Edinburgh



A Split Personality, Deacon William Brodie

When Robert Louis Stevenson wrote The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in 1886, it shocked genteel society. Little did people realise that although he set the book in London, he had based his story on the reallife case of an Edinburgh man. Deacon William Brodie was a respecable cabinetmaker and locksmith who, when he closed his shop in the evening, lived another life. After dark he frequented the less prepectable parts of the town - gambling, cockfighting and fathering five illegitimate children. He funded this lifestyle by stealing from his respectable customers, taking copies of the keys of cabinets and strongboxes sold in his shop and creeping into their houses to relieve them of their valualbles.
Deacon Brodie was caught in the act in 1788 and was hanged in front of a huge crowd.
(Berlitz Edinburgh pocket guide)
 

Fudge

Robert Fergusson, Scots Poet. Born in Edinburgh 1750. Died in Bedlam 1774