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326

INTRODUCTION OF THE DROP,

to delyver the maiden to sic as sal be sent from the town of St Androis for transporting thereof. Quhair-anent thir presents sal be ane warrand."

"It was accordingly used for the execution of this venerable gentleman-one of those rash and vindictive proceedings on the part of the Scottish liberalists of that age, which were only expiated in the succeeding reign, by the oppressions and persecutions to which they were in their turn subjected by the royalists. Two or three other prisoners taken at Philiphaugh were executed by the maiden.

"The next personage who fell a sacrifice to it was the Marquis of Huntly in 1649. About this period, and for some years later, it was used to execute almost all kinds of criminals. We have observed from a manuscript abridgement of the books of Justiciary in the Advocates' Library, that even women guilty of childmurder were executed by it. Perhaps it was as a peculiarly ignominious distinction, that the Marquis of Montrose, in 1650, was hanged. A return to the dis

grace of the rope, in his case, might be looked upon as not the least severe part of a punishment intended to comprehend every possible severity.

"After the Restoration, if less actively employed, the maiden was still continued in use. It was brought into play at the execution of the Marquis of Argyle in 1661, as also that of his son the Earl in 1685; the latter, in kneeling to submit his neck to the axe, embraced the instrument in his arms, and said it was the sweetest maiden he had ever kissed. After this time, there occurs no notice of its ever having been employed. It seems to have been resigned at that period to the obscurity of a cellar under the Parliament House, which was also devoted, as we are informed by Maitland, to the keeping the trappings which had been used at the ridings of the Scottish parliament. From that dungeon, it was rescued within the last few years, - by the Antiquarian Society, and placed in their museum."

OR FALLING TABLE.

327

The drop, or table which falls from beneath the feet of malefactors when put to death on the gallows, did not come into use in Great Britain till about the year 1784. In that year, we believe, it was first used at Newgate, on that place becoming the scene of execution after removal from Tyburn, where the driving away of the cart from under the culprit served as the drop. The first time such a device was resorted to in Scotland, was on April 20. 1785, on the execution of a young man of the name of Stewart, for house-breaking, at the west end of the tolbooth at Edinburgh. Previously, the place of execution in the metropolis was in the Grassmarket; where the double ladder was used, to the very last. It is a very common belief, that the inventor of the drop was William Brodie, a master carpenter in Edinburgh, and a deacon of the incorporation of hammermen, who was himself the first who suffered by it. But this is a very inaccurate supposition. Brodie and his companion Smith were executed for robbing the office of excise, October 1, 1788, more than three years after the introduction of the falling table. They were, however, hanged with a new drop, from a fresh gallows, and such may been the cause of the very common belief, that Brodie was the first person who was executed in the new mode.

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Most of our Edinburgh readers will remember that there projected a modern low building from the west end of the old tolbooth, on which executions took place till the whole fabric was taken down some years since. Originally, this edifice or wing had a slanting roof attached to the end wall of the jail. Some weeks before the above-mentioned Stewart was executed, the magistrates of the city ordered a door to be broke out,* opening upon this roof, and a small scaffold to be erected thereupon the width of the door. A single beam of wood being fixed in the wall above, the whole machinery of a scaffold was completed. For three years the erection stood in this way, until it happened

* Council Records, 1785.

328

INFERIOR CORPORAL PUNISHMENTS.

that no fewer than four individuals were doomed to be executed all on the same day, namely, Brodie, Smith, and two unfortunate, and as it afterwards appeared, innocent men, who had been accused and convicted by perjury, of robbing a bank in Dundee. These two latter persons, a few days before the day of execution, were reprieved, (but subsequently executed,) though not until the magistrates had been obliged to level the whole of the slanting roof, and erect a more substantial gallows with a strong cruciform beam, having four hooks to which to attach the ropes. The alterations consequent on these erections were made a short time before the execution of Brodie, who, while under sentence, complained of the noise made by the carpenters. As it is thus tolerably evident, that the Scotch drop was a copy from that at Newgate, and as it cannot be discovered that Brodie had any concern in the introduction or erection of either the first or the second scaffold at the tolbooth, the very common tradition that he was the inventor, and the first who suffered by such a contrivance, is altogether incorrect.

Inferior corporal punishments are now almost never inflicted. Public scourging, once so common, is practically abrogated; and punishment by pillory is entirely unknown. The old Scottish pillory, known in history by the title of the Collistriguum, or neck stretcher, is utterly forgot. By this instrument a very savage punishment was inflicted. The culprit being placed on a low scaffold, in a standing position, his neck was encased in a wooden collar or board, not so closely as to provoke suffocation; but being elevated to such a height as just to allow the tip of the toes to barely touch the ground; the weight of the body on the chin and back of the head produced a painful sensation. The thumbikens, or small iron vice, which squeezed the thumb to extort confession, and the iron boot and wedge, are already so well understood as to require no description. They were principally used on the trial of rebels in the reign of Charles II. Nailing the luggs

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to the trone, (a post at the market place at which goods were weighed,) was a very common punishment in Scotland, prior to the eighteenth century. It was latterly only applied to gipsies or tinkers, who could be so used merely for being habit and repute "Egyptians."

Another very usual punishment at one period, was the chaining of evil-doers to the gateways of the parish churches, by an iron collar fastened with a padlock. This infamous and brutal punishment was more frequently administered at the instance of kirk sessions than of civil authorities. Sometimes the culprits were dressed in sackcloth, and passengers had a liberty of spitting upon individuals so unfortunately condemned to this species of pillory. The collars used on these occasions were called the "jougs," (from jugum, a yoke,) and answered the same purpose as the stocks in England. Jougs are now entirely abrogated; but fragments of the chains and collars are often to be seen at the doors of country kirks, where they remain as palpable evidence of that rigour exercised in former times by the Scottish clergy and their elders, in their outrageous zeal for purity in morals, which was dictated as much from mistaken views of the pastoral office as ignorance of human nature. One of these instruments may be seen, almost entire, at the entrance to Duddingstone church, within a mile of Edinburgh.

SCOTTISH BANKING INSTITUTIONS.

Let us alone.

SHAKESPEARE.

THE Scotch have been deservedly celebrated as the most ingenious and successful bankers in the world; and a sketch of the principles upon which their institutions in this branch of business are conducted, as well as a delineation of the causes of their continued prosperity, ought certainly to find a place among other distinguishing peculiarities in the moral topography of the country. That they have arrived at an astonishing degree of eminence in the process of banking, all must be willing to allow. They have unquestionably reared by far the most perfect and rational system of a paper currency ever invented; and their institutions, strengthened by the experience of nearly a century and a half, while they command respect, attract the admiration and imitative faculties of all nations aiming at prosperity through the aid of representative paper money.

Most of the peculiar institutions of the Scotch have been generated from the force of particular circumstances, and it is very possible that they have sometimes succeeded in the ends of their establishment, when the same result would not follow their erection in many other territories. The nature and size of the country, the reflecting habits of the people, but above all, the poverty of the nation, have given a decided turn to the modes of action of the inhabitants, who have a

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