The Old Excise Office, Chessel’s Court, Canongate.
(From a Drawing by Bruce J. Home.)
every nerve to discover the guilty author, calmly officiate upon a jury to judge of the crimes of others. But, although he may have laughed in his sleeve at this ironical situation—for he had a pretty wit, and doubtless relished the humour of it keenly—fate had prepared for him one yet more dramatic. A few months later he himself would sit in that dock on trial for his life, the same counsel would conduct the prosecution, the same judges occupy the bench; but the verdict would be a different one, and the sentence to follow upon it, death.
Undisturbed by any shadow of coming disaster, and emboldened by his previous successes, Deacon Brodie now decided to carry out a robbery upon a grander scale than any he had previously attempted, the daring and danger of which were commensurate with the advantages to be gained. The General Excise Office for Scotland was at that period kept in a large mansion, enclosed by a parapet wall and iron railing, situated in Chessel’s Court, Canongate. The building had formerly been occupied as a dwelling-house, and was by no means a secure repository for the great sums of money which in those days were collected there from all parts of the country. The Deacon, in his professional capacity, was familiar with the arrangements of the office, his men having at various times executed repairs on the premises. A connection of his, Mr. Corbett, of Stirling, too, was in the habit of coming to Edinburgh frequently on Excise business, and Brodie took the opportunity of accompanying him upon these occasions with a view to studying how the land lay.
Having learned all that was necessary for his purpose, the Deacon went one day to the office with Smith, on pretence of inquiring for Mr. Corbett, and while he thus engaged the attention of the cashier, Smith took an impression in putty of the key of the outer door, which, according to the prevailing ingenuous custom, was hung upon a nail inside it. From this Brodie prepared a drawing of the wards, and Smith filed a key of similar pattern. The next step was to ascertain the habits of the watchman who guarded the premises, and for this purpose Ainslie—whose department seems to have been scouting—was deputed to observe the office on several successive nights. He found that it was usually closed for the day at eight o’clock; that when all the clerks had left the outer door was locked, and the key taken to Mr. Dundas, “the housekeeper,” who lived in the court, and that the night watchman did not come on duty until ten o’clock. The Excise Office was thus left wholly unguarded between the hours of eight and ten at night.
Smith and Brown had already tried the efficiency of the new key, which readily opened the outer door, but the lock of the inner door to the cashier’s room refused to yield to their persuasive methods. Smith was of opinion that its resistance could only be overcome by violence, observing that the coulter of a plough would be a suitable instrument for that purpose. Accordingly, on the afternoon of Friday, 28th February, Ainslie and Brown repaired to Duddingston as a likely spot for picking up such an implement. Having refreshed themselves after their walk with a bottle of porter at a house in the village, they entered a field in the neighbourhood, where they had seen a man ploughing, and, when his back was turned, removed the coulter of the plough and two iron wedges, which on their way home by the King’s Park they hid in Salisbury Crags. Unfortunately for themselves and Smith, they were accompanied upon this country ramble by a black dog, belonging to the latter, named “Rodney,” which, curiously enough, was at a later stage to bear testimony against its master before the Sheriff.
On Tuesday, 4th March, a final consultation was held by the four desperadoes at Smith’s house in the Cowgate to arrange the details of the attack upon the Excise Office, which was fixed for the following night, when, as they had ascertained, it was the turn of an old man, who watched night about with the other porter, to be on guard. According to Smith’s second declaration, “it was concerted by Brodie, in case of interruption by the man coming into the office before the business was accomplished, to conceal themselves quietly until he was gone to rest, and then to secure him; and they were, if this happened, to personate smugglers who came in search of their property that had been seized; and the declarant had a wig of Brodie’s father in his pocket in order to disguise himself.” Little did that decent old gentleman dream to what base uses his respectable wig would one day be assigned by his cynical and degenerate offspring. The Deacon also furnished Smith with a coil of rope to be knotted into a ladder, so that if taken by surprise they could lock the outer door of the office and make good their escape by the back windows into the garden behind. Having decided upon their plan of campaign, the meeting adjourned till the following afternoon.
Wednesday, the 5th of March, 1788, was a busy day for the Deacon. Between two and three o’clock he was back at Smith’s, attired in “the white-coloured clothes he usually wore,” with various requisites for the night’s adventure—pick-locks, false keys, an ivory whistle, “a strong chisel with a brass virral,” and a spur, which was to be left on the scene of the robbery, “to make it believed it had been done by some person on horseback, in order that it might appear, when found, to have dropped from the foot by its being torn by accident at the buckle.”
By three o’clock he was presiding in his own dining-room, with the panel painting and the great arched window, at a dinner-party consisting of his aunt, his two sisters, Matthew Sheriff, his brother-in-law, and “a stranger gentleman” whose identity was not disclosed. “We drank together,” says Mr. Sheriff, “from dinner to tea, which I think was brought in about six o’clock, and then the stranger gentleman went away.” Probably he thought discretion the better part of valour. The brothers-in-law, however, continued the sederunt till shortly before eight o’clock, when Sheriff retired to his residence in Bunker’s Hill—the name by which St. James’ Square was then known. The moment his guest had gone the Deacon, hastily attiring himself in an old-fashioned black suit, a cocked hat, and a light-coloured great-coat, put his pistols and dark lantern in his pocket, and hurried off to the business of the evening.
It had been arranged that the gang should assemble at Smith’s house at seven o’clock, since which hour the others had been impatiently awaiting their leader’s arrival. The Deacon was in a merry mood; his spirits were high as his hopes, and the potations of the afternoon had doubtless contributed to their elation. He burst in upon his anxious friends with a pistol in his hand, singing a stave from his favourite “Beggar’s Opera”—