by Rick Wilson
Though he enjoyed the fruits of the New Town’s demands, one thing he wouldn’t do with his new-found fortune was join the gentry’s exodus to the north. His life was intensely centred around the Old Town and he sensed that it would survive and even thrive. For even before the coming of the New Town, the city had been gaining post-Culloden confidence. New banks had appeared to service government and the landed gentry and support burgeoning industries such as engineering and shipbuilding, coal, iron and cotton. But to put the icing on the cake, rising alongside the elegantly ordered New Town, with its royal street-name tributes and King George III’s personal endorsement, was the city’s new international reputation as ‘a hotbed of genius’, home to the leaders of a new wave of ideas known as the Scottish Enlightenment. The city’s intellectual buzz was encapsulated in this memorable comment attributed to the King’s Chemist, Englishman John Amyatt, talking in the mid-1700s: ‘Here I stand, at what is called the Cross of Edinburgh, and can, in a few minutes, take fifty men of genius and learning by the hand.’
The Cross? He meant the fourteenth-century Mercat Cross, part of which still stands in Parliament Square within an elaborate Victorian base built in 1885, the landmark where royal proclamations and other official announcements were read out, where merchants and citizens – and enlightened figures – gathered to talk and exchange ideas. As such, the area of the Cross was still the city’s hub, focus of most of that new cultural consciousness – despite the developing New Town. For while Craig’s architectural masterpiece (now a World Heritage site) created the kind of living space that the Old Town had lacked, forced as it had been to expand ever upwards with unhealthy, packed-out, reach-for-the-sky tenements, the new scheme had taken on the nature of a social experiment – successful in many respects but with the socially divisive effect of separating rich and poor as never before. Its exclusivity was threatening to create sealed-off lifestyles that would erode inter-class relationships.
The privileged professionals in the newly gentrified north could not be totally isolated, however, as there was a conspicuous shortage of commercial premises and caterings for basic human needs in this well-gardened residential plan: then, as now to some extent, it had relatively few shops, taverns, workshops, hotels or clubs and minimal general social buzz. So with little in the way of fine goods, furnishings and social contact immediately to hand in their still-growing community, this higher society began to regard the Old Town – before Princes Street emerged with luxury shops and products to satisfy their new expectations – as a place to revisit. Not just for shopping and snuff but for the intellectual stimulation of the Enlightenment magnet personified by people like the philosopher David Hume, the economist Adam Smith and, of course, the most intriguing draw of them all, Ayrshire’s ploughman poet Robert Burns, lured to ‘Edina’ in 1786 to be celebrated as ‘Caledonia’s Bard’ for his revised edition of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect.
Grand personages invited the handsome bard-in-buckskin-breeches to their homes for him to be regarded with wonder – especially by much-impressed ladies. In reciprocal tribute, and thinking for a moment that he ought to be posh in the manner of his well-born admirers, he briefly abandoned his Ayrshire roughage to write a less-than-successful ‘English’ tribute to the capital whose eight verses began with:
Edina! Scotia’s darling seat!
All hail thy palaces and tow’rs;
Where once, beneath a Monarch’s feet,
Sat Legislation’s sovereign pow’rs:
From marking wildly-scatt’red flow’rs,
As on the banks of Ayr I stray’d,
And singing, lone, the ling’ring hours,
I shelter in thy honour’d shade.
As it happened, Burns’s lodging in Scotia’s darling seat was in Baxter’s Close (near today’s Writers’ Museum in Lady Stair’s Close), almost immediately opposite Deacon Brodie’s premises in the cobbled Lawnmarket. And while the star visitor was making a raft of illustrious local contacts like the Earl of Glencairn, distinguished lawyer Henry Erskine and Encyclopaedia Britannica editor William Smellie, not to mention the celebrated painters Nasmyth and Raeburn, it is said that the two near-neighbours became acquainted and that Brodie even attended the party at which Burns met, and was smitten by, Clarinda, his unfulfilled love and poetic inspiration.
