[Illustration: Tweeddale Court.]
The town mansion of the Marquises of Tweeddale was one of large extent
and dimensions, in a court which still bears the title of that family,
nearly opposite to the mansion of John Knox.[226] When John, the
fourth marquis, was Secretary of State for Scotland, in the reign of
George II., this must have been a dwelling of considerable importance
in the eyes of his countrymen. It had a good garden in the rear,
with a yard and coach entry from the Cowgate. Now all the buildings
and ‘pertinents’ are in the occupation of Messrs Oliver & Boyd, the
well-known publishers.
[Illustration: Scene of the Begbie Murder.]
The passage from the street into Tweeddale Court is narrow and dark,
and about fifteen yards in length. Here, in 1806, when the mansion was
possessed as a banking-house by the British Linen Company, there took
place an extraordinary tragedy. About five o’clock of the evening of
the 13th of November, when the short midwinter day had just closed,
a child, who lived in a house accessible from the close, was sent by
her mother with a kettle to obtain a supply of water for tea from the
neighbouring well. The little girl, stepping with the kettle in her
hand out of the public stair into the close, stumbled in the dark over
something which lay there, and which proved to be the body of a man
just expiring. On an alarm being given, it was discovered that this
was William Begbie, a porter connected with the bank, in whose heart
a knife was stuck up to the haft, so that he bled to death before
uttering a word which might tend to explain the dismal transaction. He
was at the same time found to have been robbed of a package of notes to
the value of above four thousand pounds, which he had been entrusted,
in the course of his ordinary duty, to carry from the branch of the
bank at Leith to the head-office.[227] The blow had been given with an
accuracy and a calculation of consequences showing the most appalling
deliberation in the assassin; for not only was the knife directed
straight into the most vital part, but its handle had been muffled in a
bunch of soft paper, so as to prevent, as was thought, any sprinkling
of blood from reaching the person of the murderer, by which he might
have been by some chance detected. The knife was one of those with
broad thin blades and wooden handles which are used for cutting bread,
and its rounded front had been ground to a point, apparently for the
execution of this horrible deed. The unfortunate man left a wife and
four children to bewail his loss.
The singular nature and circumstances of Begbie’s murder occasioned
much excitement in the public mind, and every effort was of course
made to discover the guilty party. No house of a suspicious character
in the city was left unsearched, and parties were despatched to watch
and patrol all the various roads leading out into the country. The
bank offered a reward of five hundred pounds for such information as
might lead to the conviction of the offender or offenders; and the
government further promised the king’s pardon to any except the actual
murderer who, having been concerned in the deed, might discover their
accomplices. The sheriff of Edinburgh, Mr Clerk Rattray, displayed the
greatest zeal in his endeavours to ascertain the circumstances of the
murder, and to detect and seize the murderer, but with surprisingly
little success. All that could be ascertained was that Begbie, in
proceeding up Leith Walk on his fatal mission, had been accompanied by
‘a man;’ and that about the supposed time of the murder ‘a man’ had
been seen by some children to run out of the close into the street
and down Leith Wynd, a lane leading off from the Netherbow at a point
nearly opposite to the close. There was also reason to believe that the
knife had been bought in a shop about two o’clock on the day of the
murder, and that it had been afterwards ground upon a grinding-stone
and smoothed on a hone. A number of suspicious characters were
apprehended and examined; but all, with one exception, produced
satisfactory proofs of their innocence. The exception was a carrier
between Perth and Edinburgh, a man of dissolute and irregular habits,
of great bodily strength, and known to be a dangerous and desperate
character. He was kept in custody for a considerable time on suspicion,
having been seen in the Canongate, near the scene of the murder, a
very short time after it was committed. It has since been ascertained
that he was then going about a different business, the disclosure of
which would have subjected him to a capital punishment. It was in
consequence of the mystery he felt himself impelled to preserve on this
subject that he was kept so long in custody; but at length facts and
circumstances came out to warrant his discharge, and he was discharged
accordingly.
