The mad murderer of Edinburgh Castle

JAMAICA HAS had many serial killers, some committing heinous acts, for which they were never found to be charged. There were those who paid for their dastardly acts, sometimes by way of the hangman’s noose. Lewis Hutchinson was one of them, but he was not just an ordinary murderer. He was demented, driving fear into the heart of man, woman and child.

Hutchinson was said to be a middle-age Scottish doctor who arrived in Jamaica in the 1760s. At a place (near the district of Bensonton) between Kellits in Clarendon and Claremont in St Ann he built a two-storey stone mansion, which the locals called Edinburgh Castle, and which had two circular towers, giving him a panoramic view of the hilly landscape.

It was his fortress, and he kept enslaved Africans who themselves were afraid of him. They had reasons to. You see, Hutchinson had a hobby that was as murderous as murderous is. From a vantage point, when the evil that lurked within his brain was too strong for him to control, he would kill a passerby with a single bullet.

It has also been said that Hutchinson would invite some people to his space, wined and dined with them. After he wished them farewell and sent them on their way, he would shoot them as they depart. His victims would lie until night came. And that’s when his terrified chattels would take them to the back of the property, and cast them down a sinkhole, an underground geological feature, which can be very deep, or bottomless. Sinkholes are connected to other subterranean features.

Hutchinson’s neighbours found him to be quite unpleasant, and they spread rumours about what was going on in his castle. But the authorities, not even on a whim, did any investigations, for lack of evidence, and enslaved people could not give evidence in court against colonisers. Yet, people were disappearing randomly. The mad doctor of Edinburgh Castle was untouchable, it seemed.

The second to last person that Hutchinson killed, Dr Jonathan Hutton, was to be the beginning of the end for the doctor who appeared to kill people for fun, as if they were game. Dr Hutton lived near Hutchinson’s castle, and when a soldier arrived with a warrant to arrest Hutchinson, Hutchinson killed him too, right in front of some other colonists.

It was only then that the authorities acted swiftly, but Hutchinson was several steps ahead of them. He fled the castle, abandoning his chattels, and headed towards Old Harbour in St Catherine. His attempt to board a ship was thwarted, for the navy was alerted. Sailors from Lord Rodney’s ship arrested him and brought him back to face the consequence of his wicked deeds.

Where was he going, and why did he come here? One source says he came to manage an estate, and that he would steal livestock from neighbouring estates. Also, he might have been on the run from Scotland where he had committed similar crimes. The long arm of the law eventually grabbed him, and on March 16, 1773 he was hanged in Spanish Town. When the castle was searched several pieces of clothes were found, likewise 43 watches. Hutchinson apparently stripped his victims before disposing of them.

In her book, Encyclopedia of Jamaican Heritage, Olive Senior writes, “Even as he went to the gallows he showed no remorse, as the Rev’d G. W. Bridges recorded in his Annals of Jamaica , ‘nor can the annals of human depravity equal the fact that, at the foot of the scaffold, he left one hundred pounds in gold to erect a monument, and to inscribe the marble with a record of his death.’”

He even wrote his own epitaph: “Their sentence, pride, and malice, I defy; Despite their power, and, like a Roman, died.” Who were “their”, and what has inspired his unspeakable bitterness towards them? And, despite his wealth, Lewis Hutchinson’s wishes were never honoured.

Edinburgh Castle has long fallen into ruins; only the sinkhole could tell the true extent of Hutchinson’s crime. Most of what people learned about his preoccupation with killing was told by the abandoned people.

Senior writes that in 1895, 122 years after Hutchinson’s death, Sir Henry Blake, governor of Jamaica, along with the superintendent of public works, was lowered to the bottom of Hutchinson’s sinkhole. No human remains or material evidence was uncovered, yet in the annals of Jamaica’s history, Lewis Hutchinson is regarded as Jamaica’s first serial murderer.