SMUGGLING was widely seen as a victimless crime in 18th century Scotland, so when Andrew Wilson and George Robertson were tried in Edinburgh and sentenced to death, they enjoyed a good deal of public sympathy.

For one thing, the sentence was harsh for an escapade in which no-one had been killed. For another, Wilson had gained popular status for helping his pal escape during a church service.

There had been a previous escape attempt — a traditional sawing-through-the-bars job — but on that occasion Wilson, who was not a skinny man, managed to get wedged in the window, which prevented either of them getting out.

They had better luck on the Sunday before the execution was due when, as was customary, they were taken under heavy guard to the church next to the Tollbooth prison to hear a final sermon. At some point, Wilson shouted to his accomplice to run.

Some accounts say he picked Robertson up and threw him over the heads of the guards; others that he took hold of the soldiers — two by hand and one with his teeth. Either way, George Robertson raced away through a cheering congregation and was never seen in Scotland again.

This might be a good place to point out that almost every syllable of every aspect of this story is — and has been since it happened — disputed, contradicted and mythologised. Usually reliable sources differ on even some of the basic facts. What is definite is that Wilson was hanged before a large crowd in the Grassmarket, Edinburgh, on April 14 1736.

By the time of his death, Wilson had become something of a folk hero, and the authorities were fearful — “Unco flayd,” in the words of a poet who attended the execution — that a mob would rise to rescue him from the noose.

The area was thus flooded with armed men, under the command of John Porteous, captain of the city guard. At some point, stones were thrown at the hangman, and so began the first of what became known as the Porteous Riots, later immortalised in Walter Scott’s novel The Heart of Midlothian.

Within minutes, shots had been fired into the crowd, and several people lay dead. What caused, if anything, even greater outrage was shots being fired over the heads of the onlookers, which flew straight through the windows of neighbouring homes, creating more casualties.

Captain Porteous was a universally hated bully and thug, authoritarian and tyrannical in his enforcement of the law. Even the local gentry had no time for him, and he was arrested for murder within hours. At his trial in July, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. He sat in the same cell which had housed Wilson and Robertson, awaiting an execution fixed for September 8.

The government in London took a very different view to that held by the people of Edinburgh. As far as they could see, Porteous had been doing his duty — ruthlessly suppressing dissent and maintaining order. On September 2, an order arrived to delay the execution for six weeks. In Scotland, this was seen clearly as the first move in a process which would end with Porteous getting away with murder.

It seems that plans were made to reinforce the guard at the prison for September 8, the day when the deferred execution should have taken place. But the mob attacked on the evening of the 7th. It took some hours, but eventually the crowd of several thousand justice-seekers overpowered the authorities and got hold of Captain Porteous.

They took him to the Grassmarket, and there he was hanged on a makeshift scaffold. The rioters, if we can call them that, were apparently so disciplined, calm and well-mannered that they left money behind to pay for the rope which they had taken from a local shop. It’s also said that they left behind all the weapons which they had confiscated from the guards.

The parliamentary inquiry which inevitably followed was all for punishing Edinburgh with harsh sanctions. But such was the depth and the breadth, of the support for the Porteous rioters throughout Scotland, that almost all the planned punitive measures had to be dropped if any kind of order was to survive. In the end, the Lord Provost was barred from office and the city was fined £2,000, which was given to Porteous’s widow as a pension.

The government faced one final humiliation. It passed an Act of Parliament offering a £200 reward for information identifying the lynching’s ringleaders, and required this to be read out at every church on the first Sunday of each month for a year. This stirred up so much trouble with the clergy that it, too, had to be withdrawn. Needless to say, no-one ever claimed the £200 and no-one was ever charged with the killing of Captain Porteous.

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