Months rolled on without eliciting any evidence respecting the murder,
and, like other wonders, it had ceased in a great measure to engage
public attention, when, on the 10th of August 1807, a journeyman mason,
in company with two other men, passing through the Bellevue grounds in
the neighbourhood of the city, found, in a hole in a stone enclosure
by the side of a hedge, a parcel containing a large quantity of
bank-notes, bearing the appearance of having been a good while exposed
to the weather. After consulting a little, the men carried the package
to the sheriff’s office, where it was found to contain about £3000 in
large notes, being those which had been taken from Begbie. The British
Linen Company rewarded the men with two hundred pounds for their
honesty; but the circumstance passed without throwing any light on the
murder itself.
Up to the present day the murderer of Begbie has not been discovered;
nor is it probable, after the space of time which has elapsed, that he
will ever be so. It is most likely that the grave has long closed upon
him. The only person on whom public suspicion alighted with any force
during the sixteen years ensuing upon the transaction was a medical
practitioner in Leith, a dissolute man and a gambler, who put an end to
his own existence not long after the murder. But I am not acquainted
with any particular circumstances on which this suspicion was grounded
beyond the suicide, which might spring from other causes. It was not
till 1822 that any further light was thrown on this mysterious case.
In a work then published under the title of _The Life and Trial of
James Mackoull_, there was included a paper by Mr Denovan, the Bow
Street officer, the object of which was to prove that Mackoull was the
murderer, and which contained at least one very curious statement.
Mr Denovan had discovered in Leith a man, then acting as a teacher, but
who in 1806 was a sailor-boy, and who had witnessed some circumstances
immediately connected with the murder. The man’s statement was as
follows: ‘I was at that time (November 1806) a boy of fourteen years
of age. The vessel to which I belonged had made a voyage to Lisbon,
and was then lying in Leith harbour. I had brought a small present
from Portugal for my mother and sister, who resided in the Netherbow,
Edinburgh, immediately opposite to Tweeddale’s Close, leading to the
British Linen Company’s Bank. I left the vessel late in the afternoon,
and as the articles I had brought were contraband, I put them under
my jacket, and was proceeding up Leith Walk, when I perceived a tall
man carrying a yellow-coloured parcel under his arm, and a genteel
man, dressed in a black coat, dogging him. I was a little afraid: I
conceived the man who carried the parcel to be a smuggler, and the
gentleman who followed him to be a custom-house or excise officer. In
dogging the man, the supposed officer went from one side of the Walk to
the other [the Walk is a broad street], as if afraid of being noticed,
but still kept about the same distance behind him. I was afraid of
losing what I carried, and shortened sail a little, keeping my eyes
fixed on the person I supposed to be an officer, until I came to the
head of Leith Street, when I saw the smuggler take the North Bridge,
and the custom-house officer go in front of the Register Office; here
he looked round him, and imagining he was looking for me, I hove
to, and watched him. He then looked up the North Bridge, and, as I
conceive, followed the smuggler, for he went the same way. I stood a
minute or two where I was, and then went forward, walking slowly up
the North Bridge. I did not, however, see either of the men before me;
and when I came to the south end or head of the Bridge, supposing that
they might have gone up the High Street or along the South Bridge, I
turned to the left, and reached the Netherbow, without again seeing
either the smuggler or the officer. Just, however, as I came opposite
to Tweeddale’s Close, _I saw the custom-house officer come running
out of it with something under his coat_: I think he ran down the
street. Being much alarmed, and supposing that the officer had also
seen me and knew what I carried, I deposited my little present in my
mother’s with all possible speed, and made the best of my way to Leith,
without hearing anything of the murder of Begbie until next day. On
coming on board the vessel, I told the mate what a narrow escape I
conceived I had made: he seemed somewhat alarmed (having probably, like
myself, smuggled some trifling article from Portugal), and told me
in a peremptory tone that I should not go ashore again without first
acquainting him. I certainly heard of the murder before I left Leith,
and concluded that the man I saw was the murderer; but the idea of
waiting on a magistrate and communicating what I had seen never struck
me. We sailed in a few days thereafter from Leith; and the vessel to
which I belonged having been captured by a privateer, I was carried
to a French prison, and only regained my liberty at the last peace. I
can now recollect distinctly the figure of the man I saw; he was well
dressed, had a genteel appearance, and wore a black coat. I never saw
his face properly, for he was before me the whole way up the Walk; I
think, however, he was a stout big man, but not so tall as the man I
then conceived to be a smuggler.’
