FEW today realise that historic Irvine was founded on only one side of the River Irvine.

Everything on the west side of the river was not only part of a different settlement but was originally situated in a completely different parish and controlled by a separate system of seemingly bendable laws.

Indeed, all the land on the west side of the river (with the possible exception of the harbour) was likely a veritable no-man’s land of gangs, frustrated teams of colliers, rioters, fugitives and lawless banditry!

In the words of the 1835 Local Report of the Commissioners (presented to “both houses of Parliament by command of His Majesty”), the “whole property” of the Ancient Royal Burgh of Irvine “lies within the parish of Irvine”.

With “no burgage tenures on the west side of the river” any and all legal jurisdiction was previously “considered to be confined to the old royalty” (meaning Irvine).

The poorly maintained burgh of Fullarton on the other hand had a completely “separate jurisdiction of its own”.

Given this legal duality, Fullarton had no magistrate to implement and enforce the law. In contrast to the burgh of Irvine, which was in 1835 said to be “comparatively prosperous”, the burgh of Fullarton was unlit, had no recognisable legal system and no powers to “impose any police assessment; and in consequence it is neither lighted nor watched, and the streets are in a state of great disrepair. This inconvenience is severely felt in Irvine, as Fullarton is situated in a direct line between the burgh and the harbour, and is on that account a great thoroughfare”.

Just as one can temporarily evade legal interception in the USA by merely crossing a border into another state, criminals from Irvine (and probably Kilwinning) regularly escaped into Fullarton to exploit the non-existent police presence and unlit streets.

In the 1838 parliamentary inspectors report into “the different prisons of Great Britain” we find a veritable cornucopia of crimes recorded in the burghs of Kilwinning and Irvine. The so-called “good old days” are certainly tarnished by the large number of petty (and occasionally unwholesome) crimes recorded in the burgh in the first half of the 19th century. In Irvine alone … there “appears to be a good deal of crime […], particularly crime of a petty kind. The most common offences are thefts (such as robbing, shops, gardens, fields, etc), fighting, assaults, and poaching.” The report also observes that Irvine, just 30 years previously, had been host to many unsavoury instances of “highway robbery, house-breaking, child-murder, and sheep-stealing, which are said to have been rather common”.

Kilwinning, in 1838, also had the reputation of being a “lawless place”.

“Kilwinning has the reputation, and I believe, to a considerable extent, deservedly, of being a lawless place. Breaches of the peace and petty robberies are of constant occurrence.” Like Fullarton, Kilwinning lacked adequate police protection and law enforcement. There was, in the words of the prison report of 1838, a “pressing want for a police in this town”. There was only one officer “of any kind” but he was “not bound to act, except when he receives particular instructions from the sheriff or one of the procurators fiscal”.

Even so, this lone ranger quickly admitted that “it is of no use for him to attempt to interfere when there is a riot because he is not supported”. In Kilwinning, the 1838 report found that “few offences of any kind are followed by apprehension and punishment”.

On the other hand, though Irvine’s jail was at times quite overcrowded, the overall conditions were a credit to the town’s management of crime and criminals.

Though the prisoners were “generally huddled together”, prisoners were “allowed access to the court room during the day”, and – with the exception of bed bugs - the conditions in the jail were dry and “moderately clean”. Much to this writer’s surprise, “corporal punishment [was] never employed”.

On the other hand, criminal statistics from the 19th century are highly detailed and thick on the ground: “…there are about 40 men and boys in Irvine who are thieves, and that there are about 30 girls who are thieves and prostitutes. Many of these offenders are members of one or other of seven families.

Besides these and other resident offenders, there are often large parties of colliers from the neighbourhood, who commit assaults and otherwise disturb the peace.” Perhaps these collier gangs hooked up with those from Kilwinning, where “a considerable portion of the population consists of colliers”. Indeed, as the report of 1838 indicates, Kilwinning’s “formidable bands” of colliers “sometimes go to the neighbouring town of Irvine, apparently, for the sole object of creating a disturbance” though it seems Irvine was eventually able to tackle the problem head on.

“The respectable part of the inhabitants of that town having enrolled themselves into a regular constabulary force, the colliers are now always mastered.” Pesky colliers.

Perhaps Fullarton, easily accessed via the bridge, was also a place of sanctuary for the colliers of Kilwinning as well as the “delinquents” of Irvine. The 1835 Local Report observes that offenders “in order to evade the civil authorities in the one place, have merely to pass into the other”.

The easy access of fleeing fugitives into the separate, poorly lit, un-policed burgh of Fullarton to the west of the river “render[ed] their apprehension more troublesome, and enabl[ed] them sometimes to escape”.

Ah, the good old days! If only we could go back in time and relive the mayhem.