#grassmarket — Public Fediverse posts

Taken this day, 2016, The White Hart Inn at night

https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/31254799590/in/photostream/lightbox/

This place was already old when Robert Burns stayed there...

#Grassmarket #Edinbugh #Edimbourg #EdinburghByNight #NightPhotography #photography #photographie #TheWhiteHart #Inn #Pub #OldTownEdinburgh #History #Histoire

Taken this day, 2016, The White Hart Inn at night

https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/31254799590/in/photostream/lightbox/

This place was already old when Robert Burns stayed there...

#Grassmarket #Edinbugh #Edimbourg #EdinburghByNight #NightPhotography #photography #photographie #TheWhiteHart #Inn #Pub #OldTownEdinburgh #History #Histoire

Taken this day, 2016, The White Hart Inn at night

https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/31254799590/in/photostream/lightbox/

This place was already old when Robert Burns stayed there...

#Grassmarket #Edinbugh #Edimbourg #EdinburghByNight #NightPhotography #photography #photographie #TheWhiteHart #Inn #Pub #OldTownEdinburgh #History #Histoire

Taken this day, 2016, The White Hart Inn at night

https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/31254799590/in/photostream/lightbox/

This place was already old when Robert Burns stayed there...

#Grassmarket #Edinbugh #Edimbourg #EdinburghByNight #NightPhotography #photography #photographie #TheWhiteHart #Inn #Pub #OldTownEdinburgh #History #Histoire

Taken this day, 2016, The White Hart Inn at night

https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/31254799590/in/photostream/lightbox/

This place was already old when Robert Burns stayed there...

#Grassmarket #Edinbugh #Edimbourg #EdinburghByNight #NightPhotography #photography #photographie #TheWhiteHart #Inn #Pub #OldTownEdinburgh #History #Histoire

Blue skies and golden, winter sunlight less than an hour ago, on the way to my appointment.

Now murky, grey clouds closing in as I left, and rain starting. There's a reason we talk so much about weather here...

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #architecture #Grassmarket #PrincesStreet #ScottMonument #EdinburghCastle #castle #chateau

Spotted this handsome beast in the Grassmarket over the summer, a classic Lanchester https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/54777910377/in/dateposted/

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #car #voiture #Lanchester #Grassmarket #ClassicCar #VintageCar

Grassmarket is bustling today, between the open air market, drinkers, diners and tourists. Needless to say the queue for ice-cream at Mary's Milk Bar runs up the Vennel steps

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #Grassmarket #StreetMarket #StreetPhotography #PeopleWatching

#Newwork #OnTheEasel #InProgress #NotFinishedYet

Call Me
40x30cm acrylic on paper
#Grassmarket #Edinburgh #Scotland

#art #painting #cityscape #infrastructure #phonebox #retro #callmeonthetelephone #callme #phonecall #telephonebox #callbox #phonebooth #streetfurniture #incomingcall #pleasepickup #dontleavemehanging #dappledlight

Taken this day, 2018, cooking up some hot food at the street market https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/45013337544/

Grassmarket, #Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #StreetPhotography #cooking #cuisiner #Grassmarket #StreetMarket #Ecosse #Scotland #PeopleWatching

Dining al fresco https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/53981369160/in/photostream/

#Grassmarket #Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #StreetPhotography #restaurant #dining #manger #OldTownEdinburgh

Street snacking in the Grassmarket https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/53909166445/in/dateposted/

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #StreetPhotography #eating #manger #StreetFood #Grassmarket #Ecosse #Scotland #BlackAndWhitePhotography

People enjoying a return to sunny weather after so much rain recently

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #ViewFromABus #Grassmarket #EdinburghCastle

Wet cobbles at night https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/53343271830/in/photostream/

#Grassmarket #Edinburgh #Edimbourg #EdinburghByNight #NightPhotography #photography #Edimbourg #cobbles #BlackAndWhitePhotography #OldTownEdinburgh #Scotland #Ecosse

Wet cobbles at night https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/53343271830/in/photostream/

