Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 1, September 17, 1927

THE TRUTH IS THAT “DEACON” BRODIE PROBABLY WAS AS CLOSE TO THE MASTER MIND CRIMINAL AS WE WILL EVER GET

William Brodie was born on the 28th of September, 1741, to a family of super respectability, in a class of utmost respectability, that of the professions, his father being a “writer to the signet” — a lawyer, according to the modern term.

The elder Brodie was also a freeman of the City of Edinburgh, and was “deacon” of his guild of wrights.

There were many children born to the family of the elder William Brodie, but most of them died in infancy. The family was less parsimonious than many of that time, and their attitude toward life was both sensible and kindly.

There were no privations for the boy to endure. There was nothing to mark his young mind and soul with the fears, terrors, restraints, and animosities which it is now the habit to consider as the contributing factors to the development of a criminal nature.

He attracted little attention as a child, in fact, and was so well behaved that he never merited — at least to the knowledge of his father, chastisement.

Seek as we may for an explanation of that into which he grew, we shall not find it in his home conditions.

The boy was both admired and loved by his relatives, who liked his cleverness and shrewdness and also approved of his way of living, for as soon as William was through school he took up his residence with the old folks and showed little interest in girls.

He attended to business, was civil and fair spoken, and had a certain brusque directness of manner and speech which the honest and hardy Scots liked. The town trusted young Brodie and counted him a substantial citizen, worthy to follow in the footsteps of his family.

“Born Bad”

In February of 1763 William Brodie, the younger, was well established at home, a freeman of his native city, practically in charge of his father’s business and having a great deal to say about all the details of his parents’ house, where his wishes were scrupulously met.

He introduced some modem ideas into the business and the home, kept up a little better appearance than his father had, and succeeded in getting into the society of a good many of the aristocratic families.

In addition, he won the right to come and go as he pleased, in a way which was not common; for his father trusted him and saw, he thought, that the boy would slowly forge his way socially, and add to his patrimony, until such time as he could take to wife some girl of a higher station, with a tidy little sum of her own and with important connections. Meanwhile, a few quiet wild oats would not matter.

This is the way of the world, more or less, to this day, and at the period which we are now considering Scotland’s lads were apt to take that attitude toward marriage.

The older Brodie, therefore, asked no questions when young William was absent for a night. He always came home sober, he was never seen roistering anywhere.

He told his parents that he gambled somewhat and that he went with other young bloods to see cockfights — then a popular “sport” — but the ideals of conduct for refined young gentlemen were as elastic then as now, and Brodie the elder believed his son to be a model young man.

So did his mother, for that matter, and therein is proof of his cleverness, for mothers are harder to fool than fathers, despite the fact that they often lack the material evidence and information which fathers have.

Young William was, indeed, one of those youngsters who are “born bad,” it would seem. In after years it came out that there had been a good many unsavory incidents in his school days, but always — at least for a long time — he was too clever for everybody.

It is a sure thing that the town of Edinburgh suspected nothing: at least, none of its upper layers of society did. In 1781 William became deacon of his father’s guild, and as such he entered the proud ranks of the city council.

For a year, in the course of this part of his career, he was Trades Councillor. In 1782 his father died, honored, “full of years,” and delighting in the thought that he left behind him a worthy representative,

William was, of course, the heir, and practically the sole heir, the other surviving children being only two and receiving little. Brodie went right on gathering up business and positions, but he really did seem to have a much harder time than his father in meeting his financial obligations.

An Epidemic of Crime

He made light of this, always seemed to have cash on his person and was never stingy, but in 1788 his creditors made a little stir.

They wanted a statement from him and they got it. He said that he could meet everything and in a short time he did, so his credit was greater than ever.

Edinburgh, meanwhile, from about August, 1768, onward, had become a very precarious place in which to live and do business. Robberies got to be the order of the day. Houses were mysteriously opened without breaking a window or a door.

The secret back doors of banks were unlocked, despite the fact that the one and only key might be reposing in the pocket of the proper custodian. When the burglars, seeming to know just when whole households would be away, got in, they knew right where to look for the hidden savings.

The police force, to be sure, was totally inadequate. “The watch” were worthy old gentlemen of the town, too old for active employment, who wobbled about on their decrepit legs and looked as imposing as they could.

They occasionally caught an inept young thief, or a stupid oaf, but they never came within even suspicion distance of the perpetrators of these large and persistent robberies.

The curious thing was that, along with these almost daily lootings of houses, stores and institutions, street holdups and robberies became less and less and several rather well-known gangs of ruffians mysteriously left town after being manhandled in an obscure street fight.