The men certainly shared at least one drinking den: Johnnie Dowie’s, a dark but convivial alcove of a tavern in Libberton’s Wynd (the now-demolished address of Brodie’s mistress Jean Watt, roughly locatable today as the east pavement of George IV Bridge), where in a long narrow backroom affectionately dubbed The Coffin the poet would hold court on matters political and romantic among his admirers.
These included a mutual acquaintance, William Creech, the staunchly moralistic bookseller-publisher of Burns’s Edinburgh edition who, as a fellow town councillor and another near neighbour, was always wary of Brodie. Creech was to have his suspicions confirmed when he served on the jury at the famous burglar’s trial, and he then published his own musings on the event, printed just days later. He was also a co-founder of Edinburgh’s Speculative Society, a debating club whose members included various great figures such as Francis Horner and Sir Walter Scott.
So the Old Town remained the city’s beating heart, despite its continuing squalor in places, and could not be written off by the gradual coming to life of James Craig’s great vision. Not only was the city’s ancient centre a stage for ‘all human life is there’ day-to-day theatre, it had, along its fishlike High Street backbone with closes shooting off like ribs on either side, thriving retail premises and offices, clubs and tobacconists, booksellers and busy workshops, such as that of the Brodies. With the great lowering castle at its top end and the delicately handsome French-style Palace of Holyroodhouse at the lower end, the Royal Mile also had close proximity to other important buildings, such as the university and law courts, and – one that figures fatefully in this tale – the General Excise Office for Scotland in Chessel’s Court off the Canongate.
None of these cultural developments, prestigious buildings or changing circumstances would have been missed by the calculating 41-year-old Brodie, who now began to weigh up his future prospects in the light of his new-found fortunes.
He might have survived into his forties as an apparently reputable and prosperous man of some standing in the community, but he knew his place in that scheme of things and had no aspiration to join the gentry’s exodus over the relatively new North Bridge now spanning the drained gulf that had been the Nor’ Loch, the stinking near-sewer under the castle that would later become the fragrant Princes Street Gardens; no, he was a fixture in the familiar Old Town, where he would live out his life to the bitter end – literally, as it turned out. Not just because of the intrusive nature of his work, he knew who and what lay down every close and behind every door and would only occasionally step outside of its familiar mile-long stream of humanity.
For what? He was easily tempted by betting opportunities, so, as a breeder and owner of fighting cocks, he could often be found at Henderson’s Stables in the Grassmarket cheering on his own feathered champions. He also loved tavern card and dice games and, while often losing, would go to extraordinary lengths to win, yielding to the temptation to cheat – and not just against the chimney sweep who formally accused him of foul play. Losing did not sit well with Brodie, and his resulting fits of depression would drive him straight to his favourite antidote therefor: alcohol.
Relax into his respectability? After the reading of his father’s will, it initially seemed to him that his dissolute nightlife might slip into the past, but his other darker half sensed that this was self-delusion; that there could only be one eventual consequence of his good fortune. With immediate financial concerns lifted from his shoulders he succumbed to the weaker side of his character and the recreational enjoyments of spending unwisely. He slowly began to realise, however, that ‘recreational’ has a way of getting serious …
Then there wer
e his two most expensive obligations: a pair of mistresses (see chapter 2) and their broods who required keeping in the manner to which they had become accustomed. That meant an expectation that when rents and food threatened to be unpayable he would be standing ready to bear his (what a word for him) responsibility.
Despite his business going relatively well, with his privileged access to council work and high demand from wealthy private clients, it began to dawn on him that his after-hours lifestyle could not be maintained on what he could earn legally, even with the help of his fast-diminishing inheritance, and that something would inevitably have to give.
The process would, of course, take time, the aforementioned factors gradually combining over something like six years with other negatives – huge gaming debts, a taste for late-night drinking and out-of-bounds women – to create the perfect financial storm. Though unable or unwilling to tame himself, he finally saw that his new life could only end one way, and, with his double personality working overtime, his ‘respectable’ side could not abide the thought of bankruptcy. By 1786 he had decided that a new tack was urgently needed, and it would have to be about generating enough income. This was the catalytic acceptance that marked the birth of William Brodie’s active criminal half.
