A Journal of the Deacon Brodie Summer:

The Diary of George Sandy 1788

George Sandy’s cases: deacon brodie and peter young

1.deacon brodie

The spring and summer of 1788 saw the making of an Edinburgh legend, the scandal of William “Deacon” Brodie, a prominent and respected Edinburgh businessman and politician who had been living a double life as the leader of a daring gang of housebreakers and thieves. George Sandy’s diary is missing its first 47 pages but begins in the middle of an intense retelling of the capture and confession of Brodie’s partners in crime, and the search for Brodie acts as a thrilling backdrop to the diary as the summer wears on. Unfortunately, Sandy’s diary gives out before the beginning of Brodie’s trial in late August of 1788, and we do not have his impressions of an event that he would have watched with interest. 

The details of Brodie’s story are simple, although much remains mysterious. Brodie was a well-known tradesman (a “wright,” a title which encompassed furniture-making, lock-fitting and even minor architecture) and he was Deacon of the Edinburgh Incorporation of Wrights which controlled the local trade. He was living a secret life, which involved a career as a high-stakes gambler and the fathering of children by two mistresses. This second, hidden existence is sometimes used as the rather unsatisfactory explanation for the final part of Brodie’s secret existence: his aforementioned leadership of a gang of daring housebreakers and thieves. His reputed criminal career may have extended over decades, but the crimes which eventually caught up with him were committed in the two years previous to his flight.  

Brodie had been housebreaking in the company of three men – George Smith, Andrew Ainslie and John Brown, the latter a career thief on the run from a sentence of transportation. On a raid on the Excise Office in Edinburgh’s Chessel Court at the beginning of March 1788, the gang were disturbed, but managed to escape. A pardon had been offered following a previous robbery and now Brown took advantage of this, turning King’s evidence, giving the names of Smith and Ainslie and leading the authorities to Salisbury Craigs as described by George Sandy. Brodie fled, initially to London and then to the continent, escaping the efforts of Williamson, the King’s Messenger, which Sandy relates, to capture him. But Brodie gave himself away by sending letters back to Edinburgh, and Williamson was able to secure his arrest in Amsterdam and his return for trial.

Sandy’s account of Deacon Brodie has two points of particular interest. On page 56 of his diary he relates how after an earlier robbery by the Brodie gang, Brodie himself, then unsuspected, was brought in to replace the locks, and whilst doing so, stated “Well I can't conceive how the rogues have got in. I hope they will be taken yet-the rascals I'll be damn'd if I would not make a gallows at my own expense to hang three of them at a time.“ This may be an early iteration of the classic Edinburgh myth that Brodie was hanged on a gallows of his own design.  

On page 82 of his diary Sandy relates “About seven years ago as I remember, one Reid was murdered in Broughton Park. It seems that when Smith was tried before the Sheriff a few days ago, he Confest that he & Brodie were guilty of the said murder.” This rumour survives only in Sandy’s account, and although the known facts of Brodie’s relationship with Smith would appear to rule out any such involvement on their part, it is fascinating as evidence that local discussion of Brodie took matters far beyond mere housebreaking.

2. Peter Young

The case of Peter Young enjoys none of the fame of Deacon Brodie’s but purely in legal terms it is every bit as remarkable. Young was an Aberdonian career criminal, a thief of longstanding who had the reputation of having escaped from every prison in Scotland. Having absconded from Perth Prison in 1786, he was put on trial in Aberdeen for further offences in 1787 and sentenced to death. He again escaped and having regained his freedom returned to a life of crime. He was recaptured – and escaped again. Finally he was brought to earth and eventually taken to the Old Tolbooth prison in Edinburgh. The court case that followed centred on the question as to how the authorities could be certain that the man they now had in custody was the same Peter Young sentenced to death several hundred miles away and several months ago.  

The proceedings were star-studded. The advocates representing Young were Henry Erskine, who had already served as Lord Advocate and was an orator of the very highest ability, and a young Charles Hope, who would go on to be both Lord Advocate and Lord President of the Court of Session: Hope’s portrait hangs at the head of the Grand Stair in the Signet Library. On the bench was the lawyer and historian David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes (builder of the great library at Newhailes on the outskirts of Edinburgh, a collection now in the National Library of Scotland). The case was complex – Charles Hope’s papers on the case survive in the Signet Library (Signet Library SP 603:1) and contain extensive handwritten notes on previous cases and interpretation of the law. Lord Hailes required that parts of Hope’s information to the court be struck off the record: these passages survive in his papers. The case went against Young, and after witnesses swore to his identity he was executed on the 2nd July 1788. George Sandy reports the execution and says “I saw him from Hugh Watson’s windows” without relating whether this was in witness to the execution or merely the prisoner being led to the scaffold.

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The indictment of William Brodie, annotated by Advocate Charles Hope (later Lord Hope of Granton). Signet Library SP 603: 5