L UCKENBOOTHS AND PARLIAMENT CLOSE. I93
from prison; but the detection of its forgery involved her more deeply in crime. She
was found guilty, and executed on the 8th of March following. If Mrs Macleod had shown
art in contriving and executing this fraud, she displayed no less fortitude in meeting her
fate. She went to the place of execution dressed in a black robe and petticoat with 8
large hoop, a white fan in her hand, and a white sarsenet hood on her head, according to
the fashion of the times. When she came upon the scaffold, she put off the ornamental
parts of her attire, pinned a handkerchief over her breast, and put the fatal cord about her
neck with ber own hands. She maintained the same courageous deportment to the last,
and died denying her guilt.’
No prisoner incarcerated within the Old Tolbooth ever excited a greater degree of
interest in the minds of contemporaries than the one whom we present in contrast to
the last,-Katharine Nairn, the daughter of Sir Robert Nairn, Bart., of Dunsinnane, who
was brought to trial on the 5th of August 1765. She was accused and convicted of
poisoning her husband, with the aid of his own brother, her associate in other crimes.
The marriage appears to have been one of those unequal matches by which the happiness
of woman is so often sacrificed to schemes of worldly policy. The victim, to whom she
had been married in her nineteenth year, was a man of property, and advanced in life.
Popular indignation was so strongly excited at the report of the deeds she had perpetrated,
that she was with difficulty rescued from the mob on being fist brought to
Edinburgh ; yet her presence so wrought on the fickle populace, that her guilt was soon
forgot in the sympathy excited by her youthful appearance. Both she and her paramour,
who was an oscer in the army, were condemned; and the latter was executed in the
Grassmarket, in accordance with his sentence, after he had been three times respited
through the interest of his friends. Neanwhile the fair partner of his guilt obtained a
reprieve in consequence of her pregnancy ; and only two days after her accouchement, she
composedly walked out of the Tolbooth, disguised in the garments of Mrs Shields, the
well-known midwife who had attended on her during her confinement, and added to her
other favours this extra-professional delivery. In her confusion she knocked at Lord Alva’s
door in James’s Court, mistaking it for that of her father’s agent; but the footboy, who
opened the door with a candle in his hand, had been present at the trial, and immediately
raised the hue and cry, while she took to her heels down a neighbouring close. She was
concealed for some time in the immediate neighbourhood of the prison, in a cellar about halfway
down the old back stairs of the Parliament Close, attached to the house of her uncle,
who was afterwards promoted to the Bench under the title of Lord Dunsinnane. Our
informant, an elderly gentleman, added, when relating it, that he was himself indebted
to Mrs Shields for his first entrance on “ the stage of life; ” and the old lady
when narrating her successful jail delivery, used to hint, with a very knowing look, “that
there were other folk besides her could tell the same tale,” meaning, as was surmised, that
neither the turnkey nor the Lord Advocate were quite ignorant of the exchange of midwives
at the time. Katharine Nairn at length effected a safe &ght to the Continent,
dispised in an oEcer’s unifarm ; a from thence she escaped to America, where she is said
Amot’s Criminal Trials, 8v0, p. 317.
* She waa conduded to Dover in a post-chaise, under care of one of her uncle’s clerks. This person wam kept in
2 B
conatant dread of discovery during the journey from the extreme frivolity of her conduct.
194 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
to have married again, and died at an advanced age surrounded by a numerous and
attached family,-a striking contrast in love and fortune to the too faithful wife of the
poor wig-maker of Leith.