#Grassmarket #Edinburgh #Edimbourg #EdinburghByNight #NightPhotography #photography #Edimbourg #cobbles #BlackAndWhitePhotography #OldTownEdinburgh #Scotland #Ecosse

Wet cobbles at night https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/53343271830/in/photostream/

#Grassmarket #Edinburgh #Edimbourg #EdinburghByNight #NightPhotography #photography #Edimbourg #cobbles #BlackAndWhitePhotography #OldTownEdinburgh #Scotland #Ecosse

Wet cobbles at night https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/53343271830/in/photostream/

#Grassmarket #Edinburgh #Edimbourg #EdinburghByNight #NightPhotography #photography #Edimbourg #cobbles #BlackAndWhitePhotography #OldTownEdinburgh #Scotland #Ecosse

Wet cobbles at night https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/53343271830/in/photostream/

#Grassmarket #Edinburgh #Edimbourg #EdinburghByNight #NightPhotography #photography #Edimbourg #cobbles #BlackAndWhitePhotography #OldTownEdinburgh #Scotland #Ecosse

The real Ned Holt: the thread about the darker side of a colourful Victorian street artist

In preparation for writing up some summaries of the caricatures of “Old Edinburgh Worthies” by Ned (Edmund) Holt, I decided to dig a bit deeper into the life of this mysterious Victorian street artist. Not much is known of his life, and much of that is popular legend. Sources will tell you he was a street artist of some talents, a familiar and well loved character of Old Edinburgh and one who was limited in life only by his love of a drink. A “boon companion in the common lodging houses and in public houses.” However, with a little work digging through newspaper clippings and Scotland’s People, I hope that I am able to add a few details to his story, but also find to offer a different, and ultimately less favourable, interpretation of his character.

While he illustrated profusely -usually to earn his beer money – he never seems to have turned his attention on himself, so we known not what he looked like (although a newspaper article of 1922 claims that a likeness was published at the time of his death). Capital Collections (the wonderful online image gallery of the collections of the Edinburgh City Libraries, Museums and Galleries) uses a self portrait of John Kay to represent any artists for which they do not have a likeness. Kay is one of the best known caricaturists of old Edinburgh, leaving behind an amusing and invaluable visual and written record of the worthies of the Georgian city. Collections of his works are still reprinted and are a must-have on any self respecting bookshelf of Edinburgh local history.

At the other end of the social spectrum and 70 or so years later, we have Holt. His work is certainly cruder than Kay’s, but as an observer of the human condition he is an equal. For two good reasons, his ouvre is particularly valuable. Firstly, he painted in bright colours, which pop out when compared with the faded sepia of old photographs or the monochrome of Kay’s engravings, vividly capturing that Victorian life was much brighter than we might imagine. Secondly, where Kay lampooned Lords and Gentlemen, Holt painted almost exclusively the people of the street, men and women, and in a much more sympathetic manner. These were folk who were well known in their time but who would otherwise have slipped from popular memory but for a few sentences in old newspapers (much like the artist himself).

So who was Ned Holt? The National Galleries of Scotland embarrassingly say he was English – he was definitely a son of Edinburgh, probably born in St. Cuthbert’s parish as Edmund Holt, to Jean Mitchell and Robert Holt, a master chimney sweep. He may have been born in 1830 if we believe his entry on the register of deaths, or 1836 if we believe his census entries. Holt also goes by the names Edmond and Edward. Many accounts will tell you he signed his work E. P. Holt – I think if they looked closer they will see it is ED. HOLT, with the D raised above the full stop in the fashion of Victorian typography. His obituary in the Dundee Courier confirms his works bear the “well known signature Ed. Holt“.

