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Updated: July 2, 2025
Henceforth, he was free of the family; he loafed in the Shirra-Brae; he knew the flash houses of Leith and the Grassmarket. With Jean Johnston, the blowen of his choice, he smeared his hands with the squalor of petty theft, and the drunken recklessness wherewith he swaggered it abroad hastened his approaching downfall. With a perpetual anxiety to avoid the nippers his artistry dwindled.
We will have him die where a murderer should die, on the common gibbet We will have him die where he spilled the blood of so many innocents!" A loud shout of applause followed the proposal, and the cry, "To the gallows with the murderer! to the Grassmarket with him!" echoed on all hands.
On the 25th of March 1736, Captain Porteous was put on trial, at the instance of the lord-advocate of Scotland, before the High Court of Justiciary, for the murder of Charles Husband, and twelve other persons, on the 14th of April preceding, being the day of the execution of Andrew Wilson; and after sundry steps of procedure, having been found, by the unanimous voice of the jury, guilty, he was, on the 20th of July following, sentenced to suffer death in the Grassmarket of Edinburgh, on Wednesday the 8th of September in the same year that was, about five months after Wilson's execution.
There, in the Grassmarket, stiff-necked, covenanting heroes offered up the often unnecessary, but not less honourable, sacrifice of their lives, and bade eloquent farewell to sun, moon, and stars, and earthly friendships, or died silent to the roll of drums.
Some of them advancing up into the Grassmarket, commanded the drummer's son to beat to arms. They then called out, "Here! all those who dare to avenge innocent blood!" This probably was a signal for their associates to fall in.
Lairds and leddies, powdered, jeweled and satin-shod, were borne in sedan chairs down ten flights of stone stairs and through torch-lit courts and tunnel streets, to routs in Castle or Palace and to tourneys in the Grassmarket. From its low situation the Cowgate came in the course of time to smell to heaven, and out of it was a sudden exodus of grand folk to the northern hills.
The children gathered and gathered, and followed at their heels, until a curiously quiet mob of threescore or more crouched in the court of the old hall of the Knights of St. John, in the Grassmarket, to count the many copper coins in Tammy's woolen bonnet. "Five shullin's, ninepence, an' a ha'penny," Tammy announced.
It happened at that time that Francis was much in love with a lady who lived in a part of the town beneath the castle, which is called the Grassmarket.
Before a warrant could arrive the mob had burned down the door of the Tolbooth, captured Porteous who was hiding up the chimney, carried him to the Grassmarket, and hanged him to a dyer's pole. The only apparent sign that persons of rank above that of the mob were concerned, was the leaving of a guinea in a shop whence they took the necessary rope.
I have heard him say that his mother taught him his A B C; and that he afterwards learned to read at Mammy Smith's. This old lady kept a school for boys and girls at the top of a house in the Grassmarket. As it was only the bigger boys who could read the Bible, the strongest of them consummated the feat by climbing up the Castle rock, and reaching what they called "The Bibler's Seat."
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