Deacon Brodie: The Cabinet Maker Who Led a Double Life

The Timeline

This table pulls the documented dates of Brodie's life into one place. The early dates are his rise as a craftsman and councillor, and the 1788 dates cover the Chessels Court raid, his flight to the Continent, the trial and the hanging. The dates come from the biographical record of William Brodie.

The Respectable Deacon

By day Brodie was exactly the kind of man Edinburgh trusted. Born on 28 September 1741, he was the son of Francis Brodie, Convenor of the Trades, and he worked as a cabinet-maker and a locksmith, which matters for the story, because a locksmith is the one man in the city who understands every lock he will later open. Around 1781 he became Deacon of the Incorporation of Wrights, the craft title that gave history its name for him, and he sat on the town council as well.

He moved in good company. He knew Robert Burns and the painter Henry Raeburn, and he belonged to the Edinburgh Cape Club. His family home and workshop stood in Brodie's Close on the Lawnmarket, on the same street as Deacon Brodie's Tavern, which trades today at 435 Lawnmarket. On the surface he was a man of trade and council.

Below the surface the money ran the other way. He funded gambling and mistresses with the proceeds of crime. The record notes two mistresses who did not know of each other and five children, and his gambling table was a tavern in Fleshmarket Close, an alley off the High Street. Respectability cost money, and burglary paid it.

The Burglaries

From around 1768 Brodie robbed the city's wealthy homes, and his method was the trade he wore in plain sight. He copied keys from wax impressions, so the locks opened as if the owners had let the gang in themselves. The method needed no forced entry.

In 1786 he assembled the gang that ended him: John Brown, George Smith and Andrew Ainslie. The gang's last job was the excise office in Chessels Court on 5 March 1788, the raid that broke the double life.

The tally of that raid is the best-known number in the story. An armed gang led by a town councillor and master locksmith got away with only 16 pounds. John Brown later turned informer and betrayed the others for a King's Pardon.

Chessels Court, 5 March 1788

Chessels Court is a small court off the Canongate, and on 5 March 1788 Brodie led an armed raid on the excise office there. The gang got away with only 16 pounds.

After the raid Brodie left Edinburgh on 9 March 1788, four days after the raid, and reached London on 12 March. On 23 March he sailed on the Endeavour under the false name John Dixon, heading for the Continent and a life he would never get to live.

John Brown had already decided where his own survival lay. He turned informer for a King's Pardon, and his testimony put names, methods and dates in front of the authorities. King's Messenger George Williamson tracked Brodie to Amsterdam and brought the story back to Edinburgh. The man who had robbed the city for nearly two decades was caught not by a locksmith's failure but by his own accomplice.

The Trial and the Hanging

The trial began on 27 August 1788. Brodie and George Smith stood together, and the case against them rested on the evidence of Brown and Ainslie, the two gang members who had traded testimony for their own necks. Both men were found guilty.

He was hanged on 1 October 1788 before a crowd of about 40,000. The execution took place at the Old Tolbooth on the Royal Mile, the same prison that had held famous prisoners such as Agnes Sampson, Thomas Weir and Captain Porteous. Public hangings there took place from a rooftop platform from 1785, three years before Brodie's turn came.

The Heart of Midlothian mosaic on the High Street today marks the Tolbooth's old entrance. One legend places his burial in an unmarked grave at St Cuthbert's Chapel of Ease, but that rests on a single source and is unverified.

The Gallows Legends

Two stories cling to Brodie's execution and both are legends, not documented history. The first says he designed the gallows himself and became its first victim, a neat circle worthy of a playwright. The record is plain on this: the story is disputed. It is repeated here only as the story people tell, not as fact.

The second tale says he wore a steel collar and survived the drop. This is a legend, and nothing in the record supports it. Both legends survive because they fit the Jekyll and Hyde shape the story later took. A man who lived two lives deserves a death with a twist, so the story grew one.

This distinction matters when a guide tells the tale on the Royal Mile. The dates, the raid, the 16 pounds, the trial and the crowd are documented. The steel collar and the self-designed gallows are the folklore that grew around them. A good guide tells you which is which.

