| The first meeting of Deacon Brodie and George Smith, | [Frontispiece] |
| Foot of Brodie’s Close, Cowgate, | facing page [12] |
| Cock-fighting Match between the Counties of Lanark and Haddington in 1785, | “ [15] |
| Head of Brodie’s Close, Lawnmarket, | “ [25] |
| The Old Excise Office, Chessel’s Court, Canongate, | “ [31] |
| Deacon Brodie’s Dark Lanthorn and False Keys, | “ [43] |
| George Williamson, King’s Messenger for Scotland, | “ [50] |
| George Smith at the Bar, | “ [55] |
| The Old Tolbooth of Edinburgh, | “ [62] |
| Deacon Brodie, | “ [66] |
| The Solicitor-General (Robert Dundas), | “ [81] |
| Lord Hailes, | “ [105] |
| Lord Eskgrove, | “ [113] |
| Lord Stonefield, | “ [130] |
| Charles Hay (afterwards Lord Newton), | “ [160] |
| The Lord Advocate (Ilay Campbell), | “ [165] |
| John Clerk (afterwards Lord Eldin), | “ [174] |
| The Dean of Faculty (Hon. Henry Erskine), | “ [181] |
| The Lord Justice-Clerk (Lord Braxfield), | “ [197] |
| Facsimile of first page of MS. Register in the Brodie Family Bible, | “ [238] |
| Facsimile of Deacon Brodie’s Letter to the Duchess of Buccleuch, | “ [269] |
DEACON BRODIE.
INTRODUCTION.
FEW cities have preserved more faithfully than Edinburgh the traditions of former days, and none is richer in the material of romance. Throughout the length of the Royal mile extending from Holyrood to the Castle Hill, each tortuous wynd and narrow close owns its peculiar association, each obscure court and towering “land” has contributed, if but by a footnote, to the volume of the city’s history. And where these visible memorials have perished beneath the slow assault of time, or succumbed to the more lethal methods of modern improvement, the legends which they embodied survive their dissolution and serve in turn to perpetuate their fame.
Of the many memories that haunt the lover of old Edinburgh, wandering to-day among the vestiges of her romantic and insanitary past, perhaps the most curious is that of William Brodie, Deacon of the Wrights and doyen of the double life; by day “a considerable house carpenter” and member of the Town Council; by night a housebreaker and the companion of thieves.
It is nearly a hundred and twenty years since Deacon Brodie played out his twofold part at the west end of the Luckenbooths one grey October afternoon in 1788; but the close in the Lawnmarket which bears his name remains to this day. Here he was born and lived, man and boy, robber and decent burgess, for many reputable years; here his old father passed away, happy in the possession of so excellent a son; and from hence did the son essay that “last fatal” adventure, the issue of which was, for him, discovery and the scaffold.
The house itself has long since vanished—a victim to the indiscriminate destruction which has swept away so much else worthy of preservation. You can no longer see the heavy oaken door with the cunning lock of the Deacon’s own contriving, and the turnpike stair down which, with mask and lantern, he so often stole at midnight upon his secret and criminous affairs. But if you follow him in fancy down the High Street and past the Nether Bow, to where a gloomy “pend” leads into Chessel’s Court, you will find the tall front of the old Excise Office still rising within its “palisadoes,” behind which lurked the trembling Ainslie; and if it be about the dusk of the evening, and your imagination is informed with the spirit of the place, you may even see the man rush wildly forth from the doorway up the court, and hear, in the succeeding silence, the three blasts of an ivory whistle.
The trial of Deacon Brodie has many claims upon the attention of a later age. It is of value to the antiquarian for the vivid picture it presents of the manners and customs of our forbears at a time when the life of Edinburgh yet flowed in the ancient arteries of the old city on the ridge, although beginning to circulate more freely in the spacious thoroughfares of the New Town already invading the fields across the valley. To the lawyer it is notable as affording a singularly graphic view of the old-time practice of our criminal Courts, as well as for the galaxy of legal talent engaged upon its conduct—with such men as Braxfield on the bench and Henry Erskine and John Clerk at the bar the proceedings could lack neither picturesqueness nor importance. The psychologic interest of the chief actor’s character and the dramatic elements in which his career abounds make a more general appeal; and so long as human nature remains the same will the story of the Deacon’s downfall be accorded an indulgent hearing.
That story had for Robert Louis Stevenson a strong attraction. As early as 1864 he prepared the draft of a play founded upon it, which—after being at various times re-cast—finally took shape in the melodrama, “Deacon Brodie, or the Double Life,” written in collaboration with the late W. E. Henley, and published in 1892. It may even be that the conception of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” was suggested to Stevenson by his study of the dual nature so strikingly exemplified in his earlier hero; while in other of his writings he has touched the Deacon with a felicitous and kindly hand.