Superintendent Barratt

DESCRIPTION: "O, Sherlock Holmes is deid lang syne In some forgotten garrett, But aa o youse hae heard the news O' Superintendant Barratt." Barratt comes north to seek the Stone, dislikes the weather, gives up, and goes home
AUTHOR: Words: Morris Blythman ("Thurso Berwick") (1919-1981) [Called "Maurice Blythman" by MacColl-PersonalChoice]
EARLIEST DATE: 1962 (MacColl-PersonalChoice)
KEYWORDS: humorous travel theft | Stone of Scone Sherlock Holmes
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Dec 25, 1950 - Four Scottish students break into Westminster Abbey and steal the Stone of Scone
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (2 citations):
MacColl-PersonalChoice, p. 15, "Superintendent Barratt" (1 text)
DT, BARRETT
NOTES [3961 words]: The tune of this is said to be "Barbara Allen." Pick your favorite version....
It is obviously not traditional; I'm not sure why MacColl included this in what is otherwise a book of traditional songs. Maybe he just wanted to poke John Bull about the seizure of the Stone of Scone -- "the Stone of Destiny," the rock on which Kings of Scotland were crowned, which was stolen at Christmas 1950. Some people still think the "official" stone was hidden away (Magnuson, pp. 679-680), but a stone that was accepted as the original was returned to Westminster in 1951 (OxfordCompanion, p. 842) after being placed in Arbroath Abbey wrapped in a Scottish flag, a symbolic protest since it was there that the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath declared Scotland independent of England (Keay/Keay, p. 847). Still, the first attempts to find the stolen Stone were unsuccessful, which would explain this song.
Hamish Henderson, in his essay "The Voice of the People," commented, "The 'reiving' of the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1950 inspired a host of celebratory songs. Most were ephemeral, but one -- Johnny McEvoy's 'The Wee Magic Stane' -- has survived to join the present-day corpus of Scots folk song." Maybe, but there appear to be no actual traditional collections of either song. The lyrics of "The Wee Magic Stane" are in the DT (file: WEESTANE) and on p. ix of Gerber. The tune is the omnipresent "Vilikins."
This song is another musical relic of the event. According to Henderson, p. 3, "Thurso Berwick" would later be involved in the 1961 protests against Polaris missile submarines that resulted most notably in the song "Ding Dong Dollar." The name presumably goes back to references to the distance "from Thurso to Berwick" -- the northernmost town in mainland Scotland to Berwick-on-Tweed, not the southernmost but the most noteworthy town actually on the English border. He was important enough to earn a Wikipedia entry. Ewan McVicar reports that "He got major poets of Scotland to write anonymously the 1951 Sangs O The Stane" about this event.
Lynch, p. 570, calls the Stone of Scone "a rectangular block of sandstone on which the early kings of Alba, later Scotland, were inaugurated.... Weighing 335 lb (152 kg) [a figure that seems to be a bit low], it is a plain, somewhat battered slab of pinkish sandstone which probably comes from the Lower Old Red Sandstone rocks of the Perth region. This suggests (although there is no specific evidence as such) that it may have been an item in royal ceremonies of the Pictish kingdom centered on Scone, and that it was taken over as a royal inaugural stone when Kenneth mac Alpin established his hegemony over the Picts in AD 843. The first firmly documented use of the Stone was in the inauguration of the boy king Alexander III (1249-1286) in 1249. But John of Fordun... stated that the seating of a king on the Stone was already an ancient ritual considered indispensable to kingly authority." There were other legends about it, but those were the facts.
Still, it must have been seen as important at the time, because Edward I, in his determination to take over Scotland, removed the Stone to England in 1296. John Balliol was the last Scottish king to be crowned upon the Stone. Thereafter, it was taken to Westminster and used to crown English monarchs. (At least, that's the historical account. Gerber, p, xi and elsewhere, implies that the stone that went to England was not the "real" Stone.) The Scots, of course, wanted it back.
