Bio

Jeannie Donald was born on July 8, 1895.

She lived in Aberdeen, Scotland, and by the 1930s she and her family occupied a ground-floor flat at 61 Urquhart Street. The building was a tenement divided into small flats.

Jeannie married Alexander Donald, who worked as a barber. They had a daughter, also called Jeannie. Jeannie Donald was a housewife who spent her days on household chores and caring for her daughter.

Murder Story

On 20–21 April 1934 eight-year-old Helen Priestly left her home in Urquhart Street, Aberdeen, to buy a loaf of bread and did not return. Her body was found early the next morning in a blue hessian sack under the stairs of the tenement where she lived. The cause of death was recorded as asphyxiation, and further tests showed the child had been injured to make it appear she had been sexually assaulted.

Police traced the sack to flour bags with a Canadian export mark and a local baker remembered giving such sacks to a customer. Neighbors were questioned and attention fell on the Donald family, who were known to be on bad terms with the Priestlys. Jeannie Donald’s daughter said the bread in the Donald home was the same type Helen usually bought. Human hairs found in the sack were matched to Jeannie Donald, and other tests linked fibres, coal-ash and bacterial growth to the Donald household. Mr Donald was soon released because he had witnesses for his whereabouts.

Jeannie Donald was arrested and taken to trial at Edinburgh on 16 July 1934. Pathologists told the court that some injuries had been made to look like a sexual assault, and evidence presented included the hair and household matches and testimony from Jeannie Donald’s daughter about the loaf. Jeannie Donald did not give evidence in her own defense.

The jury found her guilty after a short deliberation. She was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. She was released on 24 June 1944 after receiving compassionate leave to care for her dying husband, and she was allowed to remain free after his death. Jeannie Donald was born on 8 July 1895 and died in 1976. She never explained how or why Helen Priestly was killed.