IT IS said that the ghost of Dr Robert Stirling still haunts the back lane that runs past the ruined leper hospital between Burnopfield and Rowlands Gill.

The ghost is a chilling sight, its throat slit and its face caved in. And its piteous wailing cuts to the quick as it cries in agony and at the injustice.

For no-one was convicted of the brutal murder of Dr Stirling nearly 150 years ago.

He was a tall, handsome, charming fellow, just 26, and had arrived from Dumbarton only ten days earlier. Indeed, word soon got round that he would be quite a catch for some lass.

On November 1, 1855, he set out for his first house calls. As most of his possessions were still en route from Scotland and he wanted to be on time, Dr Stirling asked his partner, Dr Henry Watson, if he might borrow a timepiece.

Dr Watson happily handed over his silver pocket watch - but that was the last anyone saw of Dr Stirling alive.

They discovered his body after five days of searching. Some had said the young doctor, already known for his impetuousness, had upped and left for the Crimea - he was awaiting his call-up papers for the medical corps.

But his father Charles was there when they discovered the body. Robert had been shot in the groin, had his throat cut and his face bashed in by the butt of a gun. Then he'd been robbed of the silver watch and rolled through the gorse bushes towards the river.

Suspicion immediately fell on "Whisky Jack" Cain, a smuggler who had a still tucked away in every gully in the Derwent Valley. Indeed, Jack was known to have a still near where the doctor died, and when police called on him they found a bloodied knife - he swore he'd been skinning rabbits - and a waistcoat with just three distinctive buttons. The fourth, it was said, was found at the murder scene.

Plus, Dr Stirling's mother had a frightful dream in which she saw the murder in shocking detail. She came down to Durham and, amazingly, was able to identify Whisky Jack as the murderer in a parade.

The jury, though, was not convinced. Well, 11 were, but an old Quaker could not be persuaded to send anyone to the gallows, no matter how guilty they might be. And so Whisky Jack was released.

Indeed, in later life he went straight, working as a gardener in Newcastle. Still, police never sought anyone else for the murder.

But a new book by one of The Northern Echo's journalists about the "grim, gruesome and grisly history of the Derwent Valley" may close the case.

Because five years later, a roofer named Thomas Batey was murdered after a gambling session in Winlaton. A noted local poacher, Thomas "Lanky" Smith, was arrested wearing the dead man's clothes in an ironstone mine near Whitby.

Lanky confessed all. He'd clubbed Batey down, but only meant to rob him, not to murder him. Lanky was executed on December 28, 1860.

It was only afterwards that local people put two and two together. For when Dr Stirling died, Lanky had been working as a farm labourer in Burnopfield. And, on the day that the doctor's body had been found, Lanky had fled without drawing his wages.

Of course, at the time, everyone had been convinced of Whisky Jack's guilt. But could it have been Lanky who did for the doctor?

* The Dark Side of the Dale by Tony Kearney (Dark Dale Publications, £12.99).