Trial of Deacon [William] Brodie (Notable British Trials Series)

London / Glasgow / Edinburgh: Sweet & Maxwell, Limited / William Hodge and Company, 1906. First Edition. Hard Cover. Good/No Jacket. 0x0x0. First edition. Spine slightly faded with minimal loss from head, front and end matter foxed. 1906 Hard Cover. 354 pp. 8vo. An account of the trial of Deacon William Brodie, a well-respected member of society by day, and the leader of a gang of burglars by night. "Brodie's last crime and ultimate downfall was an armed raid on His Majesty's Excise Office in Chessel's Court, on the Canongate. Although Brodie had planned the burglary himself, things went disastrously wrong. Ainslie and Brown were caught and turned King's Evidence on the rest of the gang. Brodie escaped to the Netherlands, but was arrested in Amsterdam and returned to Edinburgh for trial... The final irony was that Brodie was hanged from a gibbet, which he himself had only recently redesigned. He proudly boasted to the crowd that the gallows upon which he was about to die was the most efficient of its kind in existence... It is said that Brodie's bizarre double-life inspired Robert Louis Stevenson, whose father had had furniture made by Brodie. Stevenson included aspects of Brodie's life and character in his story of a split personality, 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde'." - Historic UK