The Man Who Was Jekyll and Hyde

by Rick Wilson

  Tuesday, sent for by the magistrates to the Stadthouse; – from their manner, judged Brodie’s delivery as predetermined; – Mr Duncan sent for.

  Predetermined perhaps, but not so simple to execute. As it happened, while everyone involved in the case knew who the prisoner was, some difficulty was encountered in formally establishing his identity, and John Groves – sometimes referring to himself in the third person – reported further on the challenge of getting sworn witnesses (preferred by Dutch law) at the showdown meeting between Brodie and the Amsterdam magistrates questioning him. The attitude of the aforementioned Mr Duncan proved frustrating for the meeting. Why? He said he was not a native of Edinburgh but of Aberdeen, that he frequently visited Edinburgh on business and that eight, ten or twelve years before – he couldn’t say which – the man now calling himself John Dixon was pointed out to him as Deacon Brodie. He had seen him several times after that and always understood him to be Deacon Brodie, though he did not know his Christian name. He had no doubt this was the same man, but ‘he would not swear he had no doubt – a nice distinction’.

  Brodie was ordered to be brought in and, as he faced the magistrates with an unusually downtrodden expression, he seemed nonetheless also determined to err seriously on the side of caution, being prepared to admit nothing.

  Here is Grove’s reporting of the High Sheriff’s relevant exchange with the prisoner, who was first asked the following:

  What is your name?

  John Dixon.

  That is the name you go by here – but is not your real name William Brodie?

  My Lords, I stand here and claim the protection of the laws of this country, which require two witnesses, on oath, to prove me William Brodie.

  You shall have the protection of the laws of this country, but they do not require two oaths to identify you; it requires that the magistrates shall be satisfied you are the same man.

  Mr Groves – I beg leave he may be asked, if he is not a native of Edinburgh?

  Question put – the answer, I have been at Edinburgh.

  Mr Groves – Is he a Deacon of Edinburgh?

  Prisoner replied – I claim the protection of the laws.

  Mr Groves – Does he know Mr William Walker, Attorney at law, of the Adelphi, London?

  Prisoner replied – I know such a man.

  Mr Groves – Then that William Walker procured the escape of this William Brodie from London, which I can prove by extracts of letters now in my pocket, the originals of which are here in the hands of your officers. I can swear to Mr Walker’s writing.

  Here the Magistrates asked me [Groves] if I was ready to swear that, from the pointed description of him and all said circumstances, he was, to the best of my belief, the man required to be given up? – I told them I was.

  Mr Duncan was then asked if, from what he knew and what he had heard, he would swear he had no doubt, and believed him to be the man.

  Mr Duncan’s reply – I am only a visitor here; and being called on such an occasion, it might, in my own country where I am a Magistrate, have the appearance of forwardness if I was to swear. I am a man of honour and a gentleman, and my word ought to be taken. I do believe, and I have no doubt, that he is the same man; but I decline to swear it; I’ll take no oath.

  The Magistrates expostulated, but unsuccessfully, on the absurd idea of saying, ‘I have no manner of doubt, and verily believe’ and refusing to swear (that) ‘I have no manner of doubt’.

  As I had previously drawn up an information for Mr Duncan and myself to that effect, he was asked if he would sign it without swearing? – Mr Duncan said he would.

  The Magistrates then said that they should pay the same compliment to me they did to Mr Duncan, and take my signature to the certificate, without an oath, even to my belief. – [Certificate signed].

  The prisoner was then ordered in, and the certificate read to him, and asked if he had not a father? – He replied, None.

  But you had a father, said the Judge – was not his name Brodie?

  Prisoner replied – There are more Brodies than one.

  Then by that, said the Judge, you confess your name is Brodie?

  A lapsus linguae, my Lord.

