The town mansion of the Marquises of Tweeddale was one of large extent and dimensions, in a court which still bears the title of that family, nearly opposite to the mansion of John Knox.[226] When John, the fourth marquis, was Secretary of State for Scotland, in the reign of George II., this must have been a dwelling of considerable importance in the eyes of his countrymen. It had a good garden in the rear, with a yard and coach entry from the Cowgate. Now all the buildings and ‘pertinents’ are in the occupation of Messrs Oliver & Boyd, the well-known publishers.

The passage from the street into Tweeddale Court is narrow and dark, and about fifteen yards in length. Here, in 1806, when the mansion was possessed as a banking-house by the British Linen Company, there took place an extraordinary tragedy. About five o’clock of the evening of the 13th of November, when the short midwinter day had just closed, a child, who lived in a house accessible from the close, was sent by her mother with a kettle to obtain a supply of water for tea from the neighbouring well. The little girl, stepping with the kettle in her hand out of the public stair into the close, stumbled in the dark over something which lay there, and which proved to be the body of a man just expiring. On an alarm being given, it was discovered that this was William Begbie, a porter connected with the bank, in whose heart a knife was stuck up to the haft, so that he bled to death before uttering a word which might tend to explain the dismal transaction. He was at the same time found to have been robbed of a package of notes to the value of above four thousand pounds, which he had been entrusted, in the course of his ordinary duty, to carry from the branch of the bank at Leith to the head-office.[227] The blow had been given with an accuracy and a calculation of consequences showing the most appalling deliberation in the assassin; for not only was the knife directed straight into the most vital part, but its handle had been muffled in a bunch of soft paper, so as to prevent, as was thought, any sprinkling of blood from reaching the person of the murderer, by which he might have been by some chance detected. The knife was one of those with broad thin blades and wooden handles which are used for cutting bread, and its rounded front had been ground to a point, apparently for the execution of this horrible deed. The unfortunate man left a wife and four children to bewail his loss.

The singular nature and circumstances of Begbie’s murder occasioned much excitement in the public mind, and every effort was of course made to discover the guilty party. No house of a suspicious character in the city was left unsearched, and parties were despatched to watch and patrol all the various roads leading out into the country. The bank offered a reward of five hundred pounds for such information as might lead to the conviction of the offender or offenders; and the government further promised the king’s pardon to any except the actual murderer who, having been concerned in the deed, might discover their accomplices. The sheriff of Edinburgh, Mr Clerk Rattray, displayed the greatest zeal in his endeavours to ascertain the circumstances of the murder, and to detect and seize the murderer, but with surprisingly little success. All that could be ascertained was that Begbie, in proceeding up Leith Walk on his fatal mission, had been accompanied by ‘a man;’ and that about the supposed time of the murder ‘a man’ had been seen by some children to run out of the close into the street and down Leith Wynd, a lane leading off from the Netherbow at a point nearly opposite to the close. There was also reason to believe that the knife had been bought in a shop about two o’clock on the day of the murder, and that it had been afterwards ground upon a grinding-stone and smoothed on a hone. A number of suspicious characters were apprehended and examined; but all, with one exception, produced satisfactory proofs of their innocence. The exception was a carrier between Perth and Edinburgh, a man of dissolute and irregular habits, of great bodily strength, and known to be a dangerous and desperate character. He was kept in custody for a considerable time on suspicion, having been seen in the Canongate, near the scene of the murder, a very short time after it was committed. It has since been ascertained that he was then going about a different business, the disclosure of which would have subjected him to a capital punishment. It was in consequence of the mystery he felt himself impelled to preserve on this subject that he was kept so long in custody; but at length facts and circumstances came out to warrant his discharge, and he was discharged accordingly.

Months rolled on without eliciting any evidence respecting the murder, and, like other wonders, it had ceased in a great measure to engage public attention, when, on the 10th of August 1807, a journeyman mason, in company with two other men, passing through the Bellevue grounds in the neighbourhood of the city, found, in a hole in a stone enclosure by the side of a hedge, a parcel containing a large quantity of bank-notes, bearing the appearance of having been a good while exposed to the weather. After consulting a little, the men carried the package to the sheriff’s office, where it was found to contain about £3000 in large notes, being those which had been taken from Begbie. The British Linen Company rewarded the men with two hundred pounds for their honesty; but the circumstance passed without throwing any light on the murder itself.

Up to the present day the murderer of Begbie has not been discovered; nor is it probable, after the space of time which has elapsed, that he will ever be so. It is most likely that the grave has long closed upon him. The only person on whom public suspicion alighted with any force during the sixteen years ensuing upon the transaction was a medical practitioner in Leith, a dissolute man and a gambler, who put an end to his own existence not long after the murder. But I am not acquainted with any particular circumstances on which this suspicion was grounded beyond the suicide, which might spring from other causes. It was not till 1822 that any further light was thrown on this mysterious case. In a work then published under the title of The Life and Trial of James Mackoull, there was included a paper by Mr Denovan, the Bow Street officer, the object of which was to prove that Mackoull was the murderer, and which contained at least one very curious statement.