Solid in the Underworld

The truth was that “Deacon” Brodie was probably as close to the “master mind criminal” as we will ever get. That is to say, he had a certain talent for organization and a personality which must have been baffling, although assertive, as we shall see as soon as we take the lid off of the respectable life which he continued to lead for so long.

And while we cannot be sure, any more than the town of Edinburgh was at the time, whether Brodie was always either the perpetrator or the instigator of the extraordinary era of robbery there, which extended for over eighteen years, it is interesting to record that when his activities were cramped by a hangman’s noose, the town suddenly went back to a normal percentage of housebreakings and street holdups and that mysterious entries by means of mysterious and unknown keys ceased to take place.

Well, then, we have the picture of Brodie keeping bachelor hall in his father’s house, decorously attending Town Council meetings, working hard, taking his young men from one house to another, to fit keys, to repair windows and doors, to fix sagging floors — and generally to be the Mr. Fixit of the place.

Among other jobs, Deacon Brodie repaired the framework and crosspiece of the hanging apparatus, and several times adjusted the rope for some poor wretch.

With grave face he appears — well dressed and calm and many a mother looks at him and sighs, for he has been the town bachelor for so many years that all hope of winning him has been given up by dames of every degree.

Bearing this in mind, let us retrace this story to the date of February 9, 1763, with old Brodie still alive and young Brodie quietly slipping into the life of the old people, and of the town.

At that very time, the young man had succeeded in making himself “solid” in the underworld of Edinburgh!

There is little doubt that he already had evil companions before he was through his eighteenth year, and that his influence on them was even then sufficient to keep their mouths sealed as to his friendship with them.

He had already become familiar with vice while still seemingly too bashful to talk to girls of his own station in life. All this is not so astounding, but that which is most so, is that for so many, many years he succeeded in completely veiling this.

Brodie’s Double Life

Charles Peace, the infamous little English criminal, did, indeed, lead a double life for many years, but he was never subjected to the scrutiny of close companions of the utmost integrity.

He was never surrounded by the half jealous admiration which besets the successful merchant. He was never obliged to meet all the upper strata of his native town, shrewd as well as suspicious and sternly respectable people. This was a test which few criminals could ever have withstood and which William Brodie did withstand, with entire success.

Not a single suspicion of him was entertained, in all the years that he led his extraordinary double life, until the last year or two of it, when, indeed, a few people began to whisper behind their hands that robberies seemed to follow wherever Brodie worked.

Continuing the study of Brodie’s nether life, we find that even while his father lived he had already established two households, in each of which he maintained the position of master and father, neither of which knew of the existence of the other, as no one in the upper levels of his life knew of either.

What was more, although criminals were his associates and hangers on in both households, neither set of rascals ever discovered the other set.

Smith Comes to Town

Thus, Brodie had to watch out for complications between— 1. People who knew him as Deacon. 2. People who knew him as the master of the house where Anne Grant held sway. 3. People who knew him as the master of the house where Jean Watt held sway. 4. People who knew him as an active thief and knew nothing of Deacon, Jean Watt, Anne Grant or that he was anybody but a man who knew how to produce keys and plan robberies. And 5. The wild and half criminal layer of aristocratic youth who knew a little of both women and something of Deacon; but nothing of the thief and master of criminals of the lower world.

It must have been a hectic life, indeed, that he led, that cool and serious businessman, going about his affairs, slyly taking impressions of keys, observing where valuables were kept, learning the secrets of bolted doors, memorizing the hours and the habits of the townfolk, while he kept careful eyes abroad for chance — and undesired — acquaintances.

Edinburgh has always been a town of rather sharply separated social strata, always a cosmopolitan town. Many a town in England or France of the period would have rendered this imposture an impossibility, but the criminal world and the bawdy world kept pretty much to themselves. These and the decent business world affected to ignore the other’s existence, and the aristocratic world dealt loftily with the business world and was either totally ignorant of the lower world or, at most, only half friendly with it.

So that is precisely the condition of social life which allowed William Brodie to pursue this amazing course of his for so long.

But a change was coming.

In July, 1786, an Englishman named George Smith — or, a man who said that was his name — arrived at Edinburgh, and if Brodie had any premonitions about that time he must have had some bad dreams.

Smith put up at a tavern kept by Michael Henderson, in the “Grassmarket,” and there he was soon friends with one named Ainslee and one named Brown, whose proper name was said to be Moore.

This last named person was an escaped convict from England, who had been wandering around Scotland for twelve years, not daring to set his foot over the border.