  It was, indeed, a sensational lapse, or slip of the tongue. Realising that he had blundered like a mouse into a clever legal eagle’s claws, Brodie tried desperately to struggle out by again stressing what he believed was a technical requirement for witnesses’ oaths. But the judge told him bluntly that the matter was closed; that all they wanted was to be satisfied about his identity, which they now were from what had been signed by Mr Duncan and Mr Groves, and partly from that virtual confession of his own. It was time to go home, the captured fugitive was told. He was duly marked for delivery to Mr Groves, who was advised by the judge that he should have a guide and waste no time in setting off that day.

  As it happened, when the journey-ready Bow Street clerk returned to the Stadhuis to get going with Brodie at 4 p.m., there were no fewer than four guides waiting for him, not to mention eight horses pulling two carriages, into one of which the ‘properly secured’ Brodie was sharply bundled. A ‘prodigious crowd’ had gathered to watch them leave like some kind of royal party and, had he had his hands free, no doubt the Deacon would have waved regally to them like some kind of royal personage. It’s not hard to imagine that, despite his recent refugee status, the self-regarding little man would have resented the severe lack of dignity he was now suffering. And it was to get worse even after they arrived at Helvoetsluys around lunchtime the next day. Here the packet had been waiting for them after Groves had written to Sir James Harris on the Saturday requesting that it be detained – ‘who informed me by Mr Rich, with whom I dined on the Monday, that it should be detained to the last moment’.

  When they sailed for Harwich, the erstwhile Mr John Dixon was ‘watched two hours alternately on board by the ship’s crew, his hands and arms confined, and his meat cut up for him, &c’ and must have registered some regret that he was not enjoying the comforts of his earlier voyage, not to mention the much greater regret he felt about not managing to follow through his major life plan.

  Groves ended his story by saying, ‘On Thursday night, eleven o’clock, we arrived at Harwich – supped – set off immediately, and arrived next day at noon at Sir Sampson Wright’s, before whom, and Mr Longlands, Brodie confessed he was the person advertised.’

  The said Thomas Longlands, a London solicitor employed by the Crown officers of Scotland for this case, took up the next part of the tale when he appeared as a witness at the Deacon’s trial (page 146). He said that, immediately on arrival in London from the Netherlands, and before being sent back to Scotland, Brodie was ‘examined’ along with two trunks belonging to him. They contained items whose provenance was obviously suspect, and Longlands – who was present – discovered ‘a wrapper with some papers’ in one which ‘made a great impression on me at the time’.

  It was at this point that George Williamson, the king’s messenger who had searched for Brodie in vain before he sailed off from London, made a re-appearance – having been sent from Edinburgh to accompany the prisoner back to his home town. In the post chaise driving north, with Mr Groves also on board, Brodie seemed to relish the idea of the robber surprising and entertaining his captors. He soon demonstrated that, despite suffering apparent depression, he had lost none of his sense of mischief, and though they were now most definitely on opposite sides of society’s fence, they seemed to enjoy each other’s company, as Williamson later wrote: ‘Mr Brodie was in good spirits, and told of many things that had happened to him in Holland.’

  What kind of things? Williamson would not have been prepared to put some of them down on record, but one story concerned a friendship that Brodie had struck up with a fellow Scot (and fellow criminal) during his short stay among the canals. This man claimed to be a master-forger and was living in the city by means of presenting home-made Bank of Scotland notes where he could. This had clearly intrigued Brod
ie, who would certainly have wished to become such an expert in a black art that he seemed to have missed out on in his second career. Indeed, he was already receiving early instruction from this expert practitioner when his studies were abruptly halted by Mr Daly’s call.

  ‘Brodie said he was a very ingenious fellow, and that, had it not been for his own apprehension, he would have been master of the process in a week’, wrote Williamson later.

  There were a few shared chortles too when Brodie recalled his heavily escorted journey from Amsterdam’s town house to his Delta port of departure. With a twinkle in his eyes, he talked of how one of his guides sported a beautiful gold watch and of how, if he had been so inclined, he could have easily relieved the ‘well-oiled’ owner of the treasure – and now regretted not doing so.