This description of the supposed custom-house officer coincides exactly
with that of the appearance of Mackoull; and other circumstances are
given which almost make it certain that he was the murderer. This
Mackoull was a London rogue of unparalleled effrontery and dexterity,
who for years haunted Scotland, and effected some daring robberies.
He resided in Edinburgh from September 1805 till the close of 1806,
and during that time frequented a coffee-house in the _Ship Tavern_ at
Leith. He professed to be a merchant expelled by the threats of the
French from Hamburg, and to live by a new mode of dyeing skins, but in
reality he practised the arts of a gambler and a pickpocket. He had a
mean lodging at the bottom of New Street in the Canongate, near the
scene of the murder of Begbie, to which it is remarkable that _Leith
Wynd_ was the readiest as well as most private access from that spot.
No suspicion, however, fell upon Mackoull at this period, and he left
the country for a number of years, at the end of which time he visited
Glasgow, and there effected a robbery of one of the banks. For this
crime he did not escape the law. He was brought to trial at Edinburgh
in 1820, was condemned to be executed, but died in jail while under
reprieve from his sentence.
The most striking part of the evidence which Mr Denovan adduces against
Mackoull is the report of a conversation which he had with that person
in the condemned cell of the Edinburgh jail in July 1820, when Mackoull
was very doubtful of being reprieved. To pursue his own narrative,
which is in the third person: ‘He told Captain Sibbald [the superior of
the prison] that he intended to ask Mackoull a single question relative
to the murder of Begbie, but would first humour him by a few jokes,
so as to throw him off his guard, and prevent him from thinking he
had called for any particular purpose [it is to be observed that Mr
Denovan had a professional acquaintance with the condemned man]; but
desired Captain Sibbald to watch the features of the prisoner when he
(Denovan) put his hand to his chin, for he would then put the question
he meant. After talking some time on different topics, Mr Denovan put
this very simple question to the prisoner: “By the way, Mackoull, if
I am correct, you resided at the foot of New Street, Canongate, in
November 1806—did you not?” He stared—he rolled his eyes, and, as if
falling into a convulsion, threw himself back upon his bed. In this
condition he continued for a few moments, when, as if recollecting
himself, he started up, exclaiming wildly: “No, —— ——! I was then
in the East Indies—in the West Indies. What do you mean?” “I mean no
harm, Mackoull,” he replied; “I merely asked the question for my own
curiosity; for I think when you left these lodgings you went to Dublin.
Is it not so?” “Yes, yes, I went to Dublin,” he replied; “and I wish I
had remained there still. I won £10,000 there at the tables, and never
knew what it was to want cash, although you wished the folks here to
believe that they locked me up in Old Start (Newgate), and brought down
your friend Adkins to swear he saw me there: this was more than your
duty.” He now seemed to rave, and lose all temper, and his visitor bade
him good-night, and left him.’
It appears extremely probable, from the strong circumstantial evidence
which has been offered by Mr Denovan, that Mackoull was the murderer of
Begbie.
One remaining fact regarding the Netherbow will be listened to with
some interest. It was the home—perhaps the native spot—of William
Falconer, the author of _The Shipwreck_, whose father was a wigmaker in
this street.[228]