Alexander Spence Guild

The remains of Alexander Spence Guild were found in a barn on Saturday 21 November 1903 at Liberton Towers Farm in Liberton.

All that was left was his skeleton.

The remains were found by an employee at the farm whilst he was conveying straw from a large straw shed. It was said that when he removed his fork from the dark corner of the shed that a bundle was disclosed which upon inspection he found to be the skeleton of a man with a grinning skull that leered at him through the gloom. It was said that it gave him such a fright that he dropped his fork and took to his heels and ran off.

When he recovered his wits he told a man who then sent for the police at Liberton Police Office.

When a constable arrived he and some other men uncovered the skeleton, which was that of a full grown man, and removed it on an ambulance barrow to the mortuary at Liberton.

It was said that some tattered rags still clung to the bones but that the rats, which the shed was infested with, had left little else and that every particle of flesh had gone. It was said that even some papers that had evidently fallen from his pockets had been partly eaten away, but the remnants were carefully gathered together by the constable and upon examination proved to be the army discharge papers of Alexander Guild, a trooper of the Utrecht Division of the Vryheid Mounted Police, a Glasgow Infirmary ticket and a letter from Lord Roberts.

The letter from Lord Roberts, which was brief, dealt with some matters to which the context gave little clue and referred Alexander Guild to the Colonial Office for further information as the subject did not come within the jurisdiction of the War Office. The letter was dated about 18 months earlier and it was surmised that it had some reference to back pay which Alexander Guild had been unable to recover.

It was later determined that Alexander Guild appeared to be a native of Dundee and had served in the Vryheid Mounted Police, receiving his discharge in 1901. He had been in weak health and after spending all the money that he had brought back from South Africa, it appeared that he had tramped about the country, including Edinburgh and Glasgow and it was thought that he might have wandered into the shed where he was found for a night's lodgings and died there.

It was thought that he had been buried in the straw for at least ten months.

Nothing is known about the inquest findings.