It would have been expected for Holt to follow his father’s trade, but perhaps on account of the early death of the latter this did not happen. Apprenticed to a baker, he never settled to that trade and in 1851 is recorded on the census as a “carrier”. He is aged 15, living with his grandmother in Gilmour’s Close off the Grassmarket, probably the property he is described as inheriting. Three years later, still living at the same address, he married a woman from a neighbouring close by the name of Jane Black, the daughter of a coal miner from Ayrshire. At this time his occupation was “artist” and the anecdotes of town Bailie (magistrate) Wilson Mclaren recall that at this time he kept a street booth in the Grassmarket where he exhibited various attractions for a penny-a-view, including a “petrified mummy”, claimed to be 4,000 years old but actually a skeleton he had procured and doctored. Street entertainment and showmanship is a recurring feature of Holt’s life, he was known to act at the “penny gaffs“, cheap theatres where popular, raucous edits of Shakespeare would be performed. By 1855 he had moved to a small shop on Lothian Road where he traded as an artist. Two years later, he took out a newspaper advert in the North Briton that he would teach the “whole art of photography” on application to an address on Haddington Place, Leith Walk. He is reputed to have joined the Edinburgh City Artillery at this time, a volunteer militia regiment raised in the wake of the Crimean wars that included an unusually high proportion of artists in its ranks. He was a favourite of the officers, who would summon him to the mess to amuse them with his antics.

In 1860, Holt announced in the North Briton that he had taken “these large photographic rooms, no. 3 Catherine Street, [part of Leith Street] where he is carrying on a First-Class business“. In the census of the following year he is recorded as a “photographic artist” but is to be found boarding with the Reilly family in Selkirk. His wife Jane is living at the Catherine Street address with their children – Edmond (age 2) and baby Georgina – along with an older relation of Jane’s, a lodger (Holt’s assistant) and his daughter. In 1866 Holt re-appears in Edinburgh, performing as a clown in Price’s Spanish Circus with “considerable success”. But he is back to being a photographer in Selkirk in 1868 when one David Mcdonald is fined £5 (or 30 days prison) for assaulting him with a walking stick. The same year, a spinner by the name of William Jeffrey was found guilty of assaulting him in the Salmon Inn public house in Galashiels by hitting him and biting off the end of one of his fingers. He was sent to prison for 60 days.

Holt, it was said, “was known everywhere; he mixed in all classes of society, high and low“. This included the landscape artist Sam Bough, who lived in Edinburgh from 1855 until his death in 1878. It was because of his connection with Bough that his work survived and found its way into the ownership of the City of Edinburgh. Holt had presented Bough with a bound copy of 22 of his sketches, which was inherited by Bough’s sister on his death. A collector later bought them from her estate, from whom Councillor Gorman acquired them and presented them to the city to prevent them being sold to an American.

At 1870, the story of Holt’s life begins to take a different, darker path. In May that year it is reported in the North Briton that he was convicted at the Sheriff court and sentenced to 60 days hard labour for having assaulted his wife “by seizing violent hold of her by the hair of the head, dragging her from a place upon which she rested, and kicking her when upon the ground to the effusion of blood.” Come the 1871 census, he is aged 36 and living with his son at no. 41 North Richmond Street off of the Pleasance. There is a servant girl, Annie Shields, living with them but of his wife and daughter Georgina, there is no sign. His occupation remains as a photographic artist. One of his obituaries will recount that “he could not rest with his family” and that “in the course of time he took to a wandering life“. This it would seem is a somewhat economical view of the truth. A decade later the census finds him in Glasgow, with a new “wife” – Annie Shields; he has run off with his servant, 16 years his junior. They have a 9 year old daughter Margaret, a 6 year old son Joseph and an 11 month old daughter Selvester. Jane Holt, aged about 36 is living in the City Poor House at Craiglockhart, working as a seamstress.

By 1885, he has returned to Edinburgh and is practising as a photographer from his address at 27 Canongate, White Horse Close. He was convicted in September of that year at the Police Court and sentenced to 30 days imprisonment for “having offered for sale obscene drawings and paintings in Princes Street.” The prosecutor was not specific as to what the depicted, but “said the pictures were very disgusting“. Sadly Jane remains in the Poor House. She was still there 6 years later for the 1891 census, by then working as a laundress.

