The Man Who Was Jekyll and Hyde (13 page)

The said Thomas Longlands, a London solicitor employed by the Crown officers of Scotland for this case, took up the next part of the tale when he appeared as a witness at the Deacon's trial (page 146). He said that, immediately on arrival in London from the Netherlands, and before being sent back to Scotland, Brodie was ‘examined' along with two trunks belonging to him. They contained items whose provenance was obviously suspect, and Longlands – who was present – discovered ‘a wrapper with some papers' in one which ‘made a great impression on me at the time'.

It was at this point that George Williamson, the king's messenger who had searched for Brodie in vain before he sailed off from London, made a re-appearance – having been sent from Edinburgh to accompany the prisoner back to his home town. In the post chaise driving north, with Mr Groves also on board, Brodie seemed to relish the idea of the robber surprising and entertaining his captors. He soon demonstrated that, despite suffering apparent depression, he had lost none of his sense of mischief, and though they were now most definitely on opposite sides of society's fence, they seemed to enjoy each other's company, as Williamson later wrote: ‘Mr Brodie was in good spirits, and told of many things that had happened to him in Holland.'

What kind of things? Williamson would not have been prepared to put some of them down on record, but one story concerned a friendship that Brodie had struck up with a fellow Scot (and fellow criminal) during his short stay among the canals. This man claimed to be a master-forger and was living in the city by means of presenting home-made Bank of Scotland notes where he could. This had clearly intrigued Brodie, who would certainly have wished to become such an expert in a black art that he seemed to have missed out on in his second career. Indeed, he was already receiving early instruction from this expert practitioner when his studies were abruptly halted by Mr Daly's call.

‘Brodie said he was a very ingenious fellow, and that, had it not been for his own apprehension, he would have been master of the process in a week', wrote Williamson later.

There were a few shared chortles too when Brodie recalled his heavily escorted journey from Amsterdam's town house to his Delta port of departure. With a twinkle in his eyes, he talked of how one of his guides sported a beautiful gold watch and of how, if he had been so inclined, he could have easily relieved the ‘well-oiled' owner of the treasure – and now regretted not doing so.

Such an accessory would doubtless have made his re-entrance into Edinburgh even more gasp-inducing than his usual personal style, which he was determined to restore – if only temporarily – before finding himself in a cage again. To that end, he persuaded Wiliamson to allow him a close shave, as he had been – up till Mr Daly's intervention – quite a master of the close shave. Williamson, alert to all possibilities of an open razor in the hands of a doomed criminal in the cabin of a bouncing coach, refused to let him perform the task – but offered to do it himself.

The Deacon, as one so good with his hands, was not entirely in admiration of his escort's ‘barbarous' efforts and, when the operation was over, commented: ‘George, if you're no better at your own business than at shaving, a person may employ you once, but I'll be damned if ever he does so again!'

They arrived in Edinburgh on 17 July after ‘only' fifty-four hours on the road, noted the
Caledonian Mercury
as it reported:

This morning early Mr Brodie arrived from London. He was immediately carried to the house of Mr Sheriff Archibald Cockburn [His Majesty's Sheriff-depute of the sheriffdom of Edinburgh], at the back of the Meadows, or Hope Park, for examination. Mr George Williamson, Messenger, and Mr Groves, one of Sir Sampson Wright's clerks, accompanied Mr Brodie in a post-chaise from Tothilfields Bridewell. He was this forenoon committed to the Tolbooth.

At the Tolbooth prison in the city's High Street, only about 100 yards from his erstwhile home and workshop, he made the following declaration to Sheriff Cockburn:

That he does not at present recollect the name of the vessel in which the declarant went from the river Thames to Holland in the month of April last; that is, in which he arrived at Holland in April last.

That, before he left the vessel, he gave some letters, at present he does not recollect the number, written by himself, to one Geddes, a passenger on board the vessel.

And being shown a letter directed to Michael Henderson, signed W.B., dated Thursday, the 10th of April last, declares that he cannot say that the letter was not wrote by him and given to Geddes.