Contrary to the implication of the song, the theft was not particularly smooth, although the pursuit certainly didn't set records for efficiency. "In the event, [the theft] only succeeded after a series of errors, narrow squeaks and almost unbelievable coincidences worthy of an Ealing comedy" (Magnusson, p. 675). Among other things, the robbers broke the stone, and were caught in the act by a policeman who was fooled into thinking two of the thieves were lovers making out (Magnusson, p. 676). And while this fellow Barratt may have been unable to find a clue, a certain Inspector Willie Kerr had interviewed the leading thief based on library records, so the investigation did involve some original thinking (Magnusson, pp. 678-679 -- though I suspect this was influenced by Hamilton, pp. 18-19, which dismisses Scotland Yard as incompetent but praises Kerr. Matheson, p. 16, also praised a detective called Calum Robertson, according to Gerber, p. 16, because he was able to talk to people in Gaelic and so didn't seem like he would be an English agent).
One of the thieves actually published a book about the event, cited here as Hamilton. It is immediately obvious just how radical he (and presumably his friends) were; even half a century later, his attitudes were pretty quixotic. What follows is summarized from Hamilton, with a few notes from other sources.
Ian Hamilton joined the R.A.F. as a teenager shortly before the end of World War II, but never made it into action. He left the service in 1948 and enrolled in Glasgow University (Hamilton, p. 8). It was there that he became acquainted with Bill Craig, who was then 26 (to Hamilton's 25; Hamilton, p. 14). Craig was the first to encourage Hamilton's crazy ideas (Hamilton, p. 15). Although he was not part of the team that stole the Stone, he would help bring it back to Scotland. Hamilton managed to cadge enough money from those around him to manage a trip to London to take a look at the Stone; he was able to determine that it was held into the Coronation Chair by a small lath that could easily be removed (Hamilton, pp. 21-23).
A little bit of basic mathematics might have stood them in good stead. The dimensions of the Stone were known: 26.75x16.73x10.75 inches (Hamilton, p. 23) -- in other words, about 4825 cubic inches. A quick check of a geology reference gives a density for sandstone of .085 pounds per square inch, making the weight of the block about 410 pounds. Apparently they were also told it was 400+ pounds (Hamilton, p. 29) -- yet Hamilton thought it would weigh about 300 pounds, saying, "we were later to discover to our cost that it was more than four [hundredweight]" (Hamilton, p. 23).
A man by the name of John MacCormick, who was associated with the Home Rule movement, agreed to finance the escapade (Hamilton, p. 25).
Fortunately for the raiders, there wasn't much security at Westminster (Hamilton, p. 25). They concocted an elaborate plan: have someone hide inside Westminster when it closed, have him open the doors, then have a group carry the stone to a waiting small car. Drive to where a larger car was waiting. Then have the small car (which they presumed the police would follow) head toward Wales while the other car headed toward Dartmoor to wait until it was safe to head for Scotland (Hamilton, p. 31). But Hamilton and Craig could not agree on a date for the raid (Hamilton, p 32). Hamilton was about ready to give up when a woman from the Highlands, Kay Matheson, joined the conspiracy and started forging the connections Hamilton didn't have the skills to create (Hamilton, p. 33. There is disagreement about her name. Hamilton's text calls her "Mathieson," but his photo insert says "Matheson," and so does Breeze/Munro, p. 30, and Gerber uses the name "Matheson" consistently. Since Hamilton didn't know her very well, I've gone with "Matheson"). According to Gerber, p. 3, Matheson found Hamilton "arrogant," but agreed to join the conspiracy anyway. (I suspect his arrogance was just his extraordinary degree of monomania.
Hamilton then started trying to find others who would work with him. He received several refusals before 24-year-old Gavin Vernon agreed to join the plot (Hamilton, p. 40). Hamilton thought that that was enough people, despite having a 400 pound rock to transport.
The car they rented was ancient and underpowered -- Hamilton, p. 42, says it had just eight horsepower! Luckily for them, Vernon (against Hamilton's wishes) approached another young man, Alan Stuart -- who, among other virtues, had access to a Ford Anglia, a much better car (Hamilton, pp. 43-44). So the conspiracy reached its final form. They set out for England shortly before Christmas, in conditions so icy that they sometimes went off the road (Hamilton, p. 46). After scouting the Abbey again, and realizing they had little money left, they decided to make their break-in on the night of December 23 (Hamilton, p. 51).
That first attempt failed. Hamilton managed to find a spot to hide when the Abbey was shut down, but soon after he came out, he was spotted and escorted off the grounds by a watchman -- which confronted him with the problem of finding his accomplices when he was in the wrong place! But he was lucky; the watchman merely made him leave; no other action was taken (Hamilton, pp. 54-57. Gerber, p. 5, has a useful plan of the Abbey making it easier to understand what happened).
