The "Bogey Man" of St Andrews

One of the most colourful characters in 19th-century St Andrews has to be Dean of Guild William T. Linskill.  He was born in 1855, the son of Captain W.T. Linskill and the Hon.  Mrs Linskill, the daughter of Viscount Valentia, and was educated at Jesus College, Cambridge.


The young William Linskill came to St Andrews for holidays in his teens and was taught to lay golf by Young Tom Morris.  His enthusiasm for the game was such that he is credited as having introduced golf to Cambridge and founded the first golf club there.


Dean Linskill moved to St Andrews in 1877, two years after having been elected a member of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, and he was eventually elected Dean of Guild of St Andrews Town Council.


The Dean of Guild was a magistrate who had the authority and responsibility to supervise buildings within the town boundaries.  Dean Linskill had the romantic notion that a labyrinth of tunnels lay under the ancient town, possibly with treasure hidden in them.  He was overjoyed when he discovered a tunnel under the road near the Pends which led to the cathedral.

That this tunnel turned out to be the equivalent of a mediaeval monastic latrine did nothing to dissuade him from his conviction or to dampen his enthusiasm.  

Dean Linskill had a great sense of the dramatic, and he put this to good use producing  and acting in many plays and pantomimes in St Andrews, and he organised many concerts in aid of local charities.  His sense of the dramatic was also to the fore when he wrote two books concerning the supernatural in St Andrews, "The Haunted Tower" and "St Andrews Ghost Stories" some of which concerned established legends in the Royal Burgh, others springing from his fertile imagination.

Before I took over the persona of Alesoun Piersoun on the Original St Andrews Witches Tour I presented myself as Jessie Linskill, his wife.

Dean Linskill spent much of his time trying to discover ghosts but bewailed the fact that, try as much as he liked, he never did see one; a fact that never stopped him from telling a rattling good ghost story over a glass of whisky and a fat cigar. 

One story that he particularly enjoyed recounting was how he narrowly avoided  death on December 28th, 1879.  He was travelling from Edinburgh to St Andrews by train that night, and the cab which was supposed to meet him at Leuchars station and carry him to St Andrews was delayed because of the fierce storm that was raging.  Dean Linskill decided to carry on with the train to Dundee, but, just as the train was pulling out of the station, the stationmaster saw the cab arriving and called to the Dean.  Dean Linskill jumped out of the moving train, and, in doing so, saved his life.  The train he jumped from was the train which was lost into the icy waters of the River Tay when the central span of the first Tay Rail Bridge collapsed at 7.15 p.m..  None of the 75 passengers on the train survived.

Dean Linskill died on the 22nd of November 1929 leaving the town to regret the passing of a master storyteller.