Lewis Hutchinson was hanged in the square at Spanish Town, Jamaica, on March 16, 1773. He was a Scottish settler, described as a doctor, who ran a remote estate called Edinburgh Castle in the hills of St Ann. In Jamaican tradition he is remembered as the man behind the disappearance of travelers on the road through the island's interior, and the Jamaica Gleaner has called him the island's first serial murderer. The court record, as the Gleaner describes it, is narrower. According to a 2002 Gleaner history feature by Rebecca Tortello, he was tried for one killing only: the shooting of John Callendar, a soldier who had come to arrest him.
The rest of his story comes down through later histories, local memory and the accounts of the enslaved people held on his estate. Two other men were convicted and sentenced to death in the same affair for the murders of two named victims. The number of people who died at Edinburgh Castle was not reported in any of the accounts, and the deaths of travelers were not tried against Hutchinson himself.
Hutchinson was born in Scotland in 1733, according to Tortello's feature. Tortello wrote that he may have studied medicine there.
He came to Jamaica in the 1760s, according to the Gleaner accounts. Paul H. Williams, writing in The Gleaner in 2024, reported an unnamed source's suggestion that he might have left Scotland after similar crimes there. No court record of any earlier crime was cited.
His neighbors accused him of building his herd from their cattle. Tortello wrote that most of his cattle were strays taken from neighboring properties.
The house stood in the Pedro district of St Ann, near the old road that ran from St Ann's Bay on the north coast across the island to the south. Tortello wrote that it was named by a Scottish architect. Williams placed it between Kellits, in Clarendon, and Claremont, in St Ann, near Bensonton.
The Gleaner accounts describe a two-story stone house with two round towers. Tortello wrote that it was the only inhabited place for miles on that road, which is how travelers came to stop there.
The estate was worked by enslaved Africans. Williams wrote that they feared him, and Tortello wrote that they told their own accounts of his abuse of them. Their accounts are the main source for what was said to have happened on the property, as Williams noted in 2024.
The accounts of the killings are traditions, not findings of a court. Tortello wrote that travelers began to vanish soon after Hutchinson arrived and that those who stopped at the house were killed regardless of their station. Williams wrote that he shot passers-by from the house and that he was reported to have entertained guests and then shot them as they left.
The bodies were said to have been put into a sinkhole on the property by enslaved workers, on his orders. The hole came to be called Hutchinson's Hole.
Rumors spread through the district, but nothing was done for years. Williams wrote that the authorities did not act for want of evidence, and that enslaved people could not testify against white colonists under the law of the time. In his words, the master of Edinburgh Castle "was untouchable, it seemed." People avoided the house as his reputation grew.
None of the accounts gives a name for any traveler who disappeared at the estate, and none gives a count. After his arrest, according to Williams, a search of the house turned up a large quantity of clothing and 43 watches. Tortello wrote that the clothing belonged to missing travelers.
One neighbor is named in the accounts. Jonathan Hutton, also a doctor, lived nearby. Tortello wrote that Hutchinson attacked him and that he survived. Williams, in 2024, wrote instead that Hutton was the second-to-last person Hutchinson killed. The accounts conflict, and neither gives a date for the attack. Hutton's case was not among the charges reported at the trial.
The end came when the authorities finally moved against him. A soldier came to the estate with a warrant for Hutchinson's arrest, and Hutchinson shot him dead. Tortello named the soldier as John Callendar. Williams wrote that the killing took place in front of other colonists, and that after it the authorities acted quickly.
Hutchinson fled toward Old Harbour, in St Catherine, leaving the estate and the enslaved people on it, according to Williams. He tried to get away by sea. The Royal Navy had been alerted, and he was taken by sailors from the ship of Admiral Rodney. Tortello wrote that he went over the side into the water and that his red hair, showing above the surface, gave him away. The House of Assembly thanked Rodney for the capture, according to Tortello.
