WE not only drank a toast to Robert Gordon at the weekend but wrapped
up a corner of my childhood which included a strange and haunting
episode. As the nostalgia flowed, the name of Betty Hadden kept flashing
before me, as reminder of a grisly murder which has lain unsolved for 50
years and for which I might have had a vital clue.
But I kept pushing her out of mind for this was the night of Robert
Gordon, the Aberdeen merchant who made his fortune in Danzig nearly 300
years ago and returned as the great benefactor of education in the
North-east.
He opened a haven for poor boys who, in the local dialect, took on the
name of Sillerton Loons, after an estate of the Gordon family.
That first building, still the proud focal point of Robert Gordon's
College in the heart of Aberdeen today, was soon commandeered by
Cumberland as a billet for his troops on the way to and from Culloden in
1746.
But once they had cleared the stench of the objectionable fellow the
school resumed its true purpose and became one of the great institutes
of education, now including Robert Gordon University.
The day-school remained the continuing link with the founder himself
and, in time, the demand from Aberdonians abroad to send their boys home
to be educated led to the opening of a boarding house in 1937.
Appropriately, it was called Sillerton House, an impressive
grey-granite building at Queen's Cross. So, two centuries after Robert
Gordon, there was a new race of Sillerton Loons, the sons of men who had
pursued tea in Assam, rubber in Malaya, jute in Calcutta.
Within that mixture of expatriates there was room for country loons
like myself, for whom the daily journey to Aberdeen was too far. And
that was how I became a Sillerton Loon in the middle of the Second World
War, exchanging the brose of the countryside for the greater
sophistication of the city.
The overlord of Sillerton was the imposing George E C Barton, who
opened the doors as housemaster in 1937 and proceeded to give the bulk
of his career to that task. I'm not sure they make men like George
Barton any more.
But with the changing needs of society, Sillerton House has outlived
its day and will close this summer, which explained our farewell toast
of Friday night.
Just as there were 13 boys in Robert Gordon's original venture, George
Barton too had begun with 13 Sillerton Loons in 1937. Fittingly, there
were 13 of us there -- his ''vintage boys'' as he called us -- to salute
him on Friday.
Now 85, he stood erect as ever and recalled the vision of the 1930s.
The memories flooded back and for me there was no escaping that late
autumn Saturday of 1945 when a friend and I accepted our pocket money
from Mr Barton and headed down Albyn Place for the Odeon Cinema.
At Holburn Junction we were beckoned by a sailor who asked if we would
deliver a letter to a certain house, wait to see if there was a reply
and bring it back to this doorway.
By skipping the pictures we could earn a couple of bob instead of
spending it. Yes, we would do it.
The street, in the Froghall district, turned out to be as much of a
slum as Aberdeen possessed. Gingerly we climbed the stair and knocked on
a door which opened to reveal a scene of post-war revelry. Sleaze might
be a better description.
As I revealed in my autobiography, drunken Servicemen lolled in chairs
with women on their knees, exposing legs and thighs and goodness knows
what. We were innocents at large.
A brittle woman took the note inside but returned to say there was no
reply. We duly reported at the appointed hour to the sailor, whose dark,
distinctive features I can see to this day.
It all seemed of no significance until a short time later when a man
strolling by the foreshore came across a sight which sent him scurrying
to the nearest phone-box. He had found a human arm, crudely sawn off,
with the fingers arched as if scratching at a killer.
There had been screams in the night but nobody paid any attention. The
arm belonged to 17-year-old Betty Hadden, whose mother Kate was a
well-known name in Aberdeen. Betty had been seen in the city's
Castlegate the night before. She had been seen with sailors . . . her
close friends lived in Froghall . . . and the police were looking for a
youth who had been known to carry a message to her.
Sailors were eventually traced to the ends of the earth and, trying to
recall the name on the envelope, my friend and I felt we might have been
able to help the police with a description.
But we were already in trouble academically and any brush with a
murder investigation would have been a short-cut to expulsion. We kept
our secret and I was many years into journalism before explaining it to
the head of the Aberdeen CID.
Whether or not we had a vital clue to the murderer of Betty Hadden we
shall never know. It was just an intriguing thought which was bound to
filter through the social haze of Friday night.
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