On the night of September 7, 1736, a crowd of more than 4,000 people took over the centre of Edinburgh, broke into its prison and hanged a man the courts had already sentenced to die. They left no names behind them. The city has argued ever since about whether it was murder, justice or something in between.
The Horror
The trouble began with two smugglers, Andrew Wilson and George Robertson, condemned in April 1736 for a robbery. Smuggling was widely tolerated in Scotland, and the pair had sympathy in the town. Robertson escaped from the Tolbooth, and Wilson was hanged in the Grassmarket on April 14.
Captain John Porteous commanded the City Guard, the town’s armed watch, and was on duty at the hanging. When the crowd turned angry as Wilson’s body was cut down, Porteous is recorded as firing on it himself and ordering his men to fire. People were killed, among them bystanders, and others were wounded in the buildings around the square. Porteous was arrested the same day.
On July 5, 1736 the High Court of Justiciary tried him. Most witnesses said he had fired into the crowd, though sixteen said they had not seen him do so. He was convicted and sentenced to hang on September 8. Then London intervened. Queen Caroline deferred the execution by six weeks while the king was away. Many in Edinburgh took the delay to mean a full pardon, and that belief set off what followed.
On the night before the planned execution, a crowd of over 4,000 overpowered the guards at the Tolbooth and took Porteous out. They dragged him to the Grassmarket, the place where Wilson had died. No gallows stood there, so they used a dyer’s pole. After he was cut down, he was stripped, hanged again and beaten. He died shortly before midnight. He was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard the next day.
What happened afterwards is as remarkable as the killing. The authorities offered a reward of £200, and nobody was ever identified as responsible. A parliamentary inquiry in 1737 first proposed disbanding the City Guard, but the idea was dropped. The city was fined £2,000, which went to Porteous’s widow, and the Lord Provost was barred from office.
The Legend
Much of the best-known colour is unconfirmed. A carpenter named James Maxwell is thought to have organised the lynching, but that is a supposition, and he was never charged. Theories about who really did it include friends of the victims, the smugglers, a Jacobite plot and Presbyterian extremists. None is confirmed. Rumours that city magistrates were involved are unproven. Even the order of events on the night is described as confusing in the standard account.
The spitting is also a folk custom rather than a record. The heart on the High Street is said to bring luck to those who spit on it, though it may have started as contempt for the prison and the executions held there. Nothing links it to Porteous.
The Modern Relic
The Old Tolbooth stood beside St Giles’ Cathedral and was demolished in 1817. A heart-shaped pattern of setts, the Heart of Midlothian, has marked the line of its entrance since 1860. Walter Scott set his 1818 novel The Heart of Midlothian against the Porteous Riots, and the football club Heart of Midlothian takes its name and crest from the mosaic. Scott also took the old iron door of the prison to his house at Abbotsford.
In the Grassmarket, a plaque near the old execution site marks where Porteous was lynched. In Greyfriars Kirkyard, his original grave marker was a small stone bearing only the letter P and the date 1736. A headstone of 1973 replaced it, and the inscription includes “All Passion Spent”.
The question of what he was has never been settled. He was convicted of murder by a court, reprieved by the Crown and killed by a crowd that has never been named.
