At Bow Street two trunks belonging to Brodie were opened, and in one of them was found a bundle of papers. Among these were two draft letters or unsigned scrolls, afterwards produced at the trial, and printed in the following report, which throw much interesting light upon the writer’s position and prospects. They were evidently intended for friends in Edinburgh, and written subsequent to the letters which he had intrusted to the treacherous Geddes. He writes—“I hope to embark in the first ship for America, to whatever port she is bound, which will probably be Charlestown, South Carolina, as there is a ship lying-to for that port. I will settle there, if I think I can do better than at Philadelphia or New York.” He asks his correspondent to inform him “what has been done with the two unfortunate men Smith and Ainslie, and the greater villain, John Brown alias Humphry Moore? Was John Murray alias Jack Tasker brought from England? I shall ever repent keeping such company; and whatever they may allege, I had no direct concern in any of their depredations, excepting the last fatal one, by which I lost ten pounds in cash. But I doubt not all will be laid to my charge, and some that I never heard of.” The last quoted passage told strongly against him at the trial, and it is difficult to see why he had preserved such compromising documents.
In the same trunk was found an account or state of Brodie’s affairs prepared by himself on 24th March, the day after he embarked in the “Endeavour.” This document was founded on in the indictment and produced at the trial; but Creech tells us, in the introduction to his report, that, “although laid on the table for the inspection of the jury, yet, being of a private nature and not necessarily connected with the crime charged, the jury had too much delicacy to look into; and it is hoped the same motive will be a sufficient apology for not laying it before the public.” It was, accordingly, not published in any of the contemporary accounts of the trial, and is now for the first time printed in the following report from the original MS. in the Justiciary Office. From this most interesting document we are able to learn the financial position of Deacon Brodie at the time of his flight, and it is surprising to find that he brings out a balance in his favour of upwards of £1800.
Our old friend, George Williamson, the King’s Messenger, was sent from Edinburgh to conduct the reluctant Deacon back to his native city. On the journey north, Williamson tells us, “Mr. Brodie was in good spirits, and told many things that had happened to him in Holland.” Among other items of interest, he mentioned that, while in Amsterdam, he had formed the acquaintance of a gentleman living in that city on the proceeds of a successful forgery committed upon the Bank of Scotland. Forgery was a branch of the learned professions which the Deacon had hitherto neglected, and he was receiving instruction from this obliging practitioner, when his studies were abruptly terminated by Mr. Daly’s call. “Brodie said he was a very ingenious fellow, and that, had
George Williamson, King’s Messenger for Scotland.
(After Kay.)
it not been for his own apprehension, he would have been master of the process in a week.” Before arriving in Edinburgh the Deacon, ever careful of his personal appearance, was anxious to obtain a shave—a luxury to which, in the turmoil of his affairs, the dapper gentleman had been for some days a stranger. Williamson, afraid to trust a razor to one so circumstanced, himself essayed the task. His intention must have been superior to his execution, for, when the operation was over, the patient remarked, “George, if you’re no better at your own business than at shaving, a person may employ you once, but I’ll be d——d if ever he does so again!”
On 17th July the Caledonian Mercury was able to announce to its readers—“This morning early Mr. Brodie arrived from London. He was immediately carried to the house of Mr. Sheriff Cockburn, 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. They were only fifty-four hours on the road.”
While their leader was enlarging his experience of life on the Continent, Smith and Ainslie had varied the monotony of existence in the Tolbooth by a vigorous attempt to regain their liberty. We read in the Scots Magazine for May, 1788, that “in the night between the 4th and 5th of May, George Smith, prisoner in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, accused of shop-breaking and theft, had the ingenuity to make his way from his own apartment to that of Andrew Ainslie, a supposed accomplice in the same crimes, though Ainslie’s room was situated two storeys above that occupied by Smith. This, it would appear, was achieved by his converting the iron handle of the jack or bucket of the necessary into a pick-lock, and one of the iron hoops round the bucket into a saw. By a dextrous use of these instruments Smith took off one door from the hinges, and opened the other which led to Ainslie’s apartment. They then both set to work, and cut a hole through the ceiling of Ainslie’s room, as well as through the roof of the prison itself. Luckily, however, the falling of the slates and lime into the street, between three and four o’clock in the morning, attracted the attention of the sentinel upon duty, who immediately gave the alarm, and the inner keeper had them soon after properly secured. In order to let themselves down from the top of the prison they had prepared 16 fathoms of rope, which they had artfully manufactured out of the sheets of their beds.”
This daring and ingenious bid for freedom deserved a better fate, and it is a testimony to Smith’s skill that he was able to achieve so much by means so grotesquely inadequate. Little wonder that, with liberty and his tools, he was a competent and successful practitioner.
Mr. Brown, that unamiable informer, was, strangely enough, also at this time an inmate of the Tolbooth. The Edinburgh Magazine for the same month gives an account of his arrest, along with George White, tanner, and William Peacock, flesher, charged with being concerned in the murder of James M‘Arthur, change-keeper in Halkerston’s Wynd, during a quarrel in the latter’s house—“alleged not to be one of very good repute”—in which M‘Arthur was fatally assaulted with a bottle. The consequences of this regrettable incident were, so far as Brown was concerned, averted by the pardon aftermentioned. White, however, was brought to trial and found guilty of culpable homicide.