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As a matter of course, this was the scene of the Porteous riot in 1736, and of the subsequent murder of Porteous by the mob. The rioters, wishing to despatch him as near to the place of his alleged crime as possible, selected for the purpose a dyer’s pole which stood on the south side of the street, exactly opposite to the gallows stone.

Some of the Edinburgh executioners have been so far notable men as to be the subject of traditionary fame. In the reign of Charles II., Alexander Cockburn, the hangman of Edinburgh, and who must have officiated at the exits of many of the ‘martyrs’ in the Grassmarket, was found guilty of the murder of a bluegown, or privileged beggar, and accordingly suffered that fate which he had so often meted out to other men. One Mackenzie, the hangman of Stirling, whom Cockburn had traduced and endeavoured to thrust out of office, was the triumphant executioner of the sentence.

Another Edinburgh hangman of this period was a reduced gentleman, the last of a respectable family who had possessed an estate in the neighbourhood of Melrose. He had been a profligate in early life, squandered the whole of his patrimony, and at length, for the sake of subsistence, was compelled to accept this wretched office, which in those days must have been unusually obnoxious to popular odium, on account of the frequent executions of innocent and religious men. Notwithstanding his extreme degradation, this unhappy reprobate could not altogether forget his original station and his former tastes and habits. He would occasionally resume the garb of a gentleman, and mingle in the parties of citizens who played at golf in the evenings on Bruntsfield Links. Being at length recognised, he was chased from the ground with shouts of execration and loathing, which affected him so much that he retired to the solitude of the King’s Park, and was next day found dead at the bottom of a precipice, over which he was supposed to have thrown himself in despair. This rock was afterwards called the Hangman’s Craig.