The Hanging of Jekyll and Hyde

HISTORY This Week

The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios

Society & Culture, History

4.5 • 4.2K Ratings

🗓️ 26 September 2022

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

October 1, 1788. William Brodie mounts the gallows outside Edinburgh’s jail. Just a few years before, as a respected member of the town council, he’d helped redesign those gallows. Now he stands upon them as a convicted criminal sentenced to be hanged, in front of 40,000 spectators. Brodie appears surprisingly and resolutely calm. But maybe somewhere deep inside is another William Brodie, panicked and full of regret. Who really was this respectable cabinetmaker by day and thief by night? And how did he inspire his fellow Scotsman, Robert Louis Stevenson, to write the famous story, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

Special thanks to our guests, professors Stephen Brown and Owen Dudley Edwards. Brown’s lecture on the 250th anniversary of the Encyclopedia Britannica is available on the National Library of Scotland's website. Edwards’ latest book is called Our Nations and Nationalisms.

Correction: Professor Brown referred to Judge Braxton in Brodie's trial. The judge's name was Lord Braxfield.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The History Channel, original podcast.
0:05.1	History this week.
0:07.0	October 1st, 1788.
0:10.5	I'm Sally Helm.
0:14.9	The peels of the Great Bell are separated by an ominously long pause.
0:22.3	30 seconds.
0:24.3	A full half minute.
0:34.4	We're not going to stop for 30 whole seconds because it would feel like a very long time.
0:42.1	But to William Brody, listening to this tolling bell on this October afternoon,
0:47.4	it feels all too short. Because William Brody is a condemned man.
0:52.7	And the bell is marking out the final moments of his life.
1:00.7	He stands at a gallows outside the town jail in Edinburgh, Scotland.
1:05.6	A medieval building with a tall round tower and the execution platform sticking off the front.
1:11.5	A few years earlier, Brody himself had come to inspect this spot.
1:17.8	Not as a criminal, but as a respected member of the town council.
1:24.3	They were looking for a new place to conduct executions.
1:27.5	Brody approved this one and even helped design these new gallows.
1:32.5	The gallows where he himself will now hang. A convicted thief.
1:40.7	A crowd of 40,000 is gathered to watch.
1:44.0	One observer says there have never been so many people at a hanging in Edinburgh.
1:49.2	They've all heard about this counselor turned criminal and they've come to watch him die.
1:55.7	Brody himself is surprisingly calm as if he's not really facing his fate.
	...

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