The Royal Celtic Society was privileged to welcome Professor Dame Sue Black as the guest speaker at our annual Spring Lunch at the New Club in Edinburgh.
Currently Pro Vice Chancellor at the University of Lancaster, Dame Sue found fame as the high profile Professor of Forensic Anthropology at the University of Dundee, and as leader of the United Nations War Crimes Tribulal investigation into the Bosnian genocide.
Her talk was titled Ancient Scottish Mysteries through a Modern Forensic Lens. She looked at five famous deaths, beginning with ‘Rosemarkie Man’, the almost complete remains of a young man from the first century, found on the Black Isle. She then investigated the murder of Lord Darnley, looking at the depiction of his death to draw some startling conclusions, including the suggestion that Mary, Queen of Scots may have been the intended victim.
She went on to discuss the ‘Appin Murder’ of Colin Campbell of Glenure, the ‘Red Fox’, immortalised by Robert Louis Stevenson in his novel, Kidnapped, before looking at the case of the ‘Old Fox’, the mysterious headless body in the Lovat family crypt, which was thought might be (but wasn’t) the body of the Old Fox himself, the beheaded Lord Lovat of Jacobite fame.
She finished with the case of William Henry Bury, hanged in Dundee for the murder of his wife, who is believed by many to be Jack the Ripper, a theory first expounded by Royal Celtic Society member Euan Macpherson in his book, The Trial of Jack the Ripper.
We are grateful to Dame Sue for a fascinating afternoon.