  Such an accessory would doubtless have made his re-entrance into Edinburgh even more gasp-inducing than his usual personal style, which he was determined to restore – if only temporarily – before finding himself in a cage again. To that end, he persuaded Wiliamson to allow him a close shave, as he had been – up till Mr Daly’s intervention – quite a master of the close shave. Williamson, alert to all possibilities of an open razor in the hands of a doomed criminal in the cabin of a bouncing coach, refused to let him perform the task – but offered to do it himself.

  The Deacon, as one so good with his hands, was not entirely in admiration of his escort’s ‘barbarous’ efforts and, when the operation was over, commented: ‘George, if you’re no better at your own business than at shaving, a person may employ you once, but I’ll be damned if ever he does so again!’

  They arrived in Edinburgh on 17 July after ‘only’ fifty-four hours on the road, noted the Caledonian Mercury as it reported:

  This morning early Mr Brodie arrived from London. He was immediately carried to the house of Mr Sheriff Archibald Cockburn [His Majesty’s Sheriff-depute of the sheriffdom of Edinburgh], at the back of the Meadows, or Hope Park, for examination. Mr George Williamson, Messenger, and Mr Groves, one of Sir Sampson Wright’s clerks, accompanied Mr Brodie in a post-chaise from Tothilfields Bridewell. He was this forenoon committed to the Tolbooth.

  At the Tolbooth prison in the city’s High Street, only about 100 yards from his erstwhile home and workshop, he made the following declaration to Sheriff Cockburn:

  That he does not at present recollect the name of the vessel in which the declarant went from the river Thames to Holland in the month of April last; that is, in which he arrived at Holland in April last.

  That, before he left the vessel, he gave some letters, at present he does not recollect the number, written by himself, to one Geddes, a passenger on board the vessel.

  And being shown a letter directed to Michael Henderson, signed W.B., dated Thursday, the 10th of April last, declares that he cannot say that the letter was not wrote by him and given to Geddes.

  And, being interrogated, if one of the letters given to Geddes was not directed to Mr Matthew Sheriff, upholsterer in Edinburgh, and signed John Dixon, dated Flushing, Tuesday, the 8th of April, 1788? – Declares that the declarant cannot give any positive answer to that question, and he does not suppose he would have signed any letter at that time by the name of John Dixon, especially as he had wrote some letters at the same time, and given them to Geddes, signed by his initials W. B.

  Declares that the declarant, when taken into custody at Amsterdam, on the 26th of June last, went by the name of John Dixon.

  Declares that the declarant first became acquainted with George Smith in Michael Henderson’s a long while ago, when Smith was indisposed and bedfast there; that the declarant has been in George Smith’s house in the Cowgate. And being interrogated, declares that he cannot say positively whether he was in Smith’s house any day of the week before the declarant left Edinburgh, which, to the best of the declarant’s recollection, he did upon the 9th of March last, and upon a Sunday, as he thinks.

  Declares that, having received a message that some person in the jail of Edinburgh wanted to see him, he went there and found it was either Smith or Ainslie who had been inquiring for him; but the declarant, when going there, was told by the keeper that neither Smith nor Ainslie could be seen; and that this was the night preceding his departure from Edinburgh.

  Being interrogated, If reports had not been going of the Excise Office having been broke into the week before the declarant left Edinburgh, if he, the declarant, would have taken that step? – declares that it was not in consequence of that report that he left Edinburgh, but that the declarant, being acquainted with Smith and Ainslie, then in custody, did not know what they might be induced to say to his prejudice, was the cause of his going away.

  A mischievous thought to share with readers on leaving this chapter: looking around central Amsterdam on the Brodie trail, this writer noticed that the entrance to the Royal Palace on Dam Square (once the Stadhuis where Brodie was held after arrest) was ‘guarded’ by four ornate, cast-iron lampposts, each bearing the inscription ‘Dixon, Amsterdam, 1844’. Though the designer was Tetar van Elven, the Dixon founder’s credit prompted a double take – and, considering there could never have been many folk of that English name in Holland, some fantasising as to what might have lain behind what looks like a tribute to someone called Dixon, from someone else called Dixon.

