Dundee’s police force was just 30 years old when an officer was slain in the line of duty.
A brutal mob ambushed Constables Ewan McDonald and William Wright as they dealt with a routine disturbance on Arbroath Road.
That summer night in 1854 ended with McDonald dead and Wright so sickened he quit the force.
The pair, together with a lamplighter called Aitken, were trying to get a drunk couple to go home when a wild group of rowdies from Cowgate attacked them.
The officers drew their batons and some ploughmen on their way home took sides with the police. During a fierce and prolonged battle, McDonald was stabbed and fell to the ground.
As Wright and Aitken ran to his assistance, the ploughmen kept the mob at bay.
McDonald was carried to a house where it became clear he was dying. He had been stabbed in the chest with a small sharp-pointed weapon like a heckle pin and he was suffering from internal bleeding.
His colleagues managed to take McDonald home but he died a few hours later.
The killer was never identified but convictions were obtained against several of the rioters.
Wright was so affected by the stabbing he quit the force he had joined in 1848 to work for a brewery.
He did return to policing in 1875 and served for another 20 years, retiring in 1895 aged 71. He was certainly the oldest police officer in Dundee and perhaps the whole of Scotland when he retired.
He had seen some horrors, including the cholera outbreak of 1832.
Wright was born in Forfar in 1824 but the family moved to Dundee when he was five. Their home was in the Joint Stock Building near Wellgate, which was devastated by cholera.
Wright recalled watching cart loads of bodies being emptied into trenches at the south side of the
Howff.
After a spell as a labourer on the Dundee to Arbroath rail construction project he sold water from barrels drawn from wells on farms around the city.