by Rick Wilson
The news was well and truly out. With the procurator fiscal’s £200 reward notice having already drawn scandalised gasps from the citizenry, Brodie’s conspicuous absence from the scene ignited a veritable blaze of outraged gossip, just as a team of justice officers began to search his house in Brodie’s Close – where the hiding of evidence had obviously not been thorough enough. Led by Brodie’s old accomplice George Smith, hoping for leniency from the justice system in return for his cooperation, they found there the fleeing ring leader’s dark lantern, several pick-locks and a parcel of twenty-five false keys, ‘of uncommon construction’, in a yard where his game cocks were kept. They also discovered the lidded japan-black case full of putty that he carried around to take impressions of his friends’ door keys. Few would, or could, now deny Brodie’s complicity. Who but he had had access to such keys by fitting new locks to the High Street shops when its new causeway was laid? But more damning than all of that were the two pistols discovered ‘wrapped in a green cloth under the earth in the fireplace of a shade in the yard’.
Such finds dramatically reinforced the case against Brodie as they lined up with others revealed by Smith, who had also taken sheriff officers to an old dyke at the foot of Warriston’s Close, under which they were shown some of the tools the gang had used to attack the Excise Office: the iron crowbar christened ‘Little Samuel’, toupee tongs and a false key for the front door.
No doubt about it. Everyone, including the man himself, now knew the game was up. And as if to formally confirm it, the following passage soon appeared in the Edinburgh Evening Courant, penned apparently by bookseller-publisher William Creech, Brodie’s ever-suspicious council colleague:
The depredations that have been committed by housebreakers in and about this city for this some time past have been no less alarming than the art with which they have been executed, and the concealment that has attended them has been surprising. From a discovery, however, just made, there is reason to hope that a stop will soon be put to such acts of atrocious villainy. With what amazement must it strike every friend to virtue and honesty to find that a person is charged with a crime of the above nature who very lately held a distinguished rank among his fellow-citizens?
With what pity and compunction must we view the unfortunate victim who falls a sacrifice to justice for having violated the laws of his country, to which violation he was perhaps impelled by necessity, when rank, ease, and opulence are forfeited in endeavouring to gratify the most sordid avarice? For to what other cause than avarice can we impute the late robbery committed upon the Excise Office, when the situation of the supposed perpetrator is considered? No excuse from necessity can be pled for a man in the enjoyment of thousands, who will run the risk of life, honour, and reputation in order to attain the unlawful possession of what could in a very trifling degree add to his supposed happiness. See the advertisement from the Sheriff-Clerk’s Office [reproduced in the previous chapter].
So where was Brodie fleeing to? According to a later-disclosed letter to his brother-in-law, his eventual intention was to reach New York where that American clergyman, primed by his Scottish colleague, would gather him up. The letter ended: ‘Let my name and destination be a profound secret for fear of bad consequences.’
The hounding actually began on the Tuesday, when George Williamson, King’s Messenger for Scotland, was ordered to track down Brodie and, after vainly checking out his known Edinburgh haunts, set off along London Road to learn from coachmen and post-boys along the route that the fugitive had made his way to the southern capital via Dunbar, Newcastle and York, latterly on the Flying Mercury light coach. From that vehicle’s coachman he learned that Brodie (obviously already being cautious) had disembarked in London at the foot of Old Street, Moorfields, instead of going all the way to the Bull and Mouth terminus.
That was where the trail went cold for Williamson, though before giving up after eighteen days – and blaming himself – he had checked out most of London’s ‘billiard tables, hazard tables, cock-pits, tennis courts and other likely places’ and, acting on information that Brodie was making for the Continent, ‘pushed my inquiries as far as Margate, Deal and Dover in expectation of seeing him’ – but simply didn’t. Oddly enough, though, he had been right on the scent and only a few metres away from his quarry a couple of times as Brodie later reported that he saw Williamson twice ‘but although countrymen usually shake hands when they meet from home, yet I did not choose to make so free with him, notwithstanding he brought a letter to me’.
This was confirmed at Brodie’s subsequent trial when Williamson – speaking as a witness – revealed that he had some knowledge of a London lawyer-contact of Brodie’s called William Walker and had even visited him during his quest at the suggestion of the now alerted and very interested Sir Sampson Wright, chief magistrate at Bow Street justice office, ‘at whose desire I called upon Mr Walker, solicitor-at-law in the Adelphi, and inquired for Mr Brodie. He told me he was bad, and that I could not see him. I said I had a letter for him and wanted only to deliver it; but Mr Walker replied that it might perhaps be dangerous to allow me to see him.’
The extent of the Bow Street Runners’ interest in the runaway Scot was confirmed by the latter himself, who said later: ‘I saw my picture [his description in newspapers] exhibited to public view, and my intelligence of what was doing at Bow Street Office was as good as ever I had in Edinburgh.’
Brodie also confessed to having had ‘some hair-breadth escapes from a well-scented pack of bloodhounds’. So where had he been holed up? By not sanctioning access, it was clear that Walker knew, and that he wasn’t Brodie’s only contact in London; that, despite having lived most of his life 500 miles away in Scotland, the fugitive was well enough connected down south to be accommodated by ‘an old female friend who kept me snug and safe in her house within 500 yards of Bow Street’ for ten days after his arrival.