Holt died on Tuesday 20th September 1892 in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, having been knocked down and fatally injured by a horse cab near Joppa on his way home from the Musselburgh horse racing. His death was mourned across the Scottish regional newspapers. Despite being obviously estranged from his wife on unfavourable terms for decades, his death certificate was witnessed by her. She sadly died of bronchitis and heart disease as an inmate of the Poorhouse just two months later, described simply as a hawker and a widow. Ann (or Annie) Shields (also known as Holt or Spaven) was left to a similar life of poverty by Holt. In 1891 she was a hawker, lodging in Penicuik. She died in 1908 in the Govan Poor House, having spent the final years of her life flitting from poor house to poor house, debilitated by neuralgia and rheumatism.

The implications are clear from newspaper writings that while Holt was publicly convivial, well liked and had certain artistic talents, he was too partial to drinking to ever make a success of himself. Obituaries describe his “great failing was a love for liquor, which in course of time, mastered him so completely that he sunk from one degree to another till he was down in the very gutter of society“. A mark of the popular mourning of his death is the story of the confectioner in Leith, who decorated a cake in his honour with a sugarwork representation of one of his illustrations and placed it in his shop window alongside the following verse:

Poo, old Ned has gone to rest,
We know that he is free
Disturb him not, but let him rest
Way down in Tennessee

Edmund Holt may have lived the life that he chose for himself happily enough, but the same cannot be said of his wife, who never shared in his popularity or any of his occasional financial successes, and quite clearly suffered at his hands. She spent the best part of half her life as an inmate in the poor house for which it would not be unreasonable to blame the actions of Holt. When he died without a penny to his name, friends and admirers raised enough to pay for a respectable burial and the newspapers made sure he did not pass forgotten. A well-curated exhibition of his work at the City Art Centre in 2014 enhanced the favourable, lovable rogue version of his character by commissioning pen poems to accompany his work. We cannot say the same privileges were accorded to Jane, who has been entirely written out of the story – until, hopefully, now.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
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NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

The thread about a 1949 plan to demolish the Grassmarket and replace it with a “Festival District”

This thread was originally written and published in April 2023.

Today’s surprising newspaper archives find is this 1949 proposal to demolish the Grassmarket and replace it with a Festival District. This (unofficial) plan includes a 3500 seat opera hall, 1500 concert theatre, 700 seat small theatre, two art and exhibition galleries, amphitheatre, a restaurant to seat 2,000 in a single sitting, a school of music and practice rooms, ornamental gardens, a multi-storey car park and so much more!

The proposal was by two “young Scotsmen”; the architect was John Netherby Graham ARIBA and he was assisted by a friend he had made during wartime service, H. A. Rendel Govan MTPI. The two had apparently whiled away their demob time coming up with the scheme after discussing it during the war. They had considered the site of Calton Hill, possibly incorporating the Royal High School (there were plans, even at that stage, to move the school out of Thomas Hamilton’s neoclassical Georgian building). However it was felt to be too exposed a site for the public plaza and amphitheatre they had in mind, so the more sheltered Grassmarket, in the shadow of the Castle Rock was chosen.

The London Illustrated News article noted that the Corporation and Festival Society had as yet made no direct move towards establishment of such a cultural centre. The Scotsman , reporting on the proposal, noted Edinburgh’s lack of an opera house or theatre with a sufficiently large orchestra pit (for which numerous proposals have come and gone and never been fulfilled), and that the Grassmarket “would not suffer from redevelopment“. It was pointed out that the district showed “limited signs of revival” and that few of the buildings were paritcularly old (most were Victorian rebuilds), and few had any real “architectural quality to warrant preservation.” The artist’s impression for that newspaper shows buildings of a more modern style than those of the London Illustrated News.

The scheme put the multistorey carpark at its heart, and envisaged further demolitions to build access roads from Johnston Terrace and Lauriston Place, and the whole plaza of the Grassmarket would form a one-way traffic gyratory around its edge, with the gardens within that ring road. The Castlehill Primary School (now the Scotch Whisky Heritage Centre) was to be demolished to make way for a new foot access corridor up the Mound, up Ramsay Lane and down the other side into the Grassmarket.

