A NARROW ESCAPE.
An innocent man narrowly escaped death through an artful plot which led to a mistake of identity, but which fortunately, at the eleventh hour, was brought home to its criminal contrivers. A certain Mr. Henderson, a respectable merchant of Edinburgh, was in 1726 charged with the forgery of an acceptance, signed by the Duchess of Gordon, although, as a matter of fact, he was ignorant of the whole affair. In the year mentioned it was discovered that a man named Petrie, who filled the post of town officer or constable in Leith, held a bill for £58 which purported on the face of it to have been drawn by George Henderson on the Duchess of Gordon, accepted by her, and paid over by Henderson to a Mrs. Macleod. This Mrs. Macleod owed a sum of money to Petrie, and she begged him for a further advance, which he made, to the amount of £6, Mrs. Macleod lodging with him as security the acceptance which she had received from Henderson. Petrie took no action on the bill in the way of demanding payment from the Duchess of Gordon; this was at the instance of Mrs. Macleod, who assured him that her Grace was at that time engaged in special devotional exercises, and that the Duchess’s agent was absent from Edinburgh. Petrie was put off with other excuses. Mrs. Macleod continued to beg him to hold over the bill, and brought him a letter to the same effect purporting to come from Henderson. Petrie, although suspicious as to the genuineness of the bill, took no steps, and the matter came out otherwise; whereupon the Edinburgh magistrates issued a warrant for the arrest of the three parties—Petrie, Henderson, and Mrs. Macleod. Petrie was almost immediately exonerated, but Mrs. Macleod gave such evidence against Henderson that he was held to be fully incriminated, and was put back for trial. Mrs. Macleod asserted positively that the bill had been given her by Henderson.
In due course Henderson was arraigned. Several witnesses swore positively that they had seen Henderson sign documents, especially an acknowledgment of a debt to Mrs. Macleod. One, a man named Gibson, declared that the signature had been given in his own house by Henderson, and in his presence and that of other witnesses. He appears to have identified Henderson in the dock, asserting that he had often previously seen him and been in his company. Gibson further declared that Henderson wore a suit of dark-coloured clothes, and a black wig such as he now appeared in.
Henderson’s defence was that he knew absolutely nothing of the whole proceeding. His counsel adduced in his favour that he was a man of excellent character, and his demeanour at the trial, his straightforward answers to all interrogatories, and the outward appearance of truth in all his details, no doubt made an impression upon the Court. The Lord Advocate, his prosecutor, pressed hard for a conviction, on the ground that the forgery of the bill had been fully proved. The judges, however, stayed proceedings, and postponed decision until the following session.
Now, when the case looked blackest against Henderson, a mere chance interposed to save him. The Lord Advocate, who seems to have had no doubt of his guilt, was on his way northward to spend the recess, when he paid a visit on the way to a Mr. Rose, of Kilravock. One day Mr. Rose took his lordship to see a house he was building, and while inspecting it Mr. Rose missed one of the carpenters. On inquiring what had become of him, the foreman took Mr. Rose aside and privately told him that the man, hearing the Lord Advocate was at Kilravock, had absconded, saying it was time for him to leave the country. The man in question, by name David Household, had gone to the coast, proposing to take ship for London. Mr. Rose felt it his duty to inform the Lord Advocate, and the foreman was questioned as to whether the carpenter had been guilty of any crime. The answer was that Household was suspected of being accessory to a forgery. The Lord Advocate forthwith despatched a messenger to the coast, who apprehended Household, and carried him prisoner to Edinburgh. Household was brought before the Court at the beginning of the winter session and questioned, when he confessed that he had been party to a very scandalous and deliberate fraud. Early in the year Mrs. Macleod had come to him and asked him to write out for her the very bill or acceptance for the forgery of which George Henderson was charged. Household admitted that he had penned the whole document, and had imitated the signatures of Henderson, both as drawer and endorser of the bill, but that he had not written the name of Gordon. Household further deposed that he had assumed, at Mrs. Macleod’s request, the identity of George Henderson; that she had given him for the personation a coat belonging to her husband, and a black-knotted periwig; that she had carried him to a gardener’s house at the Water-Gate, where she had dictated to him a part of the obligation which had been produced in court; and had then taken him on to a house in the Canon-Gate (Gibson’s), where he (Household) had written the rest of the document, and signed it
“George Henderson” in the presence of the various witnesses whom Mrs. Macleod had produced. He also confessed that he had written the letter which Mrs. Macleod had given Petrie as coming from George Henderson. Finally, after Mrs. Macleod’s arrest, a Highlander had come to him with a message from Mr. Macleod urging him to leave the country for his own safety. Household, however, did not take flight until the appearance of the Lord Advocate at Kilravock; then he went to Leith, and hid himself on board ship, where he was discovered by a Customs officer, and eventually arrested.
This evidence changed the whole character of the trial, and the Lord Advocate was the first to admit that Henderson was innocent of the forgery, which was now fixed upon Mrs. Macleod. The records of the case do not give any definite information as to who actually signed the Duchess’s name to the bill, but when Mrs. Macleod was finally arraigned this forgery was laid to her charge, and her offence must have been satisfactorily proved to the jury, for she was found guilty and sentenced to death. Two law officers, the Lord Advocate and the Solicitor-General, characterised the whole “as an artful and horrid contrivance, only discovered by the good providence of God.” It is stated in the account published that Mrs. Macleod went to her execution dressed in a black robe with a large hoop, and a white fan in her hand. When on the gallows she herself took off the ornamental parts of her dress, and put the fatal cord about her neck with her own hands. She persisted to the last in denying her guilt.