William Brodie by day is a respectable…
1788 CE
Part of his job as a cabinetmaker is to install and repair locks and other security mechanisms.
He socializes with the gentry of Edinburgh, and meets the poet Robert Burns and the painter Sir Henry Raeburn.
He is a member of the Edinburgh Cape Club and is known as "Sir Llyud".
At night, however, Brodie becomes a burglar and thief.
He uses his daytime job as a way to gain knowledge about the security mechanisms of his clients and to copy their keys using wax impressions.
As the foremost lockwright of the city, Brodie is asked to work in the houses of many of the richest members of Edinburgh society.
He uses the money he makes dishonestly to maintain his second life, which includes a gambling habit and five children to two mistresses (who do not know of each other, and are unknown in the city).
He reputedly began his criminal career around 1768, when he copied keys to a bank door and stole £800, at this time enough to maintain a household for several years.
In 1786 he had recruited a gang of three thieves, John Brown (a thief escaping a seven-year sentence of transportation), George Smith (a locksmith who ran a grocer's shop in the Cowgate) and Andrew Ainslie (a shoemaker).
The case that leads to Brodie's downfall begins later in 1788 when he organizes an armed raid on an Excise office in Chessel's Court on the Canongate.
Brodie's plan fails.
On the same night, Brown approaches the authorities to claim a King's Pardon, which had been offered after a previous robbery, and gives up the names of Smith and Ainslie (initially saying nothing of Brodie's involvement).
Smith and Ainslie are arrested and the next day Brodie attempts to visit them in prison but is refused.
Realizing that he has to leave Edinburgh, Brodie escapes to London, then to the Netherlands intending to flee to the United States, but is arrested in Amsterdam and shipped back to Edinburgh for trial.
The trial of Brodie and Smith starts on August 27, 1788.
At first there is no hard evidence against Brodie, although the tools of his criminal trade (copied keys, a disguise and pistols) are found in his house and workshops, but with Brown's evidence and Ainslie being persuaded to turn King's Evidence, added to the self-incriminating lines in the letters he had written while on the run, the jury finds Brodie and Smith guilty.
Brodie and Smith are hanged at the Old Tolbooth in the High Street on October 1, 1788, before a crowd of forty thousand
According to one tale, Brodie wore a steel collar and silver tube to prevent the hanging from being fatal.
It will be said that he had bribed the hangman to ignore it and arranged for his body to be removed quickly in the hope that he could later be revived.
If so, the plan fails.
Brodie is buried in an unmarked grave at the Buccleuch Church in Chapel Street.
The ground is now covered by a car park behind university lecture-halls.
However, rumors of his being seen in Paris will circulate later and give the story of his scheme to evade death further publicity.
Robert Louis Stevenson, whose father owned furniture made by Brodie, will write a play (with W. E. Henley) entitled Deacon Brodie, or The Double Life, which is unsuccessful.
However, Stevenson will remain fascinated by the dichotomy between Brodie's respectable façade and his real nature and will be inspired to write The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886).
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