durkie

Updated: May 18, 2025

The deponent then went east to Anstruther in search of the rest of the robbers, and having surrounded the house of James Wilson there, he found three men in a room there, viz., Andrew Wilson and George Robertson, panels, and one John Friar, and having shown them to the above Thomas Durkie, he declared that they were two of the persons who had robbed the collector; upon which the deponent having applied to Bailies Robert Brown and Philip Millar, both in Anstruther-Easter, he got the accused committed to prison; and further depones that as the panels were being carried prisoners to Edinburgh, and while they were halting at Kirkcaldy, the deponent asked George Robertson, panel, what was become of the collector's purse of gold, George answered that Andrew Wilson, the other panel, told him that William Hall got the purse; upon which the deponent inquired at Hall about it, and added that unless he confessed and discovered where the purse was, he could not expect that the promises made would be kept to him; when after some entreaty Hall told deponent that he had dropped it upon being seized in a wet furr near a dung-hill, and accordingly the deponent went back to Pittenweem, and upon application to Bailie Andrew Fowler, of Pittenweem, and in his presence the purse was found near to a dung-hill between Anstruther-Wester and Pittenweem, in the spot described by Hall, with fifty-two guineas and a-half in it, which purse and gold was given to the deponent, and the purse exhibited in court being shown to him, he thinks it is the very same purse.

- Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17