Hutchinson was brought back to Spanish Town for trial. Tortello wrote that the testimony of the enslaved witnesses was judged to be hearsay, so he was tried only for the murder of John Callendar. He pleaded not guilty and was represented by a respected lawyer, but he was convicted. The accounts do not name the court, the judge or the lawyer, and they give no date for the trial.
The evidence, Tortello wrote, also exposed others. Two men, James Walker and Roger Maddix, were convicted and sentenced to death for the murders of William Lickley and Timothy Cronin. Neither victim is described in the accounts beyond his name. Cronin was strangled, and Hutchinson, Roger Maddix and three women were said to have watched his death. Cronin's watch and seal were later found in the possession of one of the women. She pleaded not guilty and was acquitted. The accounts do not say whether the other two women were charged, and they do not say whether Walker and Maddix were executed.
Tortello wrote that the trial records were kept at the National Archives, though she did not say which.
Hutchinson was hanged in the square at Spanish Town. Williams gave the date as March 16, 1773. Williams quoted the writer Olive Senior, in her Encyclopedia of Jamaican Heritage, as writing that "even as he went to the gallows he showed no remorse." Senior in turn quoted the Reverend G. W. Bridges, author of The Annals of Jamaica, as recording that Hutchinson left "one hundred pounds in gold to erect a monument."
He wrote his own epitaph, a rhyming couplet, and asked for it to be cut on a tombstone. The two Gleaner features print it slightly differently. Tortello gave it as "Their sentence, pride and malice, I defy. Despise their power, and like a Roman, die." Williams gave the second line as "Despite their power, and, like a Roman, died." The wish was not carried out, according to Tortello and Williams.
More than a century later the sinkhole was explored. Williams wrote that in 1895, 122 years after Hutchinson's death, the governor of Jamaica, Sir Henry Blake, and the superintendent of public works were lowered into it. They found "no human remains or material evidence," in the words of his article.
The house is now a ruin. Tortello wrote in 2002 that local residents still avoided it, believing that the ghosts of the dead walked there at night.
Most of what is said about Hutchinson was never tested in court.
The killings of travelers. They are attributed to him by tradition and by the enslaved people's accounts, but he was tried only for John Callendar's death. No number of victims was reported, and no traveler is named.
The search of the house. The 43 watches and the clothing are reported by Williams, and Tortello connects the clothing to missing travelers. The accounts do not say who made the search or whether the items were produced at trial.
Jonathan Hutton. Williams counts him among the dead; Tortello says he survived.
Earlier crimes in Scotland. Williams reported an unnamed source's suggestion that he left Scotland after similar crimes; no record was cited.
His medical training. He is called a doctor in every account, but Tortello wrote only that he may have studied medicine.
The sinkhole. The 1895 descent found no human remains, according to Williams.
Tortello set his story beside that of Anne Palmer, the "White Witch of Rose Hall," as part of the folklore of Jamaica's past. Williams, in 2024, described him as still regarded as Jamaica's first serial murderer.
1733: Born in Scotland (Tortello, 2002).
1760s: Arrives in Jamaica to run an estate in St Ann (Gleaner accounts).
1760s to early 1770s: Travelers stopping at or passing the estate are said to disappear; neighbors accuse him of taking their cattle.
Date not reported: Jonathan Hutton, a neighboring doctor, is attacked.
Before March 1773 (date not reported): Soldier John Callendar is shot dead while trying to arrest him.
Before March 1773: Flees to Old Harbour and is taken by sailors from Admiral Rodney's ship.
Before March 1773 (date not reported): Tried at Spanish Town for Callendar's murder and convicted. James Walker and Roger Maddix are convicted and sentenced to death for the murders of William Lickley and Timothy Cronin; a woman tried over Cronin's death is acquitted.
March 16, 1773: Hanged in the square at Spanish Town.
1895: Governor Sir Henry Blake and the superintendent of public works descend into the sinkhole and find no human remains.