Dunblane massacre

The Dunblane massacre took place at Dunblane Primary School in Dunblane, near Stirling, Scotland, on 13 March 1996, when 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton killed 16 pupils and one teacher and injured 15 others before killing himself. It remains the deadliest mass shooting in British history.

Following the killings, public debate centred on gun control laws, including public petitions for a ban on private ownership of handguns and an official inquiry, which produced the 1996 Cullen Report.

The incident led to a public campaign, known as the Snowdrop Petition, which helped bring about legislation, specifically two new Firearms Acts, which prohibited the private ownership of most handguns in Great Britain. The UK Government instituted a buyback programme which provided compensation to licensed owners.

Shooting

At about 8:15 a.m. on 13 March 1996, Thomas Hamilton, aged 43, was seen scraping ice off his van outside his home at Kent Road in Stirling. He left soon afterwards and drove about five miles (eight kilometres) north to Dunblane. Hamilton arrived on the grounds of Dunblane Primary School at around 9:30 a.m. and parked his van near a telegraph pole in the car park of the school. He cut the telephone cables at the bottom of the telegraph pole which served nearby houses, before making his way across the car park towards the school buildings.

Hamilton headed towards the north-west side of the school to a door near the toilets and the school gymnasium. After entering, he made his way to the gymnasium armed with four legally-held handguns—two 9mm Browning HP pistols and two Smith & Wesson M19 .357 Magnum revolvers. Hamilton was also carrying 743 ammunition cartridges, consisting of 501 9 mm cartridges and 242 .357 Magnum cartridges. In the gym was a class of 28 Primary 1 pupils preparing for a P.E. lesson in the presence of three adult members of staff.

Before entering the gymnasium, it is believed Hamilton fired two shots into the stage of the assembly hall and the girls' toilet.

Hamilton started shooting rapidly and randomly. He shot P.E. teacher Eileen Harrild who was injured in her arms and chest as she attempted to protect herself and continued shooting into the gym. Harrild stumbled into the open-plan store cupboard at the side of the gym along with several injured children. Gwen Mayor, the teacher of the Primary 1 class, was shot and killed instantly. The other adult present, Mary Blake, a supervisory assistant, was shot in the head and both legs but also managed to make her way to the store cupboard with several of the children in front of her.

From entering the gymnasium and walking a few steps, Hamilton fired 29 shots with one of the pistols, killed one child, and injured several others. Four injured children had taken shelter in the store cupboard along with the injured Harrild and Blake. Hamilton then moved up the east side of the gym, firing six shots as he walked, and then fired eight shots towards the opposite end of the gym. He then went towards the centre of the gym, firing 16 shots at point-blank range at a group of children who had been incapacitated by his earlier shots.

A Primary 7 pupil who was walking along the west side of the gymnasium exterior at the time heard loud bangs and screams and looked inside. Hamilton shot in his direction and the pupil was injured by flying glass before running away. From this position, Hamilton fired 24 shots in various directions. He fired shots towards a window next to the fire exit at the southeast end of the gym, possibly at an adult who was walking across the playground, and then fired four more shots in the same direction after opening the fire exit door. Hamilton then exited the gym briefly through the fire exit, firing another four shots towards the cloakroom of the library, striking and injuring Grace Tweddle, another member of staff at the school.

In the mobile classroom closest to the fire exit where Hamilton was standing, Catherine Gordon saw him firing shots and instructed her Primary 7 class to get down onto the floor before Hamilton fired nine bullets into the classroom, striking books and equipment. One bullet passed through a chair where a child had been sitting seconds before. Hamilton then re-entered the gym, dropped the pistol he was using, and took out one of the two revolvers.

He put the barrel of the gun in his mouth, pointed it upwards, and pulled the trigger, killing himself. A total of 32 people sustained gunshot wounds inflicted by Hamilton over a 3–4 minute period, 16 of whom were fatally wounded in the gymnasium, including Gwen Mayor and 15 of her pupils. One other child died en route to hospital.

