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carrying bars would not have to be removed.
    It was, after all, a tough enough job for the carriers, as many of their customers were heavy and drunkenly relaxed old men. His brawny helpers also had to be rain and cold resistant, as sedan chairs were much in demand in bad weather – just like today’s taxis.
    There were no such weighty challenges with the lighter package of Mr Brodie, though he was quite capable of being tipsy. Sometimes, of course, the sedan would take him to places that might suggest this apparently respectable businessman, councillor and Deacon of Wrights, this pillar of society was rather cracked and leaning – or at the very least a little off-centre. So how did he escape public censure for so long? How did he engender such discretion in such men if not through the look-what-we-have-in-common touch? And there were more surprisingly shrugged shoulders. Apart from all their other duties, the town centre’s army of caddies heard and saw everything of any interest in and around their patch. As such, they were the eyes and ears of the Town Guard, another colourful body of men, who, as the forerunners of the police when law enforcement was left entirely to local initiative, should have at least been interested in Mr Brodie’s already suspect nocturnal doings.
    Colourful? Well, to a degree. Dressed in faded red uniforms and plumed hats, the Town Guard consisted of about 120 men officially devoted to guardianship of the city and preservation of public order. They were present on all public occasions but only a limited number were regularly on duty. The rest were allowed to work at their trades, subject to being called out at a moment’s notice. In truth, the body was something of a Dad’s Army, composed mainly of discharged soldiers who were still able – just – to shoulder a musket or wield a Lochaber axe and use them in a street brawl.
    The young poet Robert Fergusson, who died four years before Brodie’s demise, called them ‘that black banditti’, having encountered their tender mercies too often after his ‘regular bacchanalian irregularities’. Sir Walter Scott wrote of them that, being generally Highlanders:

    They were, neither by birth, education, nor former habits, trained to endure with much patience the insults of the rabble; or the provoking petulance of truant-boys, and idle debauchees, of all descriptions, with whom their occupation brought them into contact. On the contrary, the tempers of the poor old fellows were soured by the indignities with which the mob distinguished them … On all occasions – when holiday licensed some riot or irregularity – a skirmish with these veterans was a favourite recreation with the rabble of Edinburgh.

    Nevertheless, it remains a mystery how Brodie’s capricious ways and ‘protracted peccadilloes’ (Roughhead’s words) somehow escaped the attentions of the Guardsmen even at the very beginning of his criminal career. It was to become highly suspected at one point that he had helped spring a convicted and condemned criminal from the Tolbooth Prison and had him hidden, fed and watered within the grandiose Greyfriars tomb of Sir George Mackenzie, tormentor of the Covenanters a century before. But nothing could actually be pinned on him. And indeed, until the very end, Brodie retained the respect and esteem of his fellow citizens, as he went about his daily business, regularly attending council meetings, and latterly even sharing his colleagues’ anguish at the dreadful series of crimes that had befallen the great old capital. Even more puzzling with hindsight was the apparent lack of neighbour-to-neighbour gossip about him, when ‘stairhead’ scandal was a phenomenon well recognised by Fergusson:

    Now Stairhead Critics, senseless Fools,
    Censure their Aim, and Pride their Rules,
    In Luckenbooths, wi’ glouring Eye,
    Their Neighbours sma’est Faults descry:
    If ony Loun should dander there,
    Of aukward Gate, and foreign Air,
    They trace