by Rick Wilson
And these curls are supported, to keep up the jest,
With an hundred instead of one pin.
Her gown is tucked up to the hip on each side,
Shoes too high for a walk and a jump,
And to deck the sweet creature complete for a bride,
The cork-cutter has made her a rump.
Thus finished in taste, while on her I gaze,
I think I could take her for life;
But I fear to undress her, for out of her stays,
I should find I had lost half my wife.
How much would Brodie have been able to resist the wider range of such charms? Not much, it may be assumed. Especially if availability came down to purchasing power – which at times he had and other times hadn’t. In any case, in 1775, when he was in his early 30s, sexually active and doing quite well, just three years before he became a rich man on the death of his father, a daring small book was published that riveted the attention of Edinburgh’s young, and sometimes not-so-young, bucks. Sold discreetly for a shilling, with a preface by a celebrated wit of the time, it frankly described some fifty Edinburgh prostitutes, their bedtime talents and attributes and, most importantly for the contemporary connoisseur, their names, addresses and ages. It was entitled Ranger’s Impartial List of the Ladies of Pleasure of Edinburgh.
Would Brodie have invested a shilling in this? Readers are free to draw their own conclusions. But here are a few examples from its sixty pages that would surely have raised at least one of the eyebrows under his high forehead:
Miss SUTHERLAND at Miss WALKER’S.
This Lady is an old veteran in the service, about 30 years of age, middle sized, black hair and complection, and very good teeth, but not altogether good-natured. By her long experience in business, which is about 12 years, she is mistress of her profession; she is a firm votary to the wanton Goddess, and would willingly play morning, noon, and night, at the delicious game of push-pin. As a friend, we will give a caution to this Lady, not to make free with a gentleman’s pocket, especially when he is in liquor; as it was upon that account that Miss Forsyth put her away from her house, for which every person will commend her.
Miss WATT at MISS ADAMS’S
This lady is about 21 years of age of the middle size, light brown hair, good teeth, but rather surly in her temper, especially after the glass has gone merrily round; notwithstanding of this, she is not a bad companion, as she can sing many very fine songs. It is said, before she would sleep alone, she would rather pay a clever fellow to do her business, as love is her sole delight.
Miss GALLOWAY at Miss WALKER’S.
This Lady comes from the land of Blunders, and served her apprenticeship aboard a man of war, which probably may be the occasion that her temper is not so agreeable as one could wish. However, she is not contemptible in her profession, and she is well acquainted with the art of jostling. She will heave, twist and twine, when she is quite in play, with any nymph that ever sported in those pleasing groves dedicated to the Goddess Venus. She is about 24 years of age, thick and short, and of a fair complexion.
Miss GILMOR at Miss WALKER’S
This is a little thick Lady, about 20 years of age, brown hair, good skin and teeth, and pretty good natured. She is also very coy, and amorous to the greatest degree, and has courage enough (although little) not to be afraid of the largest and strongest man that ever drew weapon in the cause of love, upon that account she, for the most part, gives satisfaction.
Miss McCULLOCH at Mrs YOUNG’S
She is extremely loving, and gives great satisfaction in the Critical Minute, as all those declare who have had the pleasure of her embraces. She has got fine tempting legs, which she is not a little fond of showing, as she appears very often in men’s clothes. Take her all in all, she is an agreeable companion.
Miss STEPHENSON at Miss WALKER’S
This Lady is also tall and thin, black hair, good teeth, bad eyes, but her good nature makes up for that deficiency. She is about 23 years of age, and very fond of that sport which all nature is inclined to. She is very eager in the Critical Minute, and would inspire the dullest mortal with joy and vigour, and if she knows any method to create fresh desire in her lover, she will willingly do it.
