LORD MONBODDO. storm of just indignation was roused, and she was
with some dificulty rescued from rough treatment
by the authorities; but in her case, as in some
others, the strong walls of the old Tolbooth proved
incapable of retaining a culprit of courage and high
position. The final passing of the fatal sentence
had been delayed by the Lords on account of the
lady?s pregnancy. Mrs. Shields, the midwife who
attended her accouchement (and who was a public
practitioner in the city so lately as 1805), ?had the
address to achieve a jail delivery also.? For three
or four days previous to the concerted escape she
pretended to be afflicted with a maddening toothache,
and went in and out of the Tolbooth with
her head and face muffled in shawls and flannels,
In the Tolbooth, in 1770, Mungo Campbell committed
suicide when under sentence of death for
shooting the Earl of Eglinton. But his body was
dragged through the streets by the mob, who threw
it from the summit of Salisbury Craigs into the
chasm known as the Cat Nick.
In 1782 the Tolbooth was visited by the philanthropist
John Howard, and again, five years subsequently,
when he expressed his horror of it, and
hoped to have found a better one in its place j and
in 1783 there occurred one of the last remarkable
escapes therefrom. James Hay, a lad of eighteen,
son of a stabler in the Grassmarket, was a prisoner
in November, under sentence of death for robbery,
and a few days before that appointed for his exe
THE TOLBOOTH.
