The following account of multiple break-ins around Broughton on Friday night are enough to give anyone who loves their dried ling fish nightmares.
Fortunately, your claret and spruce beer are probably safe for the time being since it dates from 30 September 1765. The report, which appeared in the Caledonian Mercury, comprises one breathless sentence of 247 words.
On the night betwixt Friday and Saturday last, some rogues broke into a hen-house belonging to Mr. James Stewart Writer in Cleland’s yards, and a cellar belonging to Mr. Robert Williamson Merchant at Broughton, and carried off Mr. Stewart’s poultry, and from Mr. Williamson’s cellar two dryed ling fish, three bottles claret marked with ink on the corks, I. W. and five bottles spruce beer; a servant of Mr. Smith’s factory at the Multrees-hill saw two fellows with hats, about 12 o’clock on Friday night, with pocks on their backs, which made a jingling noise, and he suspecting them to be thieves called after them, on which one of them having called out to knock him down, the other, who was a little young like fellow with curled hair, and an old-like blue or black coat, drew his stick out, on Mr Smith’s servant’s retiring a little calling out Thieves, and taking up a stone, they run down the lane to the road called Gabriel’s road, and next morning, there was found in the inside of the dyke, on the left hand of that lane, almost opposite to the new house, a pock with Mr. Stewart’s poultry and the two dryed fish, the pock is an old pock and may contain about a firlot, has P. T. marked on one side of it, and M. H. on the other, and the spruce beer was also found next morning among nettles, on the road 'twixt Multrees-hill and Kirkbraehead.
The map below is a detail from William Edgar's 'City and Castle of Edinburgh', 1765. According to J.F. Birrell (An Edinburgh Alphabet, 1980), Gabriel's Road led from Multrie's Hill, the site of Register House in Princes Street, north-west across what is now the New Town to Canonmills on the Water of Leith [...]. It was the eastern boundary of the original New Town [...]. The road led via Broughton and Silvermills, and the last vestiges are steps at Glenogle Road which are still called Gabriel's Road'. Kirkbraehead was originally the name of a house between today's Caledonian Hotel and Rutland Square.