Less fanatical people might have given in. They were so short on money that they slept in their cars despite the freezing weather (Hamilton, pp. 62-63), and Matheson became ill (Hamiltonp. p. 66). But they still decided to try again, this time breaking in from the outside (Hamilton, p. 67).
They scouted about, learned from an old archdeacon when the watchmen changed shifts (Hamilton, p. 69), and chose 2:00 a.m. for their break-in (Hamilton, p. 72). They managed to pry their way in, then went to fetch Matheson who was resting (Hamilton, p. 74). They did this so blatantly that the landlord where she was staying called the police; a detective started to question Hamilton, but they eventually got rid of him (Hamilton, pp. 75-77). They moved their car to the entrance they had prepared (Hamilton, p. 80), broke into the Abbey (Hamilton, p. 81), tore the front lath off the Coronation Chair (Hamilton, p. 82), pushed out the Stone, and dropped it on Hamilton's coat (Hamilton, p. 83). Or, at least, most of it landed on Hamilton's coat. A piece had come loose -- though, as Hamilton, p. 83, admitted, it was a lot easier to move it when it was in two pieces. They struggled to carry it out of the Abbey -- even as a policeman spotted the car (Hamilton, p. 85). To cover what they were up to, Hamilton and Matheson started pretending to make out (Hamilton, pp. 85-86), even as the other two were making a lot of noise hauling the Stone. The policeman lectured the two in the car a little about public misbehavior, and directed them elsewhere, but didn't take any other action or note their names or license numbers. They drove off, but didn't go far (Hamilton, p. 89). Because the Anglia had been seen, Matheson would have to try to hide, while the others went in the other car. Matheson drove off, only to have the smaller piece of the stone bounce out of the improperly-secured car. But she got it back in place and went her way (Hamilton, p. 91). Back Hamilton went to get the other car -- only to discover that he had lost the keys! But with the freakish luck that had followed the whole adventure, he found them in the abbey and managed to manhandle the main part of the stone stone into hiding (Hamilton, pp. 91-95). He then set off almost at random to find the other two men, but the car was so overloaded that they had had to leave Vernon behind (Hamilton, p. 97).
In all the confusion, they had left Hamilton's coat behind, which had his name in it (Hamilton, p. 98), but he managed to get it back (Hamilton, p. 102). They could not find Vernon, who thus was lost in London with little money and no friends. They called back to allies in Scotland to report their success and try to scrape up money for him (Hamilton, pp. 103-104). Later, news started to go out on the radio that the stone had been stolen (Hamilton, p. 104). Hamilton headed for Wales, but then decided to head back to Reading (Hamilton, p, 105). He and Stuart headed for London to retrieve the stone (Hamilton, p. 107) as the police started blocking the roads to Scotland (Hamilton, p. 106). In the short term, Hamilton and Stewart buried the stone in a wood in southeast England (Hamilton, pp. 110-113). They then headed for Scotland (Hamilton, p 117). They learned, from a phone call, that Vernon had made it home safely (Hamilton, p 118). The car was starting to go to pieces on them, but they had little choice but to keep on (Hamilton, p. 119). They were actually stopped by police north of Doncaster, but they bluffed their way through (Hamilton, pp. 120-121) -- they didn't have the Stone anyway.
Matheson, despite driving the car that the authorities had seen, made it to her home in Scotland before Hamilton and Stuart did (Hamilton, pp. 127-129), though she left her chunk of the Stone with her friend in Birmingham (Hamilton, p. 130; Gerber, p. 7, says that while Matheson was with her friend there, the Chief Constable of Birmingham paid a social visit -- but suspected nothing). Hamilton, Stuart, and Vernon (who had avoided reuniting with Hamilton and Stuart in England because he had thought he was being followed) went back to their homes and tried to establish alibis for the time they were in England (Hamilton, pp. 133-136). but a newspaperman was able to demonstrate that Hamilton had disappeared for days. He chose not to publish, however (Hamilton, pp. 135-137).
Hamilton from this time started spending his time with the political leaders of the separatist movement rather than the people who helped him with the theft. The political types drafted a manifesto to the British government (reprinted on pp. 144-146 of Hamilton), offering as proof that they were the real robbers a description of the watch Hamilton had lost. Hamilton describes the text as a sort of compromise: They wanted independence, but they didn't want it to reflect badly on King George VI, still popular for his role as a wartime monarch.