Having been primed by a letter of introduction (and paid?) from north of the border by Brodie’s cousin Milton, Mr Walker took very good care of Brodie too, lending him twelve guineas and arranging for him to be shipped out of London to the Continent, so being one of the ‘some persons’ referred to in the Lord Advocate’s address – and abbreviated telling of the escape story – to the jury in the Deacon’s trial:
I would, in the next place, gentlemen, have you to attend to the prisoner’s behaviour when he flies from this place to London. He secretes himself in London for several weeks; search is made for him, but he cannot be found; he admits in one of his letters that he knew that Mr Williamson was in search of him, but he did not choose an interview; a vessel is freighted for him by some persons, contrary to the duty they owed to their country; she is cleared out for Leith; he goes on board of her in the middle of the night, with a wig on, in disguise, and under a borrowed name; he is carried to Flushing; he changes his name to John Dixon, and writes letters to people in Edinburgh under that false signature, explaining his whole future operations, in consequence of which letters he is traced and apprehended, just when he is on the point of going on board of a ship for New York. If he had been innocent … it is not possible that he could have conducted himself in this manner.
The letters referred to, as well as passages given by witnesses in court, disclose much of the intriguing detail of Brodie’s shipboard flight and so have been dealt with in separate chapters (5 and 6); only unelaborated stages of the voyage are recounted in this chapter, before looking at the dramatic circumstances of his flight, arrest and repatriation.
It was on yet another Sunday – 23 March – that Brodie found himself being led aboard the Scottish sloop Endeavour, of Carron near Falkirk, which lay at anchor at Blackwall and was supposedly set fair for Edinburgh’s port of Leith with a couple of homeward-bound Scots passengers. It was just before midnight when the captain, John Dent, came aboard with the owners, Messrs Hamilton and Pinkerton, in the company of what looked like ‘an elderly gentleman in feeble health’ who was dressed in a blue great-coat
with a pulled-up red collar, round wig, black vest, breeches and boots – and who – before the ship set off the next morning – ‘was allotted a bed in the state room near the fire as he was sick’.
Another deep sigh of relief must have emanated from the state room that morning when the Endeavour came alive, her sails billowing out as her mooring ropes were loosened to allow her a good start with a fair wind into the broad Thames estuary. Brodie too must have relished the movement, comfortable in the knowledge – despite his chronically sore throat – that he was making good his escape, as only a clever fellow like him could do.
It was not to be quite so simple, however. Suddenly, just off Tilbury Point, the Endeavour made a heavy crunching noise as her hull scraped along the bottom of the sea; she had gone aground, and, despite the crew’s energetic efforts to coax her out of trouble, she was not to be refloated to clear the Thames and get out to open sea for a fortnight.
In the resulting ‘dead’ time it became inevitable that the three Scots passengers would get to know each other. The others were John Geddes, a tobacconist in Mid-Calder, West Lothian, and his wife Margaret, who had been on a short break in London. As all three repeatedly paced the deck seeking fresh air amid waves of fog, there was much good-natured conversation, during which it became clear that the ‘sick old man’ who had come aboard in the darkness of their first day was relatively young and nimble of mind, despite the sore throat for which he had to go ashore at one point to buy some soothing milk. Turning on his legendary cheeky charm for the other passengers, he gave his name as John Dixon and, while volunteering little about his circumstances or professional interests, easily befriended the couple and at one point even took them ashore by skiff to a nearby village for dinner.
But when the Endeavour was finally refloated to resume her interrupted voyage, the Geddeses’ original sailing plan was still not to be. To everyone else’s surprise – including the captain’s? – ‘Mr Dixon’ handed Dent sealed orders from the owners, in which he was instructed to change course from a direct path to Leith and make straight across the North Sea for Ostend, where ‘Mr Dixon’ was to be landed.
The couple’s feeling about this could well be imagined, but they had little choice but to shrug off this further delay to their homeward voyage, and they would even then do ‘Mr Dixon’ a parting favour (that would ultimately backfire on him and have a serious effect on his future). As it happened, the weather was rough with cross winds, the ship failed to make Ostend and headed instead from Flanders to Flushing (Vlissingen) in The Netherlands.
What was that fateful favour? Having arrived at their unexpected destination on 8 April, the Geddeses were all set to say their farewells to ‘Mr Dixon’ – as he again boarded the skiff, to take him and his large trunk back to the ship’s original destination of Ostend – when he handed them three letters with the request that they deliver them on their arrival in Edinburgh. These were addressed to his mistress Anne Grant, of Cant’s Close; Michael Henderson, stabler in the Grassmarket; and his brother-in-law Matthew Sheriff, upholsterer in Edinburgh. The Geddeses warily agreed to do this as they waved their newfound friend goodbye.