In many ways his life had been already divided into two, as contrasting as night and day: the neat, tidy and superficially charming man who walked and talked his way around the city’s transparent daytime world of hearty greetings, respectable social contact, deals and dealmakers and his opposing night-time world of flickering street lanterns, dark closes, drunken trysts, dubious motivations, violence and shady contacts.
Though it was at first a secret only to himself, this darker half that he feigned to struggle with but really relished was about to take over his life. It had occurred to him in the course of his legitimate work – the making of cabinets with doors and house or office doors themselves – that if he had not fitted them himself, he had exclusive access to some clients’ keys, having a whole selection either directly to hand or being able to find and copy them. And while the conclusion of this thought was fully forming, a double opportunity was presenting itself. The council had decided, with the inclusion of his vote, to clear away the ancient cobbles of the High Street and lower its overall level, with the attendant need to replace doors (often with new locks) – which was, almost literally, just up Brodie’s street. So many keys! So many chances to access other people’s premises! It was more than such an easily tempted man could resist.
There is no record of whether the Deacon battled with his conscience at this point, but one suspects not; if he had such a thing, he might have paid it lip service, but all the evidence suggests he was romantically excited about his new ‘naughty’ choice of direction; that he saw it as a kind of (nicely lucrative) sport. And so it all began, the long series of sinister house and shop break-ins that suddenly gripped the city centre and deeply puzzled it too. Some places were entered with so little disturbance and damage that many people began to think there was some supernatural power at work.
For Brodie the delicious irony of it all was that – while making all the right shocked noises to the victims and acquaintances about such ‘outrageous’ thefts – he himself was benefiting from alarmed property-owners asking for increased security in the form of stronger doors and better locks.
So what were the offending incidents? Not considering earlier events suspected of being his work, such as the daylight robbery of an old lady and that of Thomson’s tobacconist shop just after his father died in 1780 (see the previous chapter), the main series happened some six years later. This consisted of eleven break-ins in all, the first perpetrated by Brodie himself who, on such expeditions, always carried a shaded lantern and sometimes a pistol (or two), and dressed in a crepe mask and dark clothes. He made his first mistake when he began to work with three dubious accomplices.
First to be recruited – as a daytime locksmith for the Brodie workshop as well as an aide in nocturnal projects – was a Berkshire refugee called George Smith, who had come to Scotland with his wife and horse-drawn cart in mid-1786 and taken shelter at the Grassmarket stables of Michael Henderson, which accommodated not just horses and fighting cocks but (according to one historian) ‘the lower order of travellers’.
Being around there a lot to cheer on his feathered friends, William Brodie soon made Smith’s acquaintance and noted not just his dire circumstances but also his professed skills as a locksmith. With his physical and financial health going rapidly downhill, the Englishman had had to sell his horse and cart to pay his rent, so – Brodie reckoned – he would no doubt be open to ‘ideas’ to improve his lot. Having accordingly groomed him with friendly conversation, Brodie eventually broached the possibility of ‘something being done to advantage, provided a due degree of caution is exercised’ – and did not have to ask twice. The ‘doing of something’ was clearly nothing new or particularly daunting to Smith, who, having had his expertise with locks well tested by Brodie, was quickly brought on board – and just as quickly improved his lot by setting up home and a suitable ‘front’ as small grocery shop in the Cowgate. He often accompanied his boss to his favourite den of iniquity, Clark’s gambling house in Fleshmarket Close, where, over well-lubricated card games, they both befriended the other two recruits: Andrew Ainslie, sometime shoemaker in Edinburgh, and another Englishman-on-the-run, John Brown, who often called himself Humphrey Moore. They occupied a lodging together at the foot of Burnet’s Close.