In example #3000 or so of how dimwitted this crew was, they didn't have access to a typewriter, so they had to hand-write the manifesto (Hamilton, p. 149). And they didn't understand the idea of press releases, so they planned to give it to the Earl of Mansfield (Hamilton, pp. 149-150) -- who refused to take it (Hamilton, p. 160). At least that gave them type to find a typewriter! (Hamilton, p. 162); this time, they gave it to the press. Hamilton also went home to his parents to talk them into giving him an alibi (Hamilton, pp. 151-153).
The English authorities, in their incompetence, actually dragged the Serpentine to try to find the Stone (Hamilton, p. 102; Gerber, p. 17, claims Scotland Yard hired a clairvoyant whose words set them searching the Thames). The stone-nappers then started planning to recover the stone from their hiding place (Hamilton, pp. 163-167). Hamilton and two others hoped to go without any of Hamilton's earlier companions, but since Hamilton was the only one of them who could drive, and they had no automobile anyway, they had to again pull in Alan Stuart -- and have him borrow a *second* car from his family, since their Ford Anglia was still in England (Hamilton, pp. 168-173). Once again they were ill-prepared and short on money, since an ice storm forced them to stop along the way and have chains put on their tires (Hamilton, p. 175). And the car had no convenient place to hide the stone (Hamilton, p. 176). And, after all that, when they got to the site, they found gypsies camping where they had hidden the stone (Hamilton, pp. 178-179). Hamilton, ironically, wondered if a "modern Sherlock Holmes" was using the gypsies as a trap (Hamilton, p. 181). Bill Craig managed to talk the Gypsies into letting them dig up their treasure (Hamilton, pp. 181-185). They managed to fit it into the car in a not-too-conspicuous way, though it meant removing a seat, and headed for Scotland (Hamilton, pp. 186-187). But they had to do something with the seat, meaning that one of the four had to head to Scotland by train, carrying a car seat with him. Yes, it got him some very odd looks, but taking a car seat on a train wasn't illegal (Hamilton, pp. 190-191).
Those still in the car eventually reached the border -- and, by pure luck, the policeman guarding the border at Longtown on the Esk stepped away, so they were able to cross un-inspected (Hamilton, pp. 193-194). After some discussion, they hid the stone with John Rollo an acquaintance of councilor Bertie Gray (Hamilton, pp. 197-199; Gerber, pp. 15-17). Hamilton then went to his home, wondering what to do next, only to have the police knock on his door (Hamilton, pp. 200-201). But he didn't have the Stone, so his alibi proved sufficient (Hamilton, p. 202). He was even able to take the train to Birmingham and recover the Ford Anglia and the piece of the stone in it (Hamilton, p. 202). That left only the problem of what to do with the thing. They hadn't figured that out when the police started to re-interrogate Hamilton, Maheson, and Co. (Hamilton, p. 205). Nothing much came of that. Finally, the stone-nabbers deposited it at Arbroath Abbey on April 11, 1951 (Hamilton, pp. 206-207; Breeze/Munro, p. 30).
There were apparently a number of rumors that the Stone was a fake, or a substitute (Gerber, p. 18-19). I strongly suspect that this was just some of the people involved trying to drive the English crazy. Hamilton, e.g., was sure that the Stone that was returned was the one he had stolen, and I see no reason to doubt it. It's harder to prove that the Stone taken to Westminster was the "real" Stone, but had I been a Scot in the thirteenth century, I wouldn't have dared try to fool Edward I; if he caught you at it, he definitely would make sure you knew his displeasure....
From Arbroath, the stone was quickly taken back to Westminster, sparking a debate about whether to return it to Scotland. It's possible it might have gone back, except that Parliament was slow, and before a decision could be made, King George VI was ill. No one was going to return it at the time a new monarch was about to be crowned (Breeze/Munro, pp. 30-31), so it remained at Westminster (despite another theft attempt in 1974; Breeze/Munro, p. 32) until the English finally decided in 1996 to let the Scots keep it most of the time.
The 1974 attempt shared several traits with the 1950 theft: The attempt was quixotic and the person involved had some loose screws. David Stewart, who was 24, tried to steal it on his own, coming up with tools and a sort of wagon to haul the stone away. Being built in the Hamilton mode of more intensity than intelligence, he forgot his tools when he started his attempt, but managed to retrieve them, sneak his way in, start breaking things, and set off alarms. He was apprehended before he could leave the building, imprisoned, and sentenced to pay £150 plus costs (Gerber, pp. 155-157).