  A son, perhaps? Just imagine the last few nights of fugitive Brodie in a lonely room in Amsterdam, within easy walking distance of the Red Light area. Would he have been tempted to strike up a ‘professional’ relationship with one of the city’s famous working girls? Did she come back to his room? Did he give her his ‘safe’ name (John Dixon)? Might she have become pregnant and given the resulting son his father’s surname? And might that son have grown up to learn the story of his father’s incarceration at what was by then the country’s most conspicuous royal palace? Was he the proprietor of an iron foundry? He would have been 58 at the time.

  In the time-honoured manner of journalists not wishing to spoil a good story by seeking out too many facts, we confess to not entirely pursuing this inventive thought – to not checking it at all, actually. So should any member of the Amsterdam Dixon family rise up in protest at such an outrageous suggestion, pre-emptive profuse apologies are herewith extended. In any case, the lampposts were cleaned and painted rich green in 1997 and are well worth a second look.

  5

  THE LAST LETTERS OF HIS LIFE

  No doubt about it, William Brodie was good with his hands. With no small thanks to his father’s teachings, he could guide a plane and bevel an edge with a true artisan’s skills, and even when fleeing the country could write a concerned letter asking after ‘my quadrant and spirit level … my brass-cased measuring line, and three-foot rule’. And in the very writing of such a letter there was a clear manual dexterity, if not an artistic bent, in the fluent flow of his copperplate handwriting – which is still to be seen in existing letters such as his last-minute plea to the Duchess of Buccleuch to use her influence in having his death sentence changed to transportation to Botany Bay, where ‘in that Infant Collony I might be usefull, from my knowledge in severall Mechanical branches besides my own particular Profession’ (see chapter 7). Also in his letters there was a certain erudition to be seen, as well as the occasional classical turn of phrase that obviously sprang from his expensive Edinburgh education.

  Pen and ink were therefore essential travelling companions for him, even while being pursued across the North Sea. He clearly needed to write – about his mindset and predicament and concerns for his various families, whether illegitimate children or fighting cocks – and in looking back at the last letters of his life, penned aboard his escape ship or in his death-row cell in the Tollbooth prison, we get a fairly clear picture of the delusions and denials of a self-destroyed man trying to hang on to the last threads of normalcy.

  Three of those missives – written mainly at sea – found their way back to Scotland through the cautious kindness of the aforementioned fellow-travelle
r John Geddes of Mid-Calder, who eventually released them to the authorities. However, he did not do so without some prevarication, doubt and a growing curiosity about them which eventually – on discovering that the letter-writer and shipmate he had known as John Dixon was in fact Deacon Brodie – led to the frowned-upon opening of the letters.

  This was recalled during Brodie’s trial, where the tobacconist’s wife, Margaret, set the shipboard scene:

  I was in London with my husband in March last, and went with him on board of a vessel bound for Leith. One night, when it was dark, a person, whom I now see a prisoner at the bar, and some others with him, came on board. The prisoner remained on board, but the others went ashore in about half-an-hour afterwards.

  I think the person had a wig on when he came on board, and he appeared to be in bad health. He passed by the name of John Dixon. The vessel sailed for the coast of Holland, and when she arrived there the prisoner went on shore. I saw my husband receive a packet of letters from Mr Dixon; but I know nothing more of them. I never saw these letters afterwards.

  Not so her husband, who was first asked by Solicitor-General Robert Dundas: ‘Do you know the prisoner … would you know that person again?’

  Geddes replied: ‘I would.’

  Dundas continued, ‘Look at the prisoners at the bar and say if you know either of them.’ (Here Geddes identified Brodie as the man who called himself John Dixon aboard ship.)

  Geddes continued:

  On getting out to sea Mr Dixon delivered to the captain a letter from [ship owners] Mr Hamilton or Mr Pinkerton, but, although I desired him to let me read it, I did not see it. In consequence of this, the captain altered his course and steered for Holland, and the vessel, although bound for Leith, sailed to Flushing. I do not think she was driven there by contrary winds, as the wind was south-west, and fairer for Newcastle or Leith than for Holland.