And, being interrogated, if one of the letters given to Geddes was not directed to Mr Matthew Sheriff, upholsterer in Edinburgh, and signed John Dixon, dated Flushing, Tuesday, the 8th of April, 1788? – Declares that the declarant cannot give any positive answer to that question, and he does not suppose he would have signed any letter at that time by the name of John Dixon, especially as he had wrote some letters at the same time, and given them to Geddes, signed by his initials W. B.

Declares that the declarant, when taken into custody at Amsterdam, on the 26th of June last, went by the name of John Dixon.

Declares that the declarant first became acquainted with George Smith in Michael Henderson's a long while ago, when Smith was indisposed and bedfast there; that the declarant has been in George Smith's house in the Cowgate. And being interrogated, declares that he cannot say positively whether he was in Smith's house any day of the week before the declarant left Edinburgh, which, to the best of the declarant's recollection, he did upon the 9th of March last, and upon a Sunday, as he thinks.

Declares that, having received a message that some person in the jail of Edinburgh wanted to see him, he went there and found it was either Smith or Ainslie who had been inquiring for him; but the declarant, when going there, was told by the keeper that neither Smith nor Ainslie could be seen; and that this was the night preceding his departure from Edinburgh.

Being interrogated, If reports had not been going of the Excise Office having been broke into the week before the declarant left Edinburgh, if he, the declarant, would have taken that step? – declares that it was not in consequence of that report that he left Edinburgh, but that the declarant, being acquainted with Smith and Ainslie, then in custody, did not know what they might be induced to say to his prejudice, was the cause of his going away.

A mischievous thought to share with readers on leaving this chapter: looking around central Amsterdam on the Brodie trail, this writer noticed that the entrance to the Royal Palace on Dam Square (once the Stadhuis where Brodie was held after arrest) was ‘guarded' by four ornate, cast-iron lampposts, each bearing the inscription ‘Dixon, Amsterdam, 1844'. Though the designer was Tetar van Elven, the Dixon founder's credit prompted a double take – and, considering there could never have been many folk of that English name in Holland, some fantasising as to what might have lain behind what looks like a tribute to someone called Dixon, from someone else called Dixon.

A son, perhaps? Just imagine the last few nights of fugitive Brodie in a lonely room in Amsterdam, within easy walking distance of the Red Light area. Would he have been tempted to strike up a ‘professional' relationship with one of the city's famous working girls? Did she come back to his room? Did he give her his ‘safe' name (John Dixon)? Might she have become pregnant and given the resulting son his father's surname? And might that son have grown up to learn the story of his father's incarceration at what was by then the country's most conspicuous royal palace? Was he the proprietor of an iron foundry? He would have been 58 at the time.

In the time-honoured manner of journalists not wishing to spoil a good story by seeking out too many facts, we confess to not entirely pursuing this inventive thought – to not checking it at all, actually. So should any member of the Amsterdam Dixon family rise up in protest at such an outrageous suggestion, pre-emptive profuse apologies are herewith extended. In any case, the lampposts were cleaned and painted rich green in 1997 and are well worth a second look.

No doubt about it, William Brodie was good with his hands. With no small thanks to his father’s teachings, he could guide a plane and bevel an edge with a true artisan’s skills, and even when fleeing the country could write a concerned letter asking after ‘my quadrant and spirit level … my brass-cased measuring line, and three-foot rule’. And in the very writing of such a letter there was a clear manual dexterity, if not an artistic bent, in the fluent flow of his copperplate handwriting – which is still to be seen in existing letters such as his last-minute plea to the Duchess of Buccleuch to use her influence in having his death sentence changed to transportation to Botany Bay, where ‘in that Infant Collony I might be usefull, from my knowledge in severall Mechanical branches besides my own particular Profession’ (see chapter 7). Also in his letters there was a certain erudition to be seen, as well as the occasional classical turn of phrase that obviously sprang from his expensive Edinburgh education.

Pen and ink were therefore essential travelling companions for him, even while being pursued across the North Sea. He clearly needed to write – about his mindset and predicament and concerns for his various families, whether illegitimate children or fighting cocks – and in looking back at the last letters of his life, penned aboard his escape ship or in his death-row cell in the Tollbooth prison, we get a fairly clear picture of the delusions and denials of a self-destroyed man trying to hang on to the last threads of normalcy.

