upon whose assistance he would principally have to rely. He therefore promptly called upon his cousin—whose name was considerately withheld in the subsequent proceedings—and explained the situation. This gentleman’s feelings, as he listened to the disclosures of his respectable relative, may readily be imagined. But the honour of the family was at stake, and he seems to have done everything he could to further the Deacon’s plans. The necessary arrangements made, early in the forenoon of Sunday, 9th March, while the good folks of Edinburgh were still in church, Deacon Brodie burnt his boats and stole secretly out of the city.
Had the Deacon’s confidence in the loyalty of his late companions been stronger, it is possible he might even yet have weathered the storm, for neither Smith nor Ainslie in the declarations emitted by them on the Saturday had admitted their guilt or made any reference to his connection with them. So far, therefore, the statements of Brown were uncorroborated; and if, in modern parlance, Brodie had decided “to face the music” and remain in Edinburgh, his fortunes might have taken a different turn.
In the course of Smith’s first examination before the Sheriff a curious incident occurred. He was confronted with the ploughman, John Kinnear, whose coulter had been stolen by Ainslie and Brown as before narrated, in order to try if that person could identify him. Kinnear, never having seen him before, failed to do so. At this moment, however, Smith’s dog “Rodney,” having followed his master to the Sheriff-Clerk’s Office, came into the room, and the ploughman at once recognised it as the black dog which he had seen with the men in the field at Duddingston. The animal ran up to Smith and fawned upon him, thus, in spite of his denial, establishing the fact of his ownership. “Rodney” figures in Kay’s sketch of the first meeting of Brodie and Smith.
On Monday, 10th March, Smith, learning that the Deacon had decamped, and no doubt hoping to secure more favourable terms for himself, sent for the Sheriff and informed him “that he wished to have an opportunity of making a clean breast and telling the truth.” He thereupon emitted his second declaration, laying bare the whole operations of the gang, and implicating Brodie to the fullest extent, his admissions being afterwards confirmed by Ainslie.
The following paragraph appeared next day in the Edinburgh Evening Courant:—“The depredations that have been committed by housebreakers in and about this city for this some time past have been no less alarming than the art with which they have been executed, and the concealment that has attended them has been surprising. From a discovery, however, just made, there is reason to hope that a stop will soon be put to such acts of atrocious villainy. With what amazement must it strike every friend to virtue and honesty to find that a person is charged with a crime of the above nature who very lately held a distinguished rank among his fellow-citizens? With what pity and compunction must we view the unfortunate victim who falls a sacrifice to justice for having violated the laws of his country, to which violation he was perhaps impelled by necessity, when rank, ease, and opulence are forfeited in endeavouring to gratify the most sordid avarice? For to what other cause than avarice can we impute the late robbery committed upon the Excise Office, when the situation of the supposed perpetrator is considered? No excuse from necessity can be pled for a man in the enjoyment of thousands, who will run the risk of life, honour, and reputation in order to attain the unlawful possession of what could in a very trifling degree add to his supposed happiness.—See the advertisement from the Sheriff-Clerk’s Office.”
The advertisement to which this article refers—a copy of which will be found in the Appendix—was the offer by the Procurator-Fiscal of a reward of two hundred pounds for the apprehension of “William Brodie, a considerable house carpenter, and burgess of the city of Edinburgh,” together with the minute and somewhat unflattering description of that gentleman’s personal appearance, to which we have already alluded. So the murder was out at last, and the ex-Town Councillor became a fugitive from justice with a price upon his head.
In consequence of the revelations of Smith, the officers of justice proceeded on Monday, 10th March, to search the house in Brodie’s Close. There Smith, who accompanied them, unearthed the Deacon’s pistols, buried in his woodyard. His dark lantern, several pick-locks, and a parcel of false keys were also found—the first “in a pen where game-cocks had been
kept”—together with “a black case, with a lid to it, the case full of potty,” with which it had been the Deacon’s amiable habit to take impressions of his friends’ door keys, and of which Smith remarked that he “approved of Brodie keeping the potty in a case, as the lid prevented an impression of a key, when taken, from being defaced.” On a subsequent occasion, Smith conducted the sheriff-officers to the foot of Warriston’s Close, where the iron crow—“Little Samuel”—the “toupee tongs,” and the false key for the Excise Office door were discovered hidden “in an old dyke.” The Deacon’s dark lantern and twenty-five false keys were, on 13th December, 1841, presented by the then Clerk of Justiciary to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, in whose museum they still remain.
On Tuesday, 11th March, George Williamson, King’s Messenger for Scotland, was deputed to search for the missing Deacon. He tried several of Brodie’s haunts in Edinburgh and Leith—even examining the enclosed tombs in Greyfriars Churchyard, which had more than once sheltered living offenders against the law—but without success. Prosecuting his inquiries along the London Road, Williamson first got scent of his quarry at Dunbar, which the fugitive had left at four o’clock on the Sunday afternoon in a post-chaise, and afterwards traced him to Newcastle, where he had taken the “Flying Mercury” light coach for York and London. From the coachman of that vehicle Williamson learned that Deacon Brodie had left the coach at the foot of Old Street, Moorfields, instead of proceeding to the “Bull and Mouth,” where the coach stopped, and there all trace of him was lost. His pursuer repaired to the billiard tables, hazard tables, cock-pits, tennis courts, and other likely places, without hearing anything of him, and pushed his inquiries as far as Margate, Deal, and Dover, with the like result. Finally, after eighteen days’ fruitless search, the King’s Messenger was compelled to return to Edinburgh and confess himself at fault.
We must now, in our turn, set forth in search of Mr. Brodie; and as to his doings after leaving Edinburgh we have the evidence of his own letter to Michael Henderson. He writes—“Were I to write you all that has happened to me, and the hair-breadth escapes I made from a well-scented pack of bloodhounds, it would make a small volume. I arrived in London on Wednesday, 12th March, where I remained snug and safe in the house of an old female friend until Sunday, 23rd March (whose care for me I shall never forget, and only wish I may ever have it in my power to reward her sufficiently), within five hundred yards of Bow Street. I did not keep the house all this time, but so altered, excepting the scar under my eye, I think you could not have rapt [swore] to me. I saw Mr. Williamson twice; but although countrymen commonly shake hands when they meet from home, yet I did not choose to make so free with him notwithstanding he brought a letter to me. He is a clever man, and I give him credit for his conduct. My female gave me great uneasiness by introducing a flash man to me, but she assured me he was a true man, and he proved himself so, notwithstanding the great reward, and was useful to me. I saw my picture [his description in the newspapers] six hours before, exhibited to public view, and my intelligence of what was doing at Bow Street Office was as good as ever I had in Edinburgh. I make no doubt but that designing villain Brown is now in high favour with Mr. Cockburn [the Sheriff], for I can see some strokes of his pencil in my portrait. May God forgive him for all his crimes and falsehoods.” It is evident that the impartial terms of this description were unpalatable to its subject.
The scar to which the Deacon here alludes was a souvenir of his membership of the club in the Fleshmarket Close, and the occasion of his receiving it is thus referred to in the answers of Hamilton, the master sweep, in the process before mentioned—“Mr. Brodie, in all his innocent amusements, never met with any person who, after having been fleeced of money to the amount of a hundred pounds, and detected of the vile and dishonest methods by which it had been abstracted