An Edinburgh merchant and magistrate, named Sir Alexander Brand, who has been already under our attention as a manufacturer of gilt leather hangings, at one time presented an overture to the Estates for the cleaning of the city. The modesty of the opening sentence will strike the reader: ‘Seeing the nobility and gentry of Scotland are, when they are abroad, esteemed by all nations to be the finest and most accomplished people in Europe, yet it’s to be regretted that it’s always casten up to them by strangers, who admire them for their singular qualifications, that they are born in a nation that has the nastiest cities in the world, especially the metropolitan.’ He offered to clean the city daily, and give five hundred a year for the refuse.[[733]] But his views do not seem to have been carried into effect.
After 1730, when, as we have seen, great changes were beginning to take place in Scotland, increased attention was paid to external decency and cleanliness. The Edinburgh magistrates were anxious to put down the system of cleaning by ejectment. We learn, for example, from a newspaper, that a servant-girl having thrown foul water from a fourth story in Skinners’ Close, ‘which much abused a lady passing by, was brought before the bailies, |1735.| and obliged to enact herself never to be guilty of the like practices in future. ’Tis hoped,’ adds our chronicler, ‘that this will be a caution to all servants to avoid this wicked practice.’
There lived at this time in Edinburgh a respectable middle-aged man, named Robert Mein, the representative of the family which had kept the post-office for three generations between the time of the civil war and the reign of George I., and who boasted that the pious lady usually called Jenny Geddes, but actually Barbara Hamilton, who threw the stool in St Giles’s in 1637, was his great-grandmother. Mein, being a man of liberal ideas, and a great lover of his native city, desired to see it rescued from the reproach under which it had long lain as the most fetid of European capitals, and he accordingly drew up a paper, shewing how the streets might be kept comparatively clean by a very simple arrangement. His suggestion was, that there should be provided for each house, at the expense of the landlord, a vessel sufficient to contain the refuse of a day, and that scavengers, feed by a small subscription among the tenants, should discharge these every night. Persons paying what was then a very common rent, ten pounds, would have to contribute only five shillings a year; those paying fifteen pounds, 7s. 6d., and so on in proportion. The projector appears to have first explained his plan to sundry gentlemen of consideration—as, for example, Mr William Adam, architect, and Mr Colin Maclaurin, professor of mathematics, who gave him their approbation of it in writing—the latter adding: ‘I subscribe for my own house in Smith’s Land, Niddry’s Wynd, fourth story, provided the neighbours agree to the same.’ Other subscribers of consequence were obtained, as ‘Jean Gartshore, for my house in Morocco’s Close, which is £15 rent,’ and ‘the Countess of Haddington, for the lodging she possessed in Bank Close, Lawnmarket, valued rent £20.’ Many persons agreed to pay a half-penny or a penny weekly; some as much as a half-penny per pound of rent per month. One lady, however, came out boldly as a recusant—‘Mrs Black refuses to agree, and acknowledges she throws over.’[[734]]
Mr Mein’s plan was adopted, and acted upon to some extent by the magistrates; and the terrible memory of the ‘Dirty Luggies,’ which were kept in the stairs, or in the passages within doors, as a necessary part of the arrangement, was fresh in the minds of old people whom I knew in early life. The city was in 1740 |1735.| divided into twenty-nine districts, each having a couple of scavengers supported at its own expense, who were bound to keep it clean; while the refuse was sold to persons who engaged to cart it away at three half-pence per cart-load.[[735]]
1736. Jan. 9.
Five men, who had suffered from the severity of the excise laws, having formed the resolution of indemnifying themselves, broke into the house of Mr James Stark, collector of excise, at Pittenweem, and took away money to the extent of two hundred pounds, besides certain goods. They were described as ‘Andrew Wilson, indweller in Pathhead; George Robertson, stabler without Bristoport [Edinburgh]; William Hall, indweller in Edinburgh; John Frier, indweller there; and John Galloway, servant to Peter Galloway, horse-hirer in Kinghorn.’ Within three days, the whole of them were taken and brought to Edinburgh under a strong guard.
Wilson, Robertson, and Hall were tried on the 2d of March, and condemned to suffer death on the ensuing 14th of April. Five days before that appointed for the execution—Hall having meanwhile been reprieved—Wilson and Robertson made an attempt to escape from the condemned cell of the Old Tolbooth, but failed in consequence of Wilson, who was a squat man, sticking in the grated window. Two days later, the two prisoners being taken, according to custom, to attend service in the adjacent church, Wilson seized two of the guard with his hands, and a third with his teeth, so as to enable Robertson, who knocked down the fourth, to get away. The citizens, whose sympathies went strongly with the men as victims of the excise laws, were much excited by these events, and the authorities were apprehensive that the execution of Wilson would not pass over without an attempt at rescue. The apprehension was strongly shared by John Porteous, captain of the town-guard, who consequently became excited to a degree disqualifying him for so delicate a duty as that of guarding the execution. When the time came, the poor smuggler was duly suspended from the gallows in the Grassmarket, without any disturbance; but when the hangman proceeded to cut down the body, the populace began to throw stones, and the detested official was obliged to take refuge among the men of the guard. Porteous, needlessly infuriated by this demonstration, seized a musket, and fired among the crowd, commanding his men to do the same. |1735.| There was consequently a full fusillade, attended by the instant death of six persons, and the wounding of nine more.
The magistrates being present at the windows of a tavern close by, it was inexcusable of Porteous to have fired without their orders, even had there been any proper occasion for so strong a measure. As it was, he had clearly committed manslaughter on an extensive scale, and was liable to severe punishment. By the public at large he was regarded as a ferocious murderer, who could scarcely expiate with his own life the wrongs he had done to his fellow-citizens. Accordingly, when subjected to trial for murder on the ensuing 5th of July, condemnation was almost a matter of course.
The popular antipathy to the excise laws, the general hatred in which Porteous was held as a harsh official, and a man of profligate life, and the indignation at his needlessly taking so many innocent lives, combined to create a general rejoicing over the issue of the trial. There were some, however, chiefly official persons and their connections, who were not satisfied as to the fairness of his assize, and, whether it was fair or not, felt it to be hard to punish what was at most an excess in the performance of public duty, with death. On a representation of the case to the queen, who was at the head of a regency during the absence of her husband in Hanover, a respite of six weeks was granted, five days before that appointed for the execution.[[736]]
1736.