Brodie, in his character of the master mind of a criminal fraternity, already knew Ainslee and “Brown.”

The tavern was frequented by doubtful characters, along with the honest farmers whose “ordinary” or restaurant it was, and Brodie had been able to go there in double character, being known to some as “deacon” and to some as a more or less shady individual, but it was safe enough, since few persons of these diverse classes would ever know or speak to each other.

A Working Partnership

The four, Smith, Brown, Ainslee and Brodie, gradually became intimate, and to them Brodie confessed that he had had thoughts for some time of “starting a life of crime.”

In this one respect, however, he was reticent with these new comrades, since his life of crime had long since been started. What he was really looking for, at that time, was some one who would alibi for him, and this he found in Smith, who knew a good deal about locks, bolts, keys and other door and window fastenings.

The proposal which was made was that Smith should be set up in a small grocery by Brodie, so that he might have a proper excuse for settling in the town, and that he should work, in his spare time, for Brodie, fixing locks and making keys and spying; also taking impressions of locks in wax and otherwise attending to Brodie’s dirty work.

According to the custom of the town, a boy from the neighborhood could be apprenticed to the “grocer” for a very small weekly sum, and thus Smith would be free to come and go, while seemingly leading a perfectly open mercantile life.

Brown and Ainslee were to have their parts in the arrangement, with maintenance from Brodie when they were not “working.”

Smith’s part time work for Brodie would make him the go-between, so that the two would be kept informed of what was afoot. On this basis they settled the partnership, with an equal division of the spoils as part of the agreement.

A number of minor robberies were at once committed, avowedly for the purpose of letting Brodie see how the combination worked!

The University’s Mace

As he became more assured of his partners, Brodie ceased to maintain some of the fictions with which he had started.

He allowed them to see that he had been a criminal for years, and admitted to them that he had a regular “fence,” as we should now call it, across the border in England.

This fence was a Scot, much “wanted” in his own country and therefore an exile, just as Brown was wanted and a fugitive from his country. These two wrote to each other and became well acquainted by letter.

So Smith ran the grocery and did odd jobs, of all sorts, for Brodie, and Ainslee and Brown seemed to live modestly on what they declared to be remittances from their families, and Brodie walked about without even the faint shadow of the suspicion which had been gathering.

Had he not stopped going himself to houses and institutions and banks for the work he now hired done? And did not the robberies keep right on, as usual?

In October of 1787 the four stole the silver mace of the University of Edinburgh, seemingly for pure wantonness. They could not dispose of it without giving themselves away, and melted down its value was that of mere lump silver.

It was never found, but the theft of it increased the fury of the town, which had been steadily rising so long.

People began to say that something really had to be done about the reign of terror which had so long existed. The mace was taken by a person or persons who had had a key to the room where it was kept.

In 1788, in the early part of the year, a lot of very expensive silk from a shop at Edinburgh Cross was stolen in the dead of the night. No doors were broken open — they were unlocked and locked again after the loot was taken, so that the watch might suspect nothing.

The honest tradesmen of the town, aroused by all these many robberies, all of which bore the stamp of “inside work,” as it would now be called, got together and made a very systematic effort to find out how it was that they had been despoiled for so many years.

They also offered a reward for the return of the silk and the pardon of any accomplice of the robbers who would turn informer.

Brown, who was always “Low Man” in the four who made up the criminal quartette, made a note of this reward. He had occasionally had disputes with the aggressive Brodie, and he was always in terror that one or more of the four would betray him; being the one escaped convict of the lot, he was in the most danger and for some reason he was not liked by any of the other three.

The Dice Are Loaded

So he stored up the idea of turning them over to justice and going scot free himself.

Then something very disagreeable happened. A stranger appeared at the inn one night, and he and the four started shaking dice. The stranger was no fool; suddenly he seized the dice and declared them “loaded.”

He hauled his four playmates to the police station, but there he cooled off. Inquiries as to his own antecedents worried him. He went away suddenly and the four were released, but not until Brown had been rather sharply interrogated.

He remembered this. He put it away in his kit of recollection, determining that he would be influenced by what had happened — some day.

March, 1788, the gang determined to do something which was more daring. Brodie knew very well the buildings of the excise office in Cannongate, for he had often been there to make repairs.

Also, he had a relative who had an office there on whom he called occasionally, for he never missed the opportunity to be friends with people in power, and he had long had his eye on how he might use this person.

