by a man named Clark, in the Fleshmarket Close.
He had the tact and art to keep his secret profligacy
unknown, and was so successful in blinding his
fellow-citizens that he continued a highly reputable
member of the Town Council until within a short
period of the crime for which he was executed,
and, according to ?Kay?s Portraits,? it is a siiigular
fact, that little more than a month previously he
there were committed a series ot startling robberies,
and no clue could be had to the perpetrators.
Houses and shops were entered, and articles of
value vanished as if by magic. In one instance a
lady was unable to go to church from indisposition,
and was at home alone, when a man entered with
crape over his face, and taking her keys, opened
her bureau and took away her money, while she re-
BAILIE MACMOBRAN?S HOUSE.
sat as a juryman in a criminal case in that very
court where he himself soon after received sentence
of death.
For years he had been secretly licentious and
dissipated, but it was not until 1786 that he
began an actual career of infamous crime, with
his fellow-culprit, George Smith, a native of Berkshire,
and two others, named Brown and Ainslie.
He was in easy circumstances, with a flourishing
business, and his conduct in becoming a leader of
miscreants seems unaccountable, yet so it was. In
and around the city during the winter of 1787
15
mained panic-stricken; but as he retired she thought,
?surely that was Deacon Brodie !? But the idea
seemed so utterly inconceivable, that she preserved
silence on the subject till subsequent events
transpired. As these mysterious outrages continued,
all Edinburgh became at last alarmed, and in all of
them Brodie was either actively or passively concerned,
till he conceived the-to him-fatal idea
of robbing the Excise office in Chessel?s CQUI~, an
undertaking wholly planned by himself. He visited
the office openly with a friend, studied the details
of the cashier?s room, and observing the key of the