Mrs KETTY [Various aliases] at Mrs YOUNG’S
This Lady has had a great propensity for the Gentlemen of the Quill. She was also in keeping with a certain Baronet, but she has left his embrace for one of the former, who goes under the name of her husband. She is very good natured, artful in her amours; and it is said, that was the Devil himself to come in a golden shower, she would as soon meet his embrace as those of Jupiter.
Did he perhaps seek divine forgiveness occasionally for his transgressions? Apparently not. At a time when the Church was central to most people’s lives, William Brodie seems not to have been much of a churchgoer – if the dates of some of his misadventures are anything to go by. Indeed, Sunday was a favourite day for getting up to no good, if only because many premises were vacated by the faithful while they went to worship. One of his biggest targets in his later career was a silk shop where, in preparation for an attack on it, he and an accomplice went frequently to test the stock-lock most commonly on Sunday mornings.
It was a Sunday when, with the help of a respectable but shocked cousin – concerned about the family honour – he stole secretly out of the city and country fearing the game was nearly up. And it was a Sunday too when one of his earliest robberies took place, when an old lady of his acquaintance (who should have been at church but had given it a miss) was politely relieved of her money.
That incident could be seen as part of a small series of experimental forays before his full shocking campaign was launched. For there were several embryonic cases of errant behaviour and downright theft that were, with hindsight, surely perpetrated by him, but – until that major robbery spree began in August, 1786 – were not linked together by the authorities or even by the gossip-mongers to nip his activities in the bud. Despite plenty of reasons for suspicions.
The almost unbelievable audacity of the Sunday-morning robbing of that older woman was perhaps forced upon him by the realisation that, in what he thought would be an empty house, he was being watched. But it almost set a style for his being caught red-handed, in that the essential part of his disguise – the crepe mask – would create doubt in the victim’s mind about the identity they suspected (‘but it just couldn’t have been him!’) and the exercise was followed through so coolly that they might imagine they had been dreaming.
In any case, unable to go to church that day as she was feeling under the weather, the lady in question was also alone in her house, as her servant was absent on divine worship (as Brodie had calculated). She was suddenly awakened from a daydream and into what seemed like a bad dream – shocked by the entrance of a masked man into the room where she sat. Her mouth fell open in disbelief as he nodded to her, smiled and picked up a set of keys lying on the table in front of her. He then walked over to her bureau, opened a few drawers and relieved it of a ‘considerable sum of money’ (she later told a friend) that had been hidden away for safekeeping. Panic-stricken and paralysed during the whole incident, she was sure she recognised the housebreaker and her eyes were wide with a mixture of fear and disbelief as, after relocking the desk, he moved back over to her to replace the keys on the table. He then made a low bow, smiled again as a kind of polite thank you, and took his leave as calmly as he had entered. When he was gone and she calmed down, she exclaimed to herself, ‘Surely that was Deacon Brodie!’ But not even her closest friend would believe that someone of his respectability could have ever stooped so low as to turn burglar. The victim, for fear of embarrassment, never mentioned it again – until, presumably, the Deacon’s crimes came fully to light.
These included another such early incident which brings to mind the comment of Robert Louis Stevenson that ‘many a citizen was proud to welcome the Deacon to supper, and dismissed him with regret at a timeous hour,
who would have been vastly disconcerted had he known how soon, and in what guise, his visitor returned’.
The story, as told by Stevenson, went like this. A friend of Brodie, who lived ‘some way towards heaven’ in one of the city’s great lands (high buildings) had told him, during one such convivial supper, that he was intending to go out into the country and would be absent for some time. As it happened, however, his trip was delayed by his having to attend to some unexpected business, so he was still in town on the first night that he should have been absent. The business matters must have been rather complex and worrying, for he lay awake far into the small hours, according to the Tron church bell. And then …! Was he finally dreaming? He suddenly heard a creak and saw a faint light. Jumping as silently out of bed as he could, he dashed over to a false window that looked on to another room – and there he was sure he saw, illuminated by a hand-held lantern, his good friend William Brodie in a mask; who had presumably intended to take full advantage of the owner’s lack of attendance to his valuables; and who, just like a bad dream, doused his flame and faded away into the dark …
What these dramas had in common was that, although Brodie was recognised in both of them, no official action was taken by his victims. In one instance the man was simply reluctant to incriminate his friend; in the other the old lady preferred to doubt the evidence of her own senses – a truly striking proof of the near-infinite advantages to be gained from a respectable family background. And didn’t William Brodie know it.