The stone was formally returned to Scotland in 1996 (Lynch, p. 571), though the plan was to take it back to Westminster for future coronations of British sovereigns. The transfer was a political offering by a Conservative government that saw it was losing all support in Scotland. So they tried giving the Stone back to the Scots to appease them (Hamilton, p. 210. It didn't appease Hamilton, but then, he was obsessive to the point of irrationality and mild bigotry). It didn't work; the Conservative party was, and remains, almost entirely an English phenomenon. But perhaps the gesture by John Major's government helps explain why songs about the theft have faded away.
It almost sounds as if the official move, when it took place, was intended as a polite nose-thumbing at how slapdash Hamilton and Co. had been; the move was planned in great detail, and it took them five hours to remove the stone and place it in the cradle used to carry it to Edinburgh Castle (Breeze/Munro, pp. 34-35). It was perhaps a bit of an ill omen that the Royal who attended the process was the man then known as Prince Andrew (Gerber, p. 169) -- though I think that was almost inevitable; neither the Queen nor the future Charles III was suitable, since she had been and he would in future be crowned on the stone, and they could hardly send Prince Edward to return a stone appropriated by an earlier royal named Edward! Andrew at least had the most Scottish name of the royal family.
The robbers were not prosecuted; the government decided it was too much of a hot button issue (Hamilton, p. 208; Gerber, p 155, thinks it is because no one really knew who owned the stone. But this is bogus; theft does not consist in taking someone else's property; it consists in taking property not one's own). There were no reunions; Hanilton lived until 2022, and was around to see a movie made out of the exploit in 2008, also called "Stone of Destiny," but he had little to do with his comrades over those many decades.
None of my histories mention a "Superintendent Barratt" as being involved in the case. But searching the web, I found a brief obituary from Time Magazine, April 1, 1957: "Died. Tom Barratt, 59, Scotland Yard's chief superintendent and senior detective, who hunted down some of Britain's most shuddery murderers (including John Christie, who killed at least seven women and buried them around the house); of lung cancer; in London." So perhaps he wasn't incompetent. He was merely better at leaving no stone unturned than at turning up stones.
A book has been announced for publication in 2026, Nick Aitchison, Scotland's Stone of Destiny, which is supposed to be the first comprehensive history of the stone. But it had not yet been published when this entry was written.
Incidentally, it cannot be said with absolute certainty that Sherlock Holmes would have been dead in 1950, although the death of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1930 obviously meant that there were no more true Holmes stories, and the last Holmes story by internal chronology, "His Last Bow," is set in 1914. Doyle never gave an absolute date for Holmes's birth (and probably never decided on one), but "The speculations of scholars have placed this important event variously in the years 1852, 1853, 1854, 1855, 1857-58, and even in 1867" (AnnotatedHolmes, volume I, p. 47). The latter date is not really possible, since Holmes was an adult at the time of "A Study in Scarlet" in 1881, but a date in the mid- to late-1850s is reasonable and, indeed, almost necessary. The most explicit reference to his age is in "His Last Bow," which says that he was "a tall, gaunt man of sixty," which, since "His Last Bow" is dated 1914, makes his birth year 1854 plus or minus a few months (Bunson, p. 108). However, the statement of his age is made by a third party, so I think we should treat that as "sixty-ish," and merely say that Holmes was born in the 1850s.
There is no reference in any of Doyle's works to Holmes's death, which I suppose could be used as an argument that it was after 1930. In fact, Bunson, p. 112, quotes W. S. Baring-Gould's Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street as saying Holmes died on January 6, 1957. (Don't ask me where the date came from. Baring-Gould had strong folklore connections -- he was the co-editor of Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose, and the grandson of Sabine Baring-Gould -- but the "biography" is basically fiction and its arguments undocumented. His "explanation" is that Holmes discovered a trick of longevity in his bee researches.) In any case, it is at least possible Holmes could have still been around, although perhaps not of sound mind or capable of his old investigative behaviors, in 1950.
Ironically, there is a book, Richard T. Ryan, The Stone of Destiny: A Sherlock Holmes Adventure, which, according to publishers' descriptions, involves this plot: someone steals the stone and Holmes is charged with investigating. However, it is set at the end of the reign of Queen Victoria. - RBW
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