Two Scots and two Englishmen, stretching across several strata of society. But what they had in common was the fact that each was a misfit in one way or another. Such a motley little army needed a little general, and, after doing the first ‘job’ himself, Brodie began to revel in that role as project-planning became increasingly precise and sophisticated. Indeed, the job description for Smith should have included ‘opportunities to travel’ for part of the operation became fencing off certain acquired articles – such as the proceeds from goldsmith John Tapp’s house and the silver mace from the university – as far away as was practicable. This meant getting to Chesterfield where ‘expelled’ Scot John Tasker (alias Murray) was the only-too-willing receiver of such goods for selling at his Bird in Hand shop. And it meant at least one long Brodie-funded coach trip back to his homeland for George Smith, who must have thought – perversely – that he had come up in the world since crossing the border with his horse and cart so relatively recently.
The timeline of their misdeeds – or their crimeline, if you like – began in mid-1786 and went like this:
12 August: The outer door of Messrs Johnston and Smith, bankers in the Royal Exchange, is opened – presumably by a counterfeit key – and over £800 taken from the drawers. Most notes are from the big three banks of the time, Bank of Scotland, Royal Bank and British Linen. Messrs Johnston and Smith resolve to fight for the money’s recovery, denouncing the ‘wicked persons’ responsible and announcing, through the Edinburgh Evening Courant, that a good reward is being offered – £5 for every £100 recovered with the help of any informer. This need not be an involved party, it is suggested, ‘as some smith may very innocently have made an impression of clay or wax, such smith giving information, so as the person who got the key may be discovered, shall be handsomely rewarded’.
9 October: The Parliament Close shop of goldsmith James Wemyss loses fifty gold and diamond rings, brooches and earrings, also a whole variety of valuable spoons. In reporting the story, the Courant issues a warning to other such shopkeepers, writing: ‘As the public, as well as the private party, are greatly interested that this daring robbery be discovered, it is requested that all Goldsmiths, Merchants and other Traders throughout Scotland, may be attentive in case any goods answering to those above-mentioned shall be offered for sale.’ A ten-guinea reward offered by the Incorporation of Goldsmiths ‘upon conviction of the offender or offenders’ attracts no interest and is assumed (too late) to have been too modest.
; November: Bridge Street hardware merchants McKain’s has clearly been broken into – the lock that should have kept out intruders has been breached – and loses seventeen steel watch-chains in what is later revealed by Smith to have been a practice run for the real thing a fortnight later. This is thwarted in mid-burglary by Smith hearing ‘a person in the room immediately below rise out of his bed’ causing him to run ‘straight into the street’ and be off with a waiting Brodie, so nothing appears to have been stolen.
8 December: The shop of John Law, tobacconist in the Exchange, is broken into, and a canister containing between £10 and £12 carried off. This robbery, though not confessed to later by any of their gang, is probably the work of Smith and Brodie.
Christmas Eve: From their shop at the corner of Bridge Street and High Street – just opened, with a new door and lock fitted – a distressed John and Andrew Bruce report that several gold and silver watches and rings worth £350 have gone missing in the night. This has been a solo job by Smith, unable to prise its setter-up Brodie away from a gambling winning streak. Press reports, telling of a twenty-guinea reward for information, point out that all the rings bear the shop’s mark, so it is perhaps surprising that Brodie’s acceptance of some token items from the haul should include two rings. It is agreed between the two that Smith should go to Chesterfield to dispose of the goods to their fence, banished Scot John Tasker, and Brodie gives five and a half guineas to pay the fare.
Christmas Day: Another reason for a trip down south: Goldsmith John Tapp is relieved of valuable items from his broken-into home while being detained at his Parliament Close shop by a bottle-wielding John Brown on the pretext of having a merry seasonable drink. Items taken by Brodie and the others include eighteen guinea notes, a 20s note, a silver watch, some rings, his pocket book and the well-hidden gold frame of a gentleman’s picture belonging to his wife. Some reports say that, on being confronted by her, Brodie talks his way out of the situation by saying he knows the sex-hungry man in the picture and wouldn’t her husband like to know him too …