The Grassmarket scheme however had gotten ahead of itself, being published before Patrick Abercrombie’s officially commissioned “Civic Survey and Plan” had published its conclusions. This latter plan demolished the Grassmarket too, but zoned it for housing and new schools, instead opting for a split cultural centre, with some facilities grouped around the existing Usher Hall and the Opera House at St. James Square.

There was also the unanswered question of paying for it all.

In regard to finance it is stated that it is sufficient to assume at this stage that a very large sum would be required in addition to the sum required in respect of compensation for the present buildings and in order to render the undertaking as free as possible from financial worry as large a figures as possible should be aimed at. The total figure would amount to several millions, but in view of the vast repercussions which such an undertaking would have on the life of the city, it might not be unreasonable.

Scotsman. September 1st 1949.

After a brief flurry of pro-and-anti letters to the papers, by October 1949 the unofficial plan had run its course and would remain just that: unofficial and a plan. Edinburgh never got its opera house, despite numerous attempts and demolishing sites in anticipation for it. What it did finally get – eventually – was a home for the Traverse Theatre in the corner of a hole demolished for the Opera House in 1966 and left empty for the next 25 years.

And when it did finally get a new cultural venue on this site, the lions share of it was turned over to a new office development to help finance the scheme.

Footnote, John Netherby Graham, the architect of the 1949 Festival District scheme, is a different John Graham from his contemporary architect who was behind the Harlow New Town in Essex.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

Soldier-turned-forger: the thread about the farcical execution of John Young

“Drawn at The Execution of John Young in the Grass Market, Edinbr., 1751” The description says “a crowd… in the foreground, beyond them the gallows officers with the condemned man on a platform“. Except that’s not quite what’s going on here… Let’s find out more!

The image is by the hand of Paul Sandby, the young English draughtsman who came to Edinburgh in the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion to turn the triangulations of William Roy’s survey of Scotland into the incredible illustrated map. Sandby also proved to be quite the artist and with his little gang of esteemed friends (including John Clerk of Eldin and Robert Adam) in his free time he would sketch the street scenes of the city. But this isn’t a thread about Paul Sandby, it’s a thread about the scene he drew and how not is quite what meets the eye.

John Young was an Irishman, born into a lower middle-class protestant family in Belfast. He had a good start in life, was educated and apprenticed to a linen draper. But when his master died, he ended up having to go to London for work, which he found as a clerk. But he had to abandon this position in a hurry however and fled London in disgrace after he got his master’s serving maid pregnant. On the road, with no prospects, he was easy prey for the Army’s recruiting sergeants and with liberal application of intoxicants he took the King’s Shilling

This was about 1744, the War of the Austrian Succession was raging, and the Army was in need of recruits. Being educated, intelligent and amenable, the officers liked him and the disgraced clerk actually found that military life in the ranks suited him. It was (apparently) the 4th Regiment of Foot (The King’s Own) that he joined and his manners and abilities quickly saw him promoted into the first sergeant’s vacancy that came along.

Shipped off to Flanders, John was said to be at Fontenoy when the Allied Army, the British contingent under the Duke of Cumberland, were defeated by the French under Louis XV. However most of the 4th missed the battle as they had been detached beforehand. Wherever he was, and whichever Regiment he was with, he apparently acquitted himself with bravery and was rewarded with promotion to company paymaster and with being sent back to England with a recruiting party to help replace the Army’s losses in Flanders.

It turned out that recruiting was also something John took to naturally. He signed men up on honest and frank terms and didn’t swindle them (or their families) out of their sign-on bounty. Again he was recognised by his superiors and a promotion to Sergeant Major was forthcoming. He rejoined his regiment in a hurry, as they had been shipped back to Britain along with the Duke of Cumberland to help put down the Jacobite Rebellion. (This fits with him being in the 4th). He was at the Battle of Falkirk Muir in January 1746, and apparently accounted for a few Jacobites with his Sergeant Major’s halberd. Although it was a Jacobite victory, it was a hollow one and they retreated from it.

