Monthly archives: November 2020

Deacon Brodie and one his partners George Smith were hanged on the Tolbooth Jail scaffold in the High Street on the first of October 1788. Deacon Brodie was buried in an unmarked grave at St Cuthbert’s Chapel of Ease on the south side of the city. image credit: Wikimedia Commons

The illustration shows the keys and lantern used by Deacon Brodie when he committed a burglary.

Born in 1741 Deacon Brodie was a cabinet maker and a town councillor. Addicted to gambling he broke into peoples’ houses to in order to pay off his debts. The engraving is by John Kay who is buried in Greyfriars kirkyard.

Street musician William Lamb was convicted of murdering his wife in their lodgings not long after the end of the First World War. The couple stayed at number eighty eight Candlemaker Row next to Greyfriars kirkyard burial gate. The story is told in Jan Bondeson’s new book “Murder Houses of Edinburgh”. Signed copies of Jan’s […]

Sir Walter Scott’s father and members of his family are buried in Greyfriars kirkyard.

The illustration shows the sitting room in John Knox’s House.

The illustration from James Grant’s “Old and New Edinburgh” shows the bedroom in John Knox’s house in the High Street.

A six-storey tenement in the High Street collapsed on Sunday, 24th November, 1861. Jan Bondeson has put forward that theory that the youngster who survived the disaster may have been Joseph McIvor and not John Geddes as previously thought.

The illustration from James Grant’s “Old and New Edinburgh” shows the Norman entrance at St Giles. The doorway no longer exists as it was destroyed towards the close of the eighteenth century.

The illustration shows John Knox’s pulpit. John Knox was appointed minister at St Giles in 1560.