The hero, however, of the Tolbooth, to modern readers, is Captain Porteous.’ The
mob that thundered at its ancient portal on the eventful night of the 7th September 1736,
and dashed through its blazing embers to drag forth the victim of their indignant revenge,
has cast into the shade all former acts of Lynch Law, for which the Edinburgh populace were
once so notorious. The skill with which the great novelist has interwoven the leading
acte of this striking act of popular vengeance, with the thrilling scenes of his beautiful
fiction, has done much to extend its fame, yet all the main features of the Porteous mob, as
related in the “Heart of Midlothian,” are strictly true, and owe their influence on the miud
of the reader less to the daring character of the act, than to the moderation and singleness
of purpose with which it was accomplished. This has tended to coufirm the belief that
the leaders of the mob were men of rank and influence, and although any evidence since
obtained seems rather to suggest a different opinion,’ most of the older citizens, who have
conversed in their youth with those who had witnessed that memorable tumult, adhere to
the idea then generally entertained, that the execution of Porteous was the act of men
moving in the higher ranks of society. We have been informed by a gentleman to whom
The following curious account of the attempt at escape by Robertson and Wilson, whose proceedings formed the
first act in the drama of the Porteous Mob, is given in the Caledonian Mwwry for April 12, 1736 :-“Friday
morning last, about two o’clock, the felons in the city jail made a grand attempt to escape ; for which purpose Ratcliff
and Stewart, horse-stealers, some time brought over from Aberbrothock, had dropt a pack-thread out of a window,
to the end of which their accomplices tied spring saws and some other accoutrements, wherewith Ratcliff and Stewart
cut through the great iron bars that secure a very thick window on the inside, and afterwards the cross grate in
the window ; .they then cut a large hole in the floor of their apartment, which is immediately over that wherein Robertson
and Wilson (condemned to suffer Wednesday next) lie; which last, in return for this friendly office, contributed
in the following manner to bring about their mutual escape, viz., Ratcliff and Stewart lay every night nailed to the
floor by a long iron bar fifteen inches round, the supporters whereof detain prisonera at the middle of the bar,
and are fastened with smaller iron bars passing through the floor to the apartnient below, fixed there with wedges
through eyes, which wedges being &ruck out by Robertson and Wilson, Ratcliff and Stewart had access to shift
themselves to the end of the bar and unlock it. Being thus disengaged, they hauled Robertson and Wilson up
through the hole, and then proceeded to break out at a window fronting the north ; and, lest the sentinel on duty
at the Purses ahould mar the design, their associates in woman-dress had knocked him down. Stewart accordingly
came down the three storeys by a rope, in his shirt, and escaped; Wilson essayed it next, but being a squat round
man, stuck in the grate, and before he could be disentangled, the guard waa alarmed. Nor was it possible for
the keepera to hear them at work; for whenever those in the upper apartment fell a sawing, they below sung
psalms. When they had done, Millar of Balmeroy, his wife, and daughter, tuned up another in their apartment, and so
forth.
‘6 Yesterday forenoon Robertson and Wilson were carried from prison to the Tolbooth Kirk, to hear their last sermon,
but were not well settled there when Wilson boldly attempted to break out, by wrenching himself out of the hands of
four armed soldiera Finding himself disappointed here, hia next care was to employ the soldiers till Robertson should
‘escape; this he effected by securing two of them in his arms ; and, after calling out, Geordie, do for thy E;fe 1 snatched
ho!d of a third with his teeth. Hereupon Robertson, after tripping up the fourth, jumped out of the seat, and run over
the tops of the pews with incredible agility, the audience opening a way for him sufficient to receive them both ; and in
hurrying out at the south gate of the church, he tumbled over the collection-money. Thence he reeled and staggered
through the Parliament Close, and got down to the New Stairs, and often tripped by the way, but had not time to fall,
some of the guard being close. after him. Passing down the Cowgate, he ran up the Horse Wynrl, and out at the Potterrow
Port, the crowd all the way covering his retreat, who, by this time were become so numeroug that it waa dangerous
for the guard to look after him. In the wynd he made up to a saddled horse, and would have mounted him, but
the gentleman to whom the horse belonged prevented him. Passing the Crosscauseway, he got into the King’s Park,
and took the Duddingston Road. Upon Robertson’s getting out of the church door, Wilson was immediately carried
out, without getting sermon, and put in close custody to prevent his escape, which the audience seemed much inclined
to favour. So that he must pay for all Wednesday next.”
3 Ante, p. 109.