Mr Denovan had discovered in Leith a man, then acting as a teacher, but who in 1806 was a sailor-boy, and who had witnessed some circumstances immediately connected with the murder. The man’s statement was as follows: ‘I was at that time (November 1806) a boy of fourteen years of age. The vessel to which I belonged had made a voyage to Lisbon, and was then lying in Leith harbour. I had brought a small present from Portugal for my mother and sister, who resided in the Netherbow, Edinburgh, immediately opposite to Tweeddale’s Close, leading to the British Linen Company’s Bank. I left the vessel late in the afternoon, and as the articles I had brought were contraband, I put them under my jacket, and was proceeding up Leith Walk, when I perceived a tall man carrying a yellow-coloured parcel under his arm, and a genteel man, dressed in a black coat, dogging him. I was a little afraid: I conceived the man who carried the parcel to be a smuggler, and the gentleman who followed him to be a custom-house or excise officer. In dogging the man, the supposed officer went from one side of the Walk to the other [the Walk is a broad street], as if afraid of being noticed, but still kept about the same distance behind him. I was afraid of losing what I carried, and shortened sail a little, keeping my eyes fixed on the person I supposed to be an officer, until I came to the head of Leith Street, when I saw the smuggler take the North Bridge, and the custom-house officer go in front of the Register Office; here he looked round him, and imagining he was looking for me, I hove to, and watched him. He then looked up the North Bridge, and, as I conceive, followed the smuggler, for he went the same way. I stood a minute or two where I was, and then went forward, walking slowly up the North Bridge. I did not, however, see either of the men before me; and when I came to the south end or head of the Bridge, supposing that they might have gone up the High Street or along the South Bridge, I turned to the left, and reached the Netherbow, without again seeing either the smuggler or the officer. Just, however, as I came opposite to Tweeddale’s Close, I saw the custom-house officer come running out of it with something under his coat: I think he ran down the street. Being much alarmed, and supposing that the officer had also seen me and knew what I carried, I deposited my little present in my mother’s with all possible speed, and made the best of my way to Leith, without hearing anything of the murder of Begbie until next day. On coming on board the vessel, I told the mate what a narrow escape I conceived I had made: he seemed somewhat alarmed (having probably, like myself, smuggled some trifling article from Portugal), and told me in a peremptory tone that I should not go ashore again without first acquainting him. I certainly heard of the murder before I left Leith, and concluded that the man I saw was the murderer; but the idea of waiting on a magistrate and communicating what I had seen never struck me. We sailed in a few days thereafter from Leith; and the vessel to which I belonged having been captured by a privateer, I was carried to a French prison, and only regained my liberty at the last peace. I can now recollect distinctly the figure of the man I saw; he was well dressed, had a genteel appearance, and wore a black coat. I never saw his face properly, for he was before me the whole way up the Walk; I think, however, he was a stout big man, but not so tall as the man I then conceived to be a smuggler.’

This description of the supposed custom-house officer coincides exactly with that of the appearance of Mackoull; and other circumstances are given which almost make it certain that he was the murderer. This Mackoull was a London rogue of unparalleled effrontery and dexterity, who for years haunted Scotland, and effected some daring robberies. He resided in Edinburgh from September 1805 till the close of 1806, and during that time frequented a coffee-house in the Ship Tavern at Leith. He professed to be a merchant expelled by the threats of the French from Hamburg, and to live by a new mode of dyeing skins, but in reality he practised the arts of a gambler and a pickpocket. He had a mean lodging at the bottom of New Street in the Canongate, near the scene of the murder of Begbie, to which it is remarkable that Leith Wynd was the readiest as well as most private access from that spot. No suspicion, however, fell upon Mackoull at this period, and he left the country for a number of years, at the end of which time he visited Glasgow, and there effected a robbery of one of the banks. For this crime he did not escape the law. He was brought to trial at Edinburgh in 1820, was condemned to be executed, but died in jail while under reprieve from his sentence.

The most striking part of the evidence which Mr Denovan adduces against Mackoull is the report of a conversation which he had with that person in the condemned cell of the Edinburgh jail in July 1820, when Mackoull was very doubtful of being reprieved. To pursue his own narrative, which is in the third person: ‘He told Captain Sibbald [the superior of the prison] that he intended to ask Mackoull a single question relative to the murder of Begbie, but would first humour him by a few jokes, so as to throw him off his guard, and prevent him from thinking he had called for any particular purpose [it is to be observed that Mr Denovan had a professional acquaintance with the condemned man]; but desired Captain Sibbald to watch the features of the prisoner when he (Denovan) put his hand to his chin, for he would then put the question he meant. After talking some time on different topics, Mr Denovan put this very simple question to the prisoner: “By the way, Mackoull, if I am correct, you resided at the foot of New Street, Canongate, in November 1806—did you not?” He stared—he rolled his eyes, and, as if falling into a convulsion, threw himself back upon his bed. In this condition he continued for a few moments, when, as if recollecting himself, he started up, exclaiming wildly: “No, —— ——! I was then in the East Indies—in the West Indies. What do you mean?” “I mean no harm, Mackoull,” he replied; “I merely asked the question for my own curiosity; for I think when you left these lodgings you went to Dublin. Is it not so?” “Yes, yes, I went to Dublin,” he replied; “and I wish I had remained there still. I won £10,000 there at the tables, and never knew what it was to want cash, although you wished the folks here to believe that they locked me up in Old Start (Newgate), and brought down your friend Adkins to swear he saw me there: this was more than your duty.” He now seemed to rave, and lose all temper, and his visitor bade him good-night, and left him.’

It appears extremely probable, from the strong circumstantial evidence which has been offered by Mr Denovan, that Mackoull was the murderer of Begbie.

One remaining fact regarding the Netherbow will be listened to with some interest. It was the home—perhaps the native spot—of William Falconer, the author of The Shipwreck, whose father was a wigmaker in this street.[228]