Читать книгу Traditions of Edinburgh онлайн

63 страница из 95

At a somewhat later period, the Edinburgh official was a man named John Dalgleish. He it was who acted at the execution of Wilson the smuggler in 1736, and who is alluded to so frequently in the tale of the Heart of Mid-Lothian. Dalgleish, I have heard, was esteemed, before his taking up this office, as a person in creditable circumstances. He is memorable for one pithy saying. Some one asking him how he contrived in whipping a criminal to adjust the weight of his arm, on which, it is obvious, much must depend: ‘Oh,’ said he, ‘I lay on the lash according to my conscience.’ Either Jock, or some later official, was remarked to be a regular hearer at the Tolbooth Church. As no other person would sit in the same seat, he always had a pew to himself. He regularly communicated; but here the exclusiveness of his fellow-creatures also marked itself, and the clergyman was obliged to serve a separate table for the hangman, after the rest of the congregation had retired from the church.

The last Edinburgh executioner of whom any particular notice has been taken by the public was John High, commonly called Jock Heich, who acceded to the office in the year 1784, and died so lately as 1817. High had been originally induced to undertake this degrading duty in order to escape the punishment due to a petty offence—that of stealing poultry. I remember him living in his official mansion in a lane adjoining to the Cowgate—a small wretched-looking house, assigned by the magistrates for the residence of this race of officers, and which has only been removed within the last few years, to make way for the extension of the buildings of the Parliament Square. He had then a second wife, whom he used to beat unmercifully. Since Jock’s days, no executioner has been so conspicuous as to be known by name. The fame of the occupation seems somehow to have departed.