It was remarkable that both these first modest toes-in-the-water of crime gave him a shocking caught-red-handed moment, yet at a highly sensitive time there came another example of his apparently fearless audacity – and of a merciless streak with regard to that family background that could truly take a good person’s breath away. When his father, the much-respected Francis Brodie, succumbed to palsy at his house in the Lawnmarket on the evening of Saturday 1 June 1782, his playboy son was out gambling. And as Saturday merged into Sunday (that special day again), with his belated visit finally made while the old man’s body was laid out with candles burning around it, the new head of the Brodie dynasty decided to set out on an endeavour that – he knew – would never be attributed by right-thinking folk to a grieving son.
He had prepared his raid on Thomson’s, the High Street tobacconist, well. Having commissioned the Brodie firm three months before to build new shelves and drawers with brass handles to house his precious stock imported from all over the world, Mr Thomson had absented himself from the shop now and again to let the craftsmen get on unhindered. And at such moments it had occurred to Brodie more than once, especially when his men were off on an ale break, that there was more than just a world of fine tobaccos – Arabian Latakia, spicy Bahia Brazil, fire-cured Kentuck, chewable Burmese and high-quality Cuban, as well as the popular Virginia and snuffs galore – to admire here: there was the shop’s main key hanging unguarded on a hook inside the door and positively inviting him to take a putty impression of it in his little japan-black box.
He had yielded to temptation then, taken the imprint with window putty, made a copy key from it, and now, having learned Mr Thomson was going away for some time, he decided to use it with a view to settling some urgent gambling debts. With a small smile of mischief playing about his narrow lips, he slowly shed his day street finery – the fine silken waistcoat, the light-coloured trousers and overcoat – and donned his chosen costume of the night: trousers and stockings, waistcoat, cloak and gloves, all in black. A bold macabre touch – his late father’s crumpled wig of dark curls – almost completed the ensemble, except that when he came out of the shadows and descended into the Cowgate emporium of nicotiana about to make his entry, there would also be the black crepe mask. He stuffed the last two items into the deep cloak pockets along with a jemmy and a loaded pistol, while in his near-invisibility he carried his dark lantern along the street on one gloved hand with his home-made key in the other.
This he slipped quietly into the door’s heavy lock and – as he glanced briefly about him to check no candles were suddenly flickering – it turned easily. Inside, all was familiar to him as a one-time work site and, while he helped himself to a raffia-tied bundle of cheroots, he even knew where Mr Thomson’s money would be held. But alas! As he started forcing the relevant mahogany drawer open, while admiring the strength of his own handiwork, he heard the cry ‘Who’s there?’ and wheeled round to see the night-gowned Thomson descending the stone stairs from his home to his shop, with a candle under his chin casting scary facial shadows. ‘Thief!’ Thompson cried.
Brodie instinctively went for his pistol but thought better of it and, as he quickly decided to avoid confrontation and promptly take his leave, he defaulted instead for the ironically polite response that was to become something of a Brodie farewell trademark. He bowed, doffed his hat and said ‘Guid nicht to ye, Mr Thomson.’
Trembling with rage and shock, the tobacconist watched without following the dark little figure vanishing into the night, and when a member of the city guard finally answered his repeated calls of ‘Thief!’ and asked if he had recognised the robber, Mr Thomson held his tongue. But he knew there was something oddly familiar about the figure and voice of the arrogant masked man who had so nearly robbed him and damn near even shot him.