John marched on with his Regiment after the retreating Jacobites and was at the bloody Battle of Culloden in April. Circumstances fit that he was in the 4th, the Grenadiers of whom are prominent in David Morier’s well known painting of that battle. The 4th were hit hardest of the Government units by the Highland charge, taking 25% losses.

But John, and the 4th, survived the Jacobites and survived the battle. As a result of its performance and losses, the regiment remained in Scotland for “mopping up” duties, before being sent to garrison Edinburgh castle. John was sent off recruiting, reaching as far south as Bristol. Coming back to Edinburgh with plenty of recruits, he was sent off again, this time to Yorkshire. But it wasn’t just recruits who followed him back to Edinburgh on this occassion, he also had an innkeeper’s wife, with whom he had fallen in “criminal intercourse” with.

That might have been that, except the woman had cleared out her husband before fleeing. It wasn’t long before an aggrieved Yorkshire innkeeper pitched up in Edinburgh on the hunt for his wife, his money and a licentious recruiting Sergeant He didn’t take long to find all three; but John was saved from punishment on account of his having been ignorant of the wife’s theft and having not conspired with her, and the fact his officers liked him; he was a good soldier, and the army needed such men.

The 4th were shipping out anyway, so John was sent off with them to Inverness and (the first) Fort George, garrisoning the remains of it while preparations were made to build the bigger replacement at Ardersier. Coincidentally, Paul Sandby made a reconstruction illustration of it as it would have looked before the retreating Jacobites blew much of it up .

It was in Inverness that John became familiar with one of his new recruits, a man by the name of Parker who had served some time as a printer. John was company paymaster, and when assisting him one day, Parker mentioned how easy it would be to copy the bank notes if you knew how. John knew better than to continue the discussion in public, but managed to get Parker aside in a tavern and pick his brains. It would be easy, said he, if you could just get a note to copy, somewhere safe to copy it, and the materials to engrave a printing plate. John could do all three, and he took on a private room where Parker and another could work, “borrowed” a Royal Bank of Scotland note from the company purse, and acquired all the materials a forger might need from the Garrison’s supplies.

Parker was good to his word, soon he had produced some Royal Bank notes that couldn’t easily be told apart. They could get away with things for a reasonable time, if they were clever, as such promissory notes would circulate in the local economy for a good long while, rather than being sent back to Edinburgh to be reconciled with the accounts against which they were issued. And although he was a mere Sergeant Major, as a paymaster it was not unusual for John to have reason to be carrying and exchanging paper money.

They got away with it for at least 6 months, before their regiment got notice that it was leaving Inverness. It now seems that he may have been with the 24th Foot, the Earl of Ancram’s, rather than the 4th.

The hitherto cautious John now over-reached himself, and before leaving Inverness he had an Aberdeen stocking manufacturer, Mr Gordon, convert £60 worth of notes into Sterling. This suited Gordon as it was safer than carrying “real” money on his journey home. Gordon left a merry trail of counterfeit paper notes across the north of Scotland as he made his way home from town to town and tavern to tavern. He was horrified to get back to Aberdeen and find notices in the newspapers from the directors of the Royal Bank that they were advising merchants in the north of Scotland that they were aware of counterfeit notes circulating and to please be on the lookout for them

Realising he had been swindled, Gordon went straight back to Inverness and called upon the Sheriff. It didn’t take long to put the facts together, and news was sent chasing along after the 24th that the law would like to ask one of their Sergeant Majors a few questions. The law caught up with the Regiment, and with John, in Glasgow. When arrested, he had the copper plate and 300 forged notes on his person.

He was sent to Edinburgh to stand trial. He was optimistic that he might be let off or treated leniently, but the embarrassed bankers of Edinburgh wanted an example made of him, and so it was. Parker and the other accomplice turned King’s evidence. The trial on November 9th 1750 lasted all of a day. He was found guilty and sentenced to hang. John prevailed upon his officers to intercede, on account of his good record, but they couldn’t, wouldn’t, or were of no avail. He was sent to the Tolbooth to await his fate.

