The Man Who Was Jekyll and Hyde Read Online Free PDF

outdoor uselessness of unprotected beeswax or tallow candles, there were only one or two other ways of easing your nocturnal fears and discomforts. It did not give out much light, but the whale-oil-fired street lamp, occasionally protruding from its street wall mounting, was a lot better than nothing. Then there was the hand-carried dark lantern as favoured by Deacon Brodie on his night-time adventures, the ‘dark’ meaning that its candle-flame could be closed off to the elements (and indoor curious eyes) by means of a sliding shutter. And there were the young lads – or ‘caddies’ – with burning-brand torches who would see people safely home for a price.
    Once indoors, the piscatorial pong would be even stronger, as fish sustained the people – packed like sardines themselves – not only as food but also as a source of oil for their ‘cruisie’ lamps. Fuel was also needed for warmth, cooking and the boiling of water, and all of these heavy essentials had to find their way up the steep and filthy, urine-smelling common stairs. Enter again, the blue-bonneted caddies, some of whom would specialise in carrying water barrels on their backs.
    Caddies? Readers will be familiar with the word as used to describe a golfer’s club-carrier, and while its provenance is not entirely clear, owing something to the French word cadet – for a military officer’s helper – it seems to have reached the International Open courses via a circuitous route from the capital of the cradle of golf, where it depicted something akin to a street messenger. Described by the chronicler Robert Chambers as ‘ragged and half-blackguard-looking’, caddies were nonetheless allowed to be ‘amazingly acute and intelligent’ … and, apparently, trustworthy.
    They were mainly rough-and-ready characters from the Highlands who – always for a price – would employ their raw power to perform the carrying feats that kept the tenement dwellers alive. But that was only part of their repertoire. They were also guides, gossip-mongers, people-finders and general dogsbodies (an interesting word in view of the fact that in the mid-1700s they were employed by the town council to catch and kill every dog they saw to prevent the spread of rabies). Edinburgh’s first historian, William Maitland, described them as ‘errand-men, news-cryers or pamphlet-sellers’ who, as of 1714, became an organised society subject to regulation and supervision by the council, responsible for upholding the monopoly of members’ activities in the city. Council magistrates determined the number of members, who each wore a standard-issue blue linen apron as a badge of identification ‘which none may lend on pain of losing his privilege’.
    Congregating around the central Mercat Cross near St Giles cathedral and summoned with the call ‘caddie!’ on a first come, first served basis, they had strict rules of behaviour in each other’s interest, with Rule 5 saying: ‘When one is called to go an errand, or sell a paper, where two or more are present, he who cometh first to the person who called him, shall have the benefit of what is sold or had for going the errand, unless the person who called otherwise determine it.’
    You couldn’t be in the city for more than a few hours, wrote the young visiting Englishman Edward Topham in his Letters from Edinburgh in the mid-1770s …

    … Before being watched, and your name, and place of abode