Brodie had got away with it again. And suitably impressed by his own talent for escaping firm identification and therefore justice, he reckoned – as he anticipated times getting tougher – that he would be getting down to this sort of thing in a much more serious and concentrated fashion in the not too distant future.
3
THE BIRTH OF
HIS CRIMINAL HALF
The sawdusty workshop in Brodie’s Close attacked the senses and brought a smile to his fox-like face. It smelled of fresh wood, boiling fishy glue, resin and lacquer, and it sounded like a busy place: saws ripping, hammers banging, planes sighing, man-to-man shouting. And when he chose to honour it with his well-dressed presence and proffer expert advice over the craftsmen’s apron-holding shoulders, the son of the house was companionable and professional enough to be seen as reasonable boss material. Not that he was near that point yet, but young William was getting into practice and, metaphorically at least, he was rubbing his hands in anticipation with plenty to smile about.
The birth of Edinburgh’s New Town in 1767, when he was a tender 26, meant a new surge of business. For anyone skilled in the creation of furniture, what was to be a century-long development of classical homes on Edinburgh’s northern fields marked a golden age of enviable prosperity. He was already feeling the benefits by sharing in his father Francis’s growing workload when the old man died at 74 in 1782 – just as young James Craig’s winning cityscape scheme, designed to transform reekie old Edinburgh into the Athens of the North, was getting into its elegant stride.
Waves of public and private money were being invested into the grand initiative of Provost George Drummond (little of which he would live to see realised) to attract not just the city’s own professionals and aristocracy out of the overcrowded Old Town but expatriates ‘of rank’ who now saw, set against the claustrophobia of London, a breathable future amid the wide avenues and Doric, Ionic and Corinthian pillars of their own grand capital. Wealthy Scots riding a sudden wave of industrial enterprise in building, iron works, land ownership, law, banking, sugar and tobacco importation, brewing, publishing and commerce generally were gathering here to seek out new lives, new homes … and new furniture.
It meant that, on his father’s death, William Brodie’s legacy was multi-faceted: the means through inherited ownership of the family business and property to exploit that great tide of money-making opportunity; the aforementioned £10,000; and – perhaps most significant of all – his father’s spotless reputation as an upstanding citizen and town councillor.
Some people sensed that differently, of course: for one, the old lady who had been visited by him and relieved of her money, politely, in the night; W
illiam Creech, the councillor and publisher whose High Street bookselling business was near enough the Brodie homestead to know him very well (of which more later); and William’s own sisters, Jacobina and Jean, who knew him even better but had at least expected him to show up at his father’s deathbed.
Yet the son who did not quite make it to the old widower’s departure – who had been too busy sleeping off ‘the night before’ at a mistress’s house – also received the benefit of any doubt. With his weaknesses and indiscretions hardly believed or recognised by wider society, he was seen as a chip off the old master craftsman and gentleman, who had been Deacon of the Incorporation of Wrights, cabinet-maker extraordinary and Mason of Lodge Kilwinning, Canongate. Surely William would be another safe pair of Brodie hands? And so, as night follows day, within a year the bereaved son was filling the father’s shoes as a Deacon Councillor of the City, a position that gave him primary access to lucrative council projects in his field.
It seemed William Brodie had been left holding a whole handful of life’s trump cards, which must have felt like quite a triumph for one so keen on gambling …
So how would he play it? The safest bet would be to feign a furrowed brow of grief and hold all these cards close to his chest while relaxing into his perceived respectability and watching his potential customer base grow organically. But if the truth were known, his wayward soul was not enamoured of safety or respectability. He was cunning enough to present that face to the world for as long as possible, but under the shadow of his three-cornered hat there was a mischievous if calculating brain that sought the darker side of life, that ached for illegitimate adventure. He would, of course, try to keep it well hidden while he enjoyed the fruits of his inheritance, but he no doubt sensed that that would be finite – as indeed it proved to be.