The Fourth of March

The watchman was away a good part of the time; Brodie tried to find out what those times were. He called on his relative at the office, in his character of lock-window-door and floor repairer, and took with him an assistant who was none other than Smith. Smith took an impression of the key of the important room, while wandering about, seeming to wait for Brodie.

Brodie, finding it difficult to get a precise account of the movements of the watchman, Ainslee was set to work to lounge and smoke and talk when the man was taking the air, at the door of the building.

The result was an exact report. The watchman was away from eight to ten every night, at his supper. This left the building without a soul in it.

The fourth of March was set for the day. Brodie, to give himself an alibi, had a party on that day. The guests sat down to a bountiful dinner at three in the afternoon, then the fashionable hour.

He was dressed all in white, which was a well-known eccentricity of his; his special “party” style. At seven, he had thought, the guests would all be gone, but he had reckoned without the easy going ways of his townsfolk. They were gone only at eight.

He tore off the white clothes, after bowing his guests away from the brightly lighted front door, for the benefit of passers-by, and ran through well-known alleys to Smith’s store, where the three lesser rascals had already begun to shiver in their boots because of his failure to appear at seven, as agreed on.

Brodie was in high spirits, singing “Let Us Take the Road,” from “The Beggar’s Opera,” which was a great favorite of his. They set out, on streets which were none too well lighted. At the building they saw no one in the dark square which it fronted, and slipped inside.

It was the work of Smith and Brown to open the locked boxes, desks and “safes” — the iron boxes in which the large sums were kept. They went at their task, using the great ring of keys which they had, which would open almost anything.

Ainslee was to stand just outside and to softly whistle if he saw any one coming, and Brodie stood in a dark place in the lower hall.

Smith and Brown had found about seventeen pounds, which was a mere trifle compared to what they could have had if they had finished their work, when they heard a door downstairs slam. Footsteps came up the stairs.

They stood, petrified, expecting every moment to have some one come on them, in the midst of the boxes and safes, all of which they had pulled into one room for convenience in working, when they heard some one go down again and slam the door.

Brodie Tries to Explain

A moment afterward a door opened, as they could tell by the draft — and then softly closed. They listened for a whistle, and heard nothing. They slipped down the stair, failed to find either Brodie or Ainslee, got into a panic and headed for Smith’s home.

What had happened was very simple. A Mr. Bonar, who worked in the building, had remembered that he needed a paper which he was to take with him on a business journey the following morning.

He went back for it after work was over, and had not the slightest idea that any one was in the building at the time. If Brodie had kept his nerve, he need never have stirred from the dark place where he was entirely concealed, in the hall.

But he had been getting nervous. Some of his early effrontery had deserted him. He ran to his house, stripped off the black suit into which he had changed from the white one and went, as he often did, to spend the night at his Jean Watt home.

For several days he kept out of sight of Smith, who did his jobs about town, directed thereto by notes which his employer left for him.

Then Brodie reappeared and to remonstrances said that he would see them all that night. At Smith’s house, then, he appeared that evening, full of assurance.

He declared that he had slipped out of the building because it would be absolutely fatal to the operations of the gang for him to be seen, and that he had thought Bonar — whom, at that time, he did not know of by name — was the watchman.

French Leave

He succeeded in partially cooling off the anger of the three and, to appease them farther, dug up a lot of loot which he had been keeping and sent Mrs. Smith, who had been the go-between of the gang for a year, across the border to the fence, promising them all of what was procured for it.

Suspicion was stronger than Brodie thought, and his association with Smith, Brown and Ainslee had not been as successfully hidden as he had imagined. There was no proof, however.

Brown, though, finally furnished it. He had not liked the way that Brodie had treated him, from time to time, and he was a timorous soul, too, always fearing that he would be made the “goat.”

The other three had made the great mistake of discounting Brown, of making fun of him, of giving him less than his share of the proceeds of their robberies. They cheated him at cards, thought anything good enough for him, and, last and crowning insult, cut him out with a girl that he liked.

So, he went to see the procurator — that is to say, the district attorney, and the next day Smith and Ainslee were arrested for the job on the Excise Building.

The two were lodged in the famous “Tolbooth,” where so many famous and infamous prisoners had been confined. Just why Brown did not implicate Brodie at first is not clear. He might have thought that it was safer to charge the lesser rascals and see what came of it.

If Brodie escaped the net, it would be better not to have mentioned him, he thought, but he trusted to later events to bring Brodie into the matter, in which he showed himself an astute observer.

Brodie was in a great sweat when he heard of the arrests, but so far there was no direct suspicion attracted to him. He made sure of that and then went to the Tolbooth to see the two men, making the excuse that he thought he knew them, but the authorities had forbidden the public to have access to them.

