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1912: A true life tale of a woman murdered in Dundee in 1912 – a genuine unsolved murder stranger than fiction itself…
The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne
What you need to know before your trail
In the small and genteel town of Broughty Ferry in Dundee, Jean Milne lives a quiet and reclusive kind of life. Living in a mansion, the unmarried woman lives a life that not many are privy to. She has even retreated from the main house in many ways and spends time in the apartment in the grounds. A place you would think would be safe, what with the huge wall surrounding it.
Her murder therefore is all the more shocking for the severity of it and the fact that no one really understood why this small, quiet and unremarkable lady should be murdered in this way. Who killed her and why?
Police start investigating and slowly but surely the secret life and curious death of Miss Jean Milne start to unravel….
Travel Guide
A small town in Dundee is thrust into the spotlight with a trip back in time to see where one of the most iconic and infamous murders of 1912 took place, a murder which remains unsolved to this day.
Welcome to Broughty Ferry
Broughty Ferry The Jewel in Dundee’s Crown” according to the tourist website, is beautiful town on the banks of the Firth, some four miles outside of Dundee itself. Known as the seaside resort, it ironically has both a secret life as the Jean Milne of the title – Broughty Ferry was the home of Dundee’s textile bosses, a thriving fishing industry and a castle. A place for relation and to lead a nice quiet life, so Jean Milne thought.
“Broughty Ferry has more millionaires in it than any other square mile on God’s green Earth. They fled here from Dundee, that sink if iniquity and depravity, to breathe deep of our clean sea breeze.”
The brutal murder is shocking and then the investigation begins into just who Jean was and what kind of life she really did have. The investigation lead by Detective-Lieutenant John Trench is painstakingly recreated and facts and fiction mingle in the small town with the big secrets. Sergeant John Fraser , the first man on the scene narrates most of the events.
Broughty Ferry has a small town mindset and so finds it hard to have all the attention that such a murder brings. The rivalry between the local police and the Dundee forces show how little things have changed from that time. The gossip and scandal are very real. Sgt Fraser comments that soon the news and grief ‘would be flying through every street in the Ferry’!
Broughty Ferry is a spotlight on a small community with a big scandal at its heart. And the secret life of Miss Jean Milne is a journey into its dark side.
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