The first call to the police was made at 9:41 a.m. by the headmaster of the school Ronald Taylor, who had been alerted by assistant headmistress Agnes Awlson to the possibility of a gunman on the school premises. Awlson had told Taylor that she had heard screaming inside the gymnasium and had seen what she thought to be cartridges on the ground, and Taylor had been aware of loud noises which he assumed to have been from builders on site that he had not been informed of. As he was on his way to the gym, the shooting ended and when he saw what had happened he ran back to his office and told deputy headmistress Fiona Eadington to call for ambulances, a call which was made at 9:43 a.m.

The first ambulance arrived on the scene at 9:57 a.m. in response to the call made at 9:43 a.m. Another medical team from Dunblane Health Centre arrived at 10:04 a.m. which included doctors and a nurse, who were involved in the initial resuscitation of the injured. Medical teams from the health centres in Doune and Callander arrived shortly after. The accident and emergency department at Stirling Royal Infirmary had also been informed of a major incident involving multiple casualties at 9:48 a.m. and the first of several medical teams from the hospital arrived at 10:15 a.m. Another medical team from the Falkirk and District Royal Infirmary arrived at 10:35 a.m.

By about 11:10 a.m., all of the injured had been taken to Stirling Royal Infirmary for medical treatment. Upon examination, several of the patients were transferred to the District Royal Infirmary in Falkirk and some to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow.

The shooter fired 106 shots in total during the massacre, including the suicide shot. 105 were fired by one of his Browning pistols, and the final shot was fired with one of his Smith & Wesson revolvers. Out of the twenty-five 20-round 9mm magazines that the shooter brought to the school, four were empty and three were partially empty.

Perpetrator

Thomas Watt Hamilton was born as Thomas Watt Jr. on 10 May 1952 in Glasgow, the son of Thomas Watt Sr., a bus driver, and Agnes Graham Hamilton, a hotel chambermaid. When Hamilton was 18 months old, his father abandoned the family for another woman, after which his parents divorced and his father had no contact with him thereafter. Thomas' maternal grandparents, James and Catherine Hamilton, raised Thomas as their son, legally adopting him and changing his name to Thomas Watt Hamilton. The family relocated to Stirling when Hamilton was a young boy. He was made to believe that his maternal grandparents were his actual parents, and that his mother was his older sister. Hamilton's grandparents told Thomas the truth when he was around 22 years old, which reportedly had a lasting psychological impact on him. He began working in youth organisations. As the head of several youth clubs, Hamilton had been the subject of several complaints to police regarding inappropriate behaviour towards young boys, including claims that he had taken photographs of semi-naked boys without parental consent. He had briefly been a Scout leader – in July 1973 at age 21, he had been appointed assistant leader with the 4th/6th Stirling troop of the Scout Association. Later that year, he was seconded as leader to the 24th Stirlingshire troop, which was being revived. Several complaints were made about Hamilton's leadership, including complaints about Scouts being forced to sleep in close proximity to him inside his van during hill-walking expeditions. Within months, on 13 May 1974, Hamilton's Scout Warrant was withdrawn, with the County Commissioner stating that he was "suspicious of his moral intentions towards boys". He was blacklisted by the Association and thwarted in a later attempt he made to become a Scout leader in Clackmannanshire.

Hamilton claimed in letters that local rumours regarding his behaviour towards young boys had led to the failure of his business in 1993, and that, in the last months of his life, he had complained that his attempts to organise a boys' club were subjected to persecution by local police and the Scout movement. Among those he complained to were Queen Elizabeth II and his local Member of Parliament (MP), Michael Forsyth (Conservative). In the 1980s, another MP, George Robertson (Labour), who lived in Dunblane, had complained to Forsyth about Hamilton's local boys' club, which his son had attended. On the day after the massacre, Robertson spoke of having previously argued with Hamilton "in my own home".

On 19 March 1996, six days after the massacre, Hamilton's body was cremated. According to a police spokesman, this service was conducted "far away from" Dunblane.