been arrested and charged, but the charges were dropped and he was released on December 3.
Manuel, noted the Herald on that opening day, “looked composed and alert ... He made no movements to betray discomfort or self-consciousness, and only after sitting for over two-and-a-half hours did he begin to look restive, and ease himself from side to side upon the hard seat”.
The picture above shows police officers clearing the pavement outside the High Court on the first day of the trial; the main image shows spectators craning for a view of Mr Watt, later in the trial, as he left the building on crutches.
* Continues on Monday
Read more: Herald Diary
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