But why were the letters so fateful? Simply because, not long after he got home, it became clear to John Geddes, on reading newspapers and listening to local gossip, that their friend was surely the sought-after Deacon Brodie; when, after three weeks of prevarication (was he wondering about related rewards?), he eventually turned the letters over to the authorities, in the shape of the sheriff, it was noted not only that he had already opened them but also that they gave fairly clear clues as to Brodie’s likely whereabouts. So no more time would be lost in setting off to find him again.
By now, the Brodie hunt had become not just national – with many British ports on the look-out for him – but international, which threatened to thwart his plan to make his American getaway unnoticed from the other side of the North Sea. Details of his progress, locations and circumstances revealed by the letters were instantly despatched to the authorities in London, and the Secretary of State, Lord Carmarthen, at once contacted Sir John Potter, the British consul at Ostend, who in turn informally appointed a ‘detective’ with special knowledge of the case to set off in hot pursuit. He was one John Daly, an Irishman resident in Ostend, who knew that – after being in the town for about two months – Brodie had left Ostend and was on his way to Amsterdam.
This intelligence was based on Daly being a tenant of John Bacon, an English vintner in Ostend who met Brodie on 4 June when he came seeking company and advice, armed with a letter from the Endeavour’s captain, which read:
Dear Friend
The bearer, John Dixon, was going passenger with me to New York but, being taken sick, had a desire to be landed at Ostend. Therefore, I recommend him to your care, being a countryman and a stranger; on my account, I hope you’ll render him every service in your power. In so doing, you will oblige your most humble servant,
John Dent
The burly Irishman had not only seen the note but had also witnessed Bacon advising the Scottish visitor that, as there were plenty of ships leaving Amsterdam with goods, including weapons, to replenish America’s post-Declaration of Independence skirmishes against the British, he would ‘very easily’ find a berth there to take him across the Atlantic.
It was when the authorities made some close-focused local enquiries that it became clear to both Bacon and Daly that the Scottish stranger they had been talking to was probably not John Dixon but the fugitive suspect William Brodie. It also became clear to them that there was a considerable reward payable on his arrest. Duly appointed, Daly, the amateur but enterprising ‘detective’, was soon on his way north in pursuit of Britain’s most wanted man. It was mid-June and Brodie had probably already arrived in Amsterdam, but the tenacious Irishman was only about a week behind him and was determined to catch up.
***
Brodie’s funds must have been fading fast. Before even reaching the Continent, and having paid for his sea passage with some of solicitor Walker’s ‘lent’ twelve guineas, he had written: ‘My stock is seven guineas, but when I reach Ostend will be reduced to less than six.’ Somehow, he had found affordable digs for two months in Ostend and was now paying his way to Rotterdam, from where he would save money by taking the cheapest form of transport. The trekschuit horse-drawn canal sailboat was packed with goods and passengers like modern buses and, travelling at a horse-trotting speed of about 7km an hour, took many hours to cover what are today seen as short distances. In this case, the 84km trip from Rotterdam to Amsterdam took thirteen hours, with two hours spent crossing Delft on foot and changing again at Leidschendam, Leiden, Haarlem and Halfweg. At least it was faster than walking, and on his 10 June arrival, with his heavy trunk, at the (still-standing) Haarlemmerpoort, the end-point of the network’s service, Brodie was greeted by two Jews who had made it their business to guide new arrivals into town.
Where, he asked them, could he find a bed for a few nights? They directed him to an alehouse with lodgings, towards the harbour area but within walking distance, though he must have hired a cart to get his trunk there too. The pub’s name was the Lommer (the Shadow) and it was crouched in an alleyway called Zoutsteeg just off the boat-busy central artery of the Damrak. Once he got there, made a deal with the landlord and heaved his trunk upstairs to his room on the first floor, with its pair of windows looking out into the lane, he must have thought he had made it, that he would be like the proverbial needle in a haystack for any pursuers now.
The last thing he expected within a few days of settling in was a hard, threatening knocking on the door of his ‘impossible to find’ refuge.
***
While being generally wary, Brodie probably had no suspicions that he had been followed. But within a few days Daly was in Amsterdam too, after linking up with the British ambassador in The Hague, Sir James Harris, to whom application for Brodie’s arrest had been formally made. The Irishman quickly became acquainted with the
two Jewish trekschuit receptionists who had helped the arriving Brodie, asking them if they could – in the name of the law – establish his whereabouts now. The Scot and his black trunk were described to them and recognised, and in return for a few loose coins, they walked the Irishman to the Lommer and left him there to complete his business.
When the landlord told him that the person he wished to speak to was in the room just above, Daly bounded upstairs – and that was when the knocking began.
Brodie froze, thought it wiser not to speak and so reveal his presence to his loud visitor, rolled quietly out of bed and tiptoed over to the room’s only cupboard, secreting himself behind his own well-diminished collection of clothes (‘My wardrobe is all on my back, excepting two check shirts and two white ones, one of them an old rag … my coat, an old blue one, out at the arms and elbows … an old striped waistcoat, and a pair of good boots’). He was surely mouse-quiet, but there must have been small bed-spring noises and door creaks that encouraged the door-knocker, for he hammered again and again, harder and harder – until deciding to let himself in. A quick glance around the room was all he needed before throwing open the cupboard door and revealing its cowering tenant.
