Trial of Deacon Brodie

In 1780s Edinburgh, William Brodie was a respected carpenter and guild deacon by day, a burglar by night. His secret life of gambling and theft eventually brought him to the gallows in a trial that shocked a nation. This 1906 historical account compiles the original trial records with contemporary sources, including Brodie's own letter to the Duchess of Buccleuch and entries from his family Bible. Editor William Roughead reconstructs the full arc of Brodie's downfall: the unremarkable beginnings, the gambling habit that spiraled into obsession, and the elaborate crimes committed with a gang of fellow degenerates. The book preserves not just the legal documents but the psychological portrait of a man who lived in permanent contradiction between his respectable daytime existence and his nocturnal adventures in the city's meanest alleys. What emerges is a stark document about the costs of living a lie. The case would later inspire Robert Louis Stevenson's «Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde», and reading these primary sources, you can see exactly why: Brodie embodied the frightening possibility that the man greeting you in the morning and the one robbing your house after dark might be the same person.