Warning! This story contains narrative about cruelty to an animal! Read a your discretion.
Andrew Dollochan was a miner, residing in Birdsfield Model Lodging-House, Burnbank, Hamilton. He was somebody the police often had their eye on and one day in August 1919, they absolutely WERE observing him!
Andrew was observed mistreating a cat in Springwells and roughly taking it on to the derelict Blantyre Golf Course (where now the Springwells Housing Estate is).
At the time, the open field could be seen from Glasgow Road and the Police move in on him to see what he was doing. Upon arriving at the scene, they were horrified to see that Andrew was performing some sort of open operation on the cat, out in the open and the animal was sadly paralysed and bleeding badly, having to be put down.
He admitted a cruelty charge in court pleading he had been “mad with liquor”. The Hon. Sheriff-Substitute Stodart sent Andrew Dollochan to prison for sixty days with hard labour. Upon looking into this sad story, I was at least satisfied that even 100 years ago, the law gave out prison sentences for being cruel to animals.
