between her friends and the students. Her friends gave the students a beating and took her body for burial in Musselburgh
Maggie recovered in a few weeks. Now the legal minds were in a
out and as she had been pronounced dead by the magistrates she would have to go free and that was the end of the matter. She went on to live for another 40 years and she carried the
which stands opposite where the gallows stood bears her name
it followed that smugglers became popular heroes. When two of them, Wilson and Robertson, were condemned to death in Edinburgh, feeling was strongly on their side. As the practice was, they were taken from the Tolbooth prison to St. Giles to attend a last service on the Sunday before their execution. The church was full of worshippers many of whom felt that the two had been harshly treated. Robertson then escaped, with at least the passive help of the congregation. At the execution of Wilson in the
the sympathetic murmuring of the vast crowd who were angered by the rough treatment meted out to Wilson by Porteous and his soldiers on the short walk from the Tolbooth prison to the
crowd, six people who were watching the proceeding from their upstairs windows were killed and many were injured. Accordingly, Porteous himself was brought to trial and condemned to death.
of rebellious subjects against a man who had only done his duty.
execution for six weeks. This was too much for the long-suffering citizens of Edinburgh. In a way that was riotous, yet curiously orderly and systematic, they seized Porteous from the Tolbooth prison and duly carried out the sentence against him, hanging him from a dyers pole in the Grassmarket. They even left a Guinea
the rope. The government in London ordered strong retaliation
Porteous Riot.
The most famous of all disturbances on the streets of Edinburgh,
and disgust with some of the consequences of the Union of Parliaments of 1707. Since the presence and activities of English
Copyright Robert McCulloch 2010
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