Three of those missives – written mainly at sea – found their way back to Scotland through the cautious kindness of the aforementioned fellow-traveller John Geddes of Mid-Calder, who eventually released them to the authorities. However, he did not do so without some prevarication, doubt and a growing curiosity about them which eventually – on discovering that the letter-writer and shipmate he had known as John Dixon was in fact Deacon Brodie – led to the frowned-upon opening of the letters.

This was recalled during Brodie’s trial, where the tobacconist’s wife, Margaret, set the shipboard scene:

I was in London with my husband in March last, and went with him on board of a vessel bound for Leith. One night, when it was dark, a person, whom I now see a prisoner at the bar, and some others with him, came on board. The prisoner remained on board, but the others went ashore in about half-an-hour afterwards.

I think the person had a wig on when he came on board, and he appeared to be in bad health. He passed by the name of John Dixon. The vessel sailed for the coast of Holland, and when she arrived there the prisoner went on shore. I saw my husband receive a packet of letters from Mr Dixon; but I know nothing more of them. I never saw these letters afterwards.

Not so her husband, who was first asked by Solicitor-General Robert Dundas: ‘Do you know the prisoner … would you know that person again?’

Geddes replied: ‘I would.’

Dundas continued, ‘Look at the prisoners at the bar and say if you know either of them.’ (Here Geddes identified Brodie as the man who called himself John Dixon aboard ship.)

Geddes continued:

On getting out to sea Mr Dixon delivered to the captain a letter from [ship owners] Mr Hamilton or Mr Pinkerton, but, although I desired him to let me read it, I did not see it. In consequence of this, the captain altered his course and steered for Holland, and the vessel, although bound for Leith, sailed to Flushing. I do not think she was driven there by contrary winds, as the wind was south-west, and fairer for Newcastle or Leith than for Holland.

During the voyage, Mr Dixon complained much of a sore throat. When we arrived at Flushing we cleaned ourselves and went ashore, and Mr Dixon set off for Ostend in a skiff which he hired for that purpose. On shore, before he left, Mr Dixon gave me a packet containing two letters, one of which had another within it, to carry to Scotland to be delivered in Edinburgh. One of the letters was directed to Mr Michael Henderson, stabler in the Grassmarket, in which there was one inclosed to Mrs Anne Grant, Cant’s Close, and the other to Mr Matthew Sheriff, upholsterer in Edinburgh, signed and dated as mentioned in the indictment.

We did no business at Flushing, and I am of opinion that the ship did not come there with that intention. After landing Mr Dixon we sailed for Leith. When I arrived in Leith, from the accounts I heard about Brodie, I was convinced that Dixon and Brodie were the same person. Next day I went to Mid-Calder, and about three weeks afterwards was at Dalkeith, where I had occasion to see the newspapers, and the description of Brodie therein given confirmed me in the above suspicion. I then delivered the letters to Sheriff Cockburn. I had previously opened the packet and read them. [
The letters were shown to Geddes at this point
]. I know that these are the letters I received from the prisoner and delivered to the Sheriff.

The Dean of Faculty Henry Erskine asked, ‘Pray, sir, when did you open these letters you have told us of? Was it before or after you came to Leith?’ – and there were many more questions:

Geddes – ‘It was after.’

Erskine – ‘You told us, sir, that upon reading the newspapers you discovered that Dixon and Brodie were one and the same person. Pray, sir, when or where did you first read the newspapers?’

Geddes – ‘At Dalkeith.’

Erskine – ‘How long was that after your arrival?’

Geddes – ‘Three weeks.’

Erskine – ‘And pray, sir, what was the reason that in all that time you did not deliver these letters to the persons to whom they were directed?’

Geddes – ‘I did not remember that I had such letters when I was in Edinburgh myself, and I afterwards wished my brother-in-law to deliver them.’

Erskine – ‘Did you open the letters?’

Geddes – ‘I did.’