In those days, unless there was such a special order, the public streamed through the Tolbooth — which was the principal jail of Edinburgh — as if it were the zoo.

Efforts to have notes taken to them failed and Brodie turned tail! Knowing the men as he did, he entertained no false ideas of their loyalty to himself, or to any one. He gathered some money together and went to London, where detectives shortly followed and lost him.

Brodie got over into Holland, still with a fair amount of money remaining and could have got work there and remained safe and in obscurity if he had not had the idea that he ought to write to the one person in the world for whom he had ever shown true affection, Anne Grant.

The Death Verdict

These two women of his had both borne him children; Anne Grant had one boy and two girls and Jean Watt had two boys; but it was always the first family to which Brodie really turned, Anne Grant — who, up to the time that Brodie fled the country never had the least idea that her “husband” was anything but a man who “traveled,” i. e., who sold goods on a set route, which kept him away from town for days at a time.

On the way to Holland Brodie had found some people on the boat who, after completing their business in Holland, were returning to Scotland, and to them he gave a letter addressed to Anne Grant. They already had their suspicions of him, for, slow and meager as were the reports of the press in those days, those reports did reach pretty far and these people knew of the man who had fled from Edinburgh.

So with a good deal of hesitation, they slipped the seals and took a look at what this friend of theirs, “Mr. Dixon,” had written to his woman friend. What they read was sufficient to send them to the authorities with the letter, when they reached Edinburgh.

That letter was certainly one of the most foolish ever written, for it practically confessed the guilt of Brodie, not only in the one instance, but for many years back.

They caught him at Amsterdam, extradited him, got him to London, accused him there, got the papers carrying him onward to Scotland, where he arrived just fifty-four hours after leaving London, which was some speed, for those days.

In the meantime Ainslee and Smith had made a desperate attempt to break jail and Brown had been taken on an old charge of murder. So when Brodie was clapped into the Tolbooth he had familiar company.

The trial began on the 27th of August and, according to the procedure for capital crimes at that time, went right on without an adjournment until it was finished, the jury being out for many hours before a verdict was arrived at.

The trial was brightened by some of the most lively scrimmages ever indulged in by the staid Scotch courts.

There were six judges. Lord Braxfield, Lord Justice Clark, Lord Hails, Lord Eskgrove, Lord Stonefield, and Lord Swinton. There were many distinguished counsel on both sides.

Two unknown young lawyers were present to look after the interests of Smith and one of these, Clerk, made such a record for himself that he is a permanent figure in Scottish tradition, although he was never heard of, very greatly, afterward.

He was one of the first lawyers to perceive that in “the technicality” the lawyer has a weapon of tricky weight and power and he made tremendous efforts to demand exceptions and to raise objections on every possible point where a technicality could be called into question.

He frizzled the tempers of the learned judges, stopped the proceedings again and again, browbeat the presiding judge and continually made his point, despite the way in which every one combined to sit on him. He did his client little good, but he put the name of Clerk into the history of the bar of Scotland.

Jean Watt testified for Brodie that he arrived at their joint home a little after eight and stayed all night. Her maid testified to the same and claimed that she knew the time by the chiming of a church clock.

The prosecution made her prove, by her own words, that she did not know where this church was and that it could not be heard at the house of her mistress.

A great deal of the implication contained in the testimony against Brodie was veiled. It could not be proved that he had been for many years the head of various bands of criminals, or that he had used the confidential position which his work gave him to make the impressions of keys and to ferret out the secrets of families and institutions, but witnesses all hinted at this veiled suspicion, and it was really this which was putting Brodie on trial.

The verdict was death. At that time the one crime of “breaking and entering” would have brought the sentence of death. That sentence was all the surer because of the practical certainty that Brodie had systematically bled the town, while masquerading as one of its prominent citizens.

Smith and Brodie were to be hanged.

Smith took it with a certain resignation and talked calmly and rather sadly with the various clergymen who sought to comfort him, but Brodie, sardonic, antagonistic, and bitter, denying constantly that he had ever been anything but a law abiding citizen, would have none of the spiritual comfort offered him, and he so vigorously fought for a reprieve that he almost got it, despite the great array of proof which had been rolled up against him.

He had a great deal to do to wind up his affairs, leaving as much of his property as possible to Anne Grant and her children, scrupulously making arrangements to pay his debts and to have his furniture, long in the family, sent to distant connections.

He was hanged, with Smith, and severely criticized the bungling arrangements of the hangman, whose technique, he declared, was painful for a real expert to look on.