On the evening of 19th December, as was the custom, he was chained in the Iron Room, the “escape proof” cell where the condemned of Edinburgh spent their last night before the final walk to the gallows. The following morning, the magistrates and 2 ministers awoke him to read him his sentence. Did he have any objections? No he did not. Would he like to speak with the ministers? Yes he would. He asked to be excused with the latter for some “ghostly consolation” for a while.

But John was less concerned with spiritual matter, his quick mind was instead hatching a plan. His sentence, which had just been read to him, had stated that he would be hung between 2 and 4 PM that afernoon. Having been misled by other prisoners, he assumed all he had to do was delay proceedings until after 4 and he would get a temporary reprieve. After prayers with the Ministers, he asked the men of God if they might give him a moment’s private contemplation, to prepare himself for his maker. This they readily agreed to. They left the cell, and he quietly pulled the door shut.What nobody was sure how he did it, but somehow he contrived to lock himself in the cell, and the ministers, magistrates and gaolers out of it.

When it was realised what he had done, no amount of pleading, shouting, or beating of the door could get John Young to come to his senses and accept his fate. “No“, said he, “in this place I am resolved to defend my life to the utmost of my power”. As he saw it, all he had to do was buy himself a few hours for another night on earth…

The tradesmen of the City were called, but they said it was impossible to break through the Iron Room’s door or wall without compromising the building. More likely they couldn’t be bothered with such heard work and found it all very funny. Time was ticking away. Perhaps John was going to get away with it. The magistrates summoned the Lord Provost, George Drummond, and together the combined minds of the city administration hit upon a simple scheme to thwart him. They had the town clock stopped!

This bought them the time they needed, and finally they resolved to smash through the floor of the room above the cell and get him out that way. This took 2 hours hard work but once a large enough hole was made, one of the Town Guard poked his musket through to help persuade him out. But John was a battle-hardened soldier and had faced worse than the Edinburgh town guard. Quick as you like he grabbed the barrel of the gun and pulled it to himself, “declaring, with an oath, that, if any man attempted to molest him, he would immediately dash out his brains“

The gun however was unloaded, so the guardsman followed through the hole after it. He took the full force of the butt of it for his efforts, knocking him down, and it took 4 of his burly colleagues to subdue John Young. Asking if it was now after 4PM, he was informed that it was, but “he would be hanging even if it was after 8“. Realising the game was up, John resolved to be “no accessory to my own murder” and be uncooperative to his last. It took 8 guardsmen to carry him, head first, out of the Tolbooth. Refusing to walk, a cart had to be sourced, and he rode this, with the noose already around his neck, the short distance down the West Bow to his place of execution in the Grassmarket. James Skene’s sketch of 1827 shows a scene fundamentally unchanged from Sandby’s of 1750. The gallows is on the left, the structure on the right was used as a corn market.

What I am pretty sure we can actually see in Sandby’s sketch is not a crowd watching the condemned ascend the gallows, it’s a scene of one waiting, in boredom and anticipation, wondering where is John Young? Where’s the afternoon’s promised gruesome entertainment?

The guardsman on the left, the one with the Lochaber Axe, looks positively bored. Is his colleague on the right pushing back the restless crowd? And what – or who – is that arriving in the background on a cart…

“John Young underwent the sentence of the law in the Grassmarket of Edinburgh, about six o’clock on the evening“. Uncooperative to the last, he had to be carried up the scaffold. It apparently took a whole 30 minutes for his desperate cling to life to be extinguished. It is unclear what motivated him; he was not known as a spender of money or an indulger in drinking or gambling. His men and his officers liked him, he was otherwise a good, honest and brave solider, and there seems little in life he desired that his pay could not cover

It is not known either where John Young’s final resting place was. No Edinburgh Kirk recorded his death or burial in their registers that I can find. The newspapers are the only record of his exploits, his final story being printed far and wide. “This poor man had served in the army many years, with reputation, was beloved by his officers, being never before convicted of the least offence, and was said to have been recommended to the first vacant colours in his corps.” In June 1751, the Royal Bank re-issued all its 1750 edition. 20 shilling bank notes.

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