In a central situation at the east end of the Grassmarket, there
remained till very lately a massive block of sandstone, having a
quadrangular hole in the middle, being the stone which served as a
socket for the gallows, when this was the common place of execution.
Instead of the stone, there is now only a St Andrew’s cross, indicated
by an arrangement of the paving-stones.
This became the regular scene of executions after the Restoration, and
so continued till the year 1784. Hence arises the sense of the Duke of
Rothes’s remark when a Covenanting prisoner proved obdurate: ‘Then e’en
let him glorify God in the Grassmarket!’—the deaths of that class of
victims being always signalised by psalm-singing on the scaffold. Most
of the hundred persons who suffered for that cause in Edinburgh during
the reigns of Charles II. and James II. breathed their last pious
aspirations at this spot; but several of the most notable, including
the Marquis and Earl of Argyll, were executed at the Cross.
As a matter of course, this was the scene of the Porteous riot in 1736,
and of the subsequent murder of Porteous by the mob. The rioters,
wishing to despatch him as near to the place of his alleged crime as
possible, selected for the purpose a dyer’s pole which stood on the
south side of the street, exactly opposite to the gallows stone.
Some of the Edinburgh executioners have been so far notable men as
to be the subject of traditionary fame. In the reign of Charles II.,
Alexander Cockburn, the hangman of Edinburgh, and who must have
officiated at the exits of many of the ‘martyrs’ in the Grassmarket,
was found guilty of the murder of a bluegown, or privileged beggar, and
accordingly suffered that fate which he had so often meted out to other
men. One Mackenzie, the hangman of Stirling, whom Cockburn had traduced
and endeavoured to thrust out of office, was the triumphant executioner
of the sentence.
Another Edinburgh hangman of this period was a reduced gentleman,
the last of a respectable family who had possessed an estate in the
neighbourhood of Melrose. He had been a profligate in early life,
squandered the whole of his patrimony, and at length, for the sake
of subsistence, was compelled to accept this wretched office, which
in those days must have been unusually obnoxious to popular odium,
on account of the frequent executions of innocent and religious men.
Notwithstanding his extreme degradation, this unhappy reprobate could
not altogether forget his original station and his former tastes and
habits. He would occasionally resume the garb of a gentleman, and
mingle in the parties of citizens who played at golf in the evenings on
Bruntsfield Links. Being at length recognised, he was chased from the
ground with shouts of execration and loathing, which affected him so
much that he retired to the solitude of the King’s Park, and was next
day found dead at the bottom of a precipice, over which he was supposed
to have thrown himself in despair. This rock was afterwards called the
_Hangman’s Craig_.
In the year 1700, when the Scottish people were in a state of great
excitement on account of the interference of the English government
against their expedition to Darien, some persons were apprehended for
a riot in the city of Edinburgh, and sentenced to be whipped and put
upon the pillory. As these persons had acted under the influence of
the general feeling, they excited the sympathy of the people in an
extraordinary degree, and even the hangman was found to have scruples
about the propriety of punishing them. Upon the pillory they were
presented with flowers and wine; and when arrayed for flagellation, the
executioner made a mere mockery of his duty, never once permitting his
whip to touch their backs. The magistrates were very indignant at the
conduct of their servant, and sentenced him to be scourged in his turn.
However, when the Haddington executioner was brought to officiate upon
his metropolitan brother, he was so much frightened by the threatening
aspect of the mob that he thought it prudent to make his escape
through a neighbouring alley. The laugh was thus turned against the
magistrates, who, it was said, would require to get a third executioner
to punish the Haddington man. They prudently dropped the whole matter.
At a somewhat later period, the Edinburgh official was a man named John
Dalgleish. He it was who acted at the execution of Wilson the smuggler
in 1736, and who is alluded to so frequently in the tale of the _Heart
of Mid-Lothian_. Dalgleish, I have heard, was esteemed, before his
taking up this office, as a person in creditable circumstances. He is
memorable for one pithy saying. Some one asking him how he contrived in
whipping a criminal to adjust the weight of his arm, on which, it is
obvious, much must depend: ‘Oh,’ said he, ‘I lay on the lash according
to my conscience.’ Either Jock, or some later official, was remarked to
be a regular _hearer_ at the Tolbooth Church. As no other person would
sit in the same seat, he always had a pew to himself. He regularly
communicated; but here the exclusiveness of his fellow-creatures also
marked itself, and the clergyman was obliged to serve a separate table
for the hangman, after the rest of the congregation had retired from
the church.
The last Edinburgh executioner of whom any particular notice has been
taken by the public was John High, commonly called Jock Heich, who
acceded to the office in the year 1784, and died so lately as 1817.
High had been originally induced to undertake this degrading duty in
order to escape the punishment due to a petty offence—that of stealing
poultry. I remember him living in his official mansion in a lane
adjoining to the Cowgate—a small wretched-looking house, assigned by
the magistrates for the residence of this race of officers, and which
has only been removed within the last few years, to make way for the
extension of the buildings of the Parliament Square. He had then a
second wife, whom he used to beat unmercifully. Since Jock’s days, no
executioner has been so conspicuous as to be known by name. The fame of
the occupation seems somehow to have departed.
* * * * *
I have now finished my account of the West Bow; a most antiquated
place, yet not without its virtues even as to matters of the present
day. Humble as the street appears, many of its shopkeepers and other
inhabitants are of a very respectable character. Bankruptcies are said
to be very rare in the Bow. Most of the traders are of old standing,
and well-to-do in the world; few but what are the proprietors of
their own shops and dwellings, which, in such a community, indicates
something like wealth. The smarter and more dashing men of Princes
Street and the Bridges may smile at their homely externals and darksome
little places of business, or may not even pay them the compliment
of thinking of them at all; yet, while they boast not of their
‘warerooms,’ or their troops of ‘young men,’ or their plate-glass
windows, they at least feel no apprehension from the approach of
rent-day, and rarely experience tremulations on the subject of bills.
Perhaps, if strict investigation were made, the ‘bodies’ of the Bow
could show more comfortable balances at the New Year than at least a
half of the sublime men who pay an income by way of rental in George
Street. Not one of them but is respectfully known by a good sum on the
creditor side at Sir William Forbes’s; not one but can stand at his
shop-door, with his hands in his pockets and his hat on, not unwilling,
it may be, to receive custom, yet not liable to be greatly distressed
if the customer go by. Such, perhaps, were shopkeepers in the golden
age![39]