Deacon Brodie
Deacon Brodie - A Famous Scot - The burgess turned burglar
William Brodie (Deacon Brodie) (d.1788). A wright and cabinet-maker, Brodie was made a deacon of the Edinburgh Wrights' Incorporation having taken over the family business in 1780 and being a freeman of the city. But he lived a double life; for by day he was a respected burgess of Edinburgh and by night a slick sleight-of-hand gambler and burglar. With accomplices, he attempted to rob the Excise Offices at Chessel's Court, Canongate, but although the exploit was well planned, it only raised 16. One of the conspirators turned King's Evidence and gave away his fellow felons. Brodie escaped to Ostend but was eventually arrested at Amsterdam, and extradited to stand trial in Edinburgh. He was executed near the Luckenbooths by St Giles's Kirk, Edinburgh, and, tradition has it, with a gibbet mechanism of his own device which he inspected for efficacy the day he died. Brodie's double lifestyle is thought to have inspired Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. He is remembered by a public house named after him in Edinburgh's Royal Mile, close to the place where he was hanged.
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