Brodie's Close and Deacon Brodie's Tavern

Brodie's Close runs off the Lawnmarket and carries his name because his family home and workshop stood there. It is a free stop, a narrow close between tall tenement buildings of exactly the kind the Old Town built because the city walls left little space. The tavern is the louder landmark. Deacon Brodie's Tavern stands at 435 Lawnmarket, EH1 2NT, on the corner of the Lawnmarket and Bank Street, in a building that dates from 1806, eighteen years after his hanging.

The corner matters for tour planning. The meeting point for the Auld Reekie vaults and graveyard tour and the Terror Tour is the pavement in front of 300 Lawnmarket, next to the tourist information booth, police box and telephone box, which is the opposite side of the road from Deacon Brodie's Tavern. The vaults and graveyard tour costs $34, lasts 1.5 hours and takes in Greyfriars Kirkyard before entering the Edinburgh Vaults in the South Bridge arches. The Terror Tour costs $34, lasts 75 minutes, is strictly 18 and over, and includes a torture exhibition and the stone circle vault of The Watcher.

A word of honesty about both tours and this story: neither listing names Brodie as a stop, so book them for the vaults and the graveyards, and read this page for the man. What you get either way is the setting. The tour price buys the vaults, not the biography.

Jekyll and Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson drew on Brodie for Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in 1886, nearly a century after the hanging. Before the novel Brodie had inspired Stevenson's play Deacon Brodie, or The Double Life. The respectable craftsman by day and criminal by night gave Stevenson the template for a doctor who becomes his own monster.

The story has kept reaching audiences since. Billy Connolly played Brodie in the 1997 BBC drama Screen One, and Muriel Spark's novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is listed among the works that echo his name, though her Miss Brodie is a schoolteacher and shares only the surname.

If you want the history told aloud rather than read, two walking tours cover Edinburgh's darker past. The Edinburgh Dark History Tour costs $24.23, lasts 2 hours and covers murderers, thieves and hangings as history rather than a ghost story. The Darkside Ghost Tour costs $29, lasts 2 hours and climbs to Calton Hill, so it covers different ground from the Lawnmarket.

Where to Find Him: A Map of Brodie's Edinburgh

The table below gathers every Deacon Brodie location on this page into one list, with the address where the record gives one and what to look for at each stop. All of it is free to see except where a tour is named.

The Jail on the High Street

The Old Tolbooth was built between 1386 and about 1400 and was pulled down in 1817. From 1785 public hangings took place on a platform on its roof, and the heads of executed prisoners were once shown on its north gable. Brodie was one of its best-known prisoners.

Others held there included Agnes Sampson, who was tried as a witch, Major Thomas Weir and Captain Porteous.

The Heart of Midlothian

A heart shape set into the setts outside St Giles' marks the old entrance of the Tolbooth. It is called the Heart of Midlothian, and people spit on it as they pass, a custom recorded on Wikipedia but not in an older source. Walter Scott took the Tolbooth door and key to his house at Abbotsford when the jail came down.

You can stand on the spot for free on the way to the Mercat Cross, where Mercat Tours meets.

The Friends Around Him

Before his arrest Brodie moved in the best company in the city. He knew the poet Robert Burns and the painter Henry Raeburn, and he belonged to the Edinburgh Cape Club. He sat on the town council and became Deacon of the Incorporation of Wrights around 1781 His father, Francis Brodie, had been Convenor of the Trades.

Away from that circle he gambled in a tavern in Fleshmarket Close and kept two mistresses who did not know of each other, with five children between them.

Stevenson and After

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a play about him, Deacon Brodie, or The Double Life, and drew on Brodie for Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in 1886. Muriel Spark's novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is listed among the works that echo his name. Billy Connolly played Brodie in a 1997 BBC Screen One drama.

The tavern that carries his name at 435 Lawnmarket dates from 1806, long after his death, and stands at the corner of the Lawnmarket and Bank Street.

The Escape That Failed

The record of his flight reads like a thriller. Brodie left Edinburgh on 9 March 1788, reached London on 12 March and sailed on the Endeavour on 23 March under the name John Dixon. The King's Messenger George Williamson tracked him to Amsterdam and brought him back.

His trial began on 27 August 1788, and he and George Smith were found guilty on the evidence of John Brown and Andrew Ainslie. Brown had turned on the gang for a King's Pardon.