The prevalent theory of William Brodie’s crime spree from 1786 to 1788 is the financial burdens of Brodie’s excessive lifestyle forced him to thievery. This theory is attractive given Brodie was known to gamble and supporting his families with Jean Watt and Anne Grant must have placed a drain on Deacon Brodie’s resources. However, there is little hard evidence to support this claim. While on the run in Amsterdam, Brodie compiled a balance sheet of his accounts. With the scant information this document presents, it appears that Deacon Brodie’s assets outstripped his debt by £1422. Should the prevalent theory of William Brodie turning to a life of crime could have been a problem of liquidity. It is impossible to tell if Deacon Brodie’s cash flow was not sufficient to cover these debts from historical documentation. It is equally possible the “Deacon Brodie’s lifestyle turned him to a life of crime” theory was the only way his contemporaries could explain his behavior and the theory goes on to this day. The truth of Deacon Brodie’s criminal motivations went to the grave with him, and we will likely never know the “why” of Brodie’s double life.

After Deacon Brodie was apprehended in Amsterdam and deposited in Edinburgh’s Tolbooth, rumors circulated the streets of Edinburgh about the crimes William Brodie could have committed. One of these rumors made local papers and fingered Deacon Brodie for robbing the Johnston and Smith Bankers in the Exchange on 13 August 1768. (This crime is often dated in books on Brodie to 1786, which is due to a typo in William Roughead’s The Trial of Deacon Brodie. Newspaper accounts in 1768 describe the Johnston and Smith bank job. Roughhead’s text does get the date correct in one of the book’s passages.) The counting house of Johnston and Smith bankers was broken into in the middle of the night. It was believed that a false key was used to enter the bank and £830 in notes from various banks was taken when the perpetrator(s) gained entry. Two nights after the robbery, £225  was left by the front door of the Edinburgh Council Chambers and thought to be some of the loot from the Johnston and Smith job.

A contemporary account of the crime appeared in the Edinburgh Evening Courant as:

On Friday evening last (the 12th August) the lock of the outer door of the compting-house of Johnston and Smith, bankers in the Exchange was opened by some wicked persons as supposed by a counterfeit key, and eight hundred pounds Sterling stolen out of their drawers, in the following bank notes, vis:

Of the Royal and Bank of Scotland: £194: 9 : 0

British Liken Company: £362: 2: 0

Dumfries Notes: £126: 0: 0

Glasgow Notes: £64: 0: 0

General Bank of Perth: £32: 0: 0

Dundee Notes (Jobson's): £40: 0: 0

Several small Notes and Silver: £11: 1: 0

Total: £830: 2: 0

It is entreated that every honest person will give the Magistrates of Edinburgh, or Johnston and Smith, notice of any circumstances that may fall under their observation for discovering the offender; and farther the said Johnston and Smith will give the informer a reward of Five Pounds Sterling for every hundred pounds sterling that shall be recovered in consequence of such information. As some smith m y very innocently have made a key from an impression of clay or wax, such smith giving information as above, so as the person who got the key may be discovered, shad be handsomely rewarded.

After the £225 was left at the Council Chamber's doorstep, this appeared in Edinburgh Evening Courant:

Whereas, on Sunday night last, the 14th inst. there was laid down or dropped at the door of the Council Chamber of this City, the sum of two hundred and twenty-five pounds sterling in bank notes, wrapped in a piece of grey paper, which was found by Robert Burton, a porter, and immediately after delivered by him to one of the Magistrates; This is to give notice, that the above sum is now sealed up, and in the hands of the City Clerks, and will be delivered. to any person who shall prove the property thereof, with deduction of a reasonable allowance to the porter who found it.

William Brodie had done work on the bank sometime prior to the robbery. By the time Brodie was thrown in the Tolbooth in 1788, the riddle of banker robbery had never been solved, and Deacon Brodie’s involvement was suspected by the public. No definitive evidence has ever surfaced of Deacon Brodie robbing Johnston and Smith’s bank. The notion that Brodie knocked off the Johnston and Smith bank brings up more questions than answers when compared to Deacon Brodie’s modus operandi between 1786 and 1788—as we will shortly see.

In July of 1786, William Brodie’s criminal life would blossom when he met George Smith. A transplant from England, Smith, was a morally pliable character who boarded at Michael Henderson’s Grassmarket home/inn/tavern. Smith fell victim to a four-month-long illness shortly after arriving in Scotland’s capital city that precluded him from finding meaningful employment. This sickness didn’t appear to stop him from frequenting Henderson’s tavern where he met fellow rogues, Andrew Ainslie and John Brown (aka Humphry Moore). Deacon Brodie was also a patron of the tavern and gambled on cockfights held in Henderson’s Grassmarket empire.

On a fateful night in the late summer or early fall of 1786, Brodie was introduced to Smith by a hitherto unknown individual with the name of Graham. A friendship was struck between the four men of vastly differing stations in Edinburgh’s social strata, and according to Smith, Brodie had an idea for his trio of new friends. Smith claimed in his 10 March 1788 statement to Edinburgh’s Sheriff, Archibald Cockburn, that Deacon Brodie floated the idea of the group collaborating in misdeeds by saying, “several things could be done in this place, if prudently managed, to great advantage, and proposed that they should lay their heads together for that purpose."

Lay their heads together the group did and went on a robbery spree over the next eighteen months. Except for robbing Edinburgh’s Excise Office, the accounts of “the Brodie gang’s” exploits are cobbled together from statements or testimony from Brodie’s accomplices. Below is a list of the crimes, admitted or attributed, to Brodie’s gang from October 1786 to March 1788. These descriptions are forthcoming, but clicking on the link will take you to an article on the particulars of each robbery. At the bottom of the page is a map pinpointing the present-day locations (as best as can be ascertained) of Deacon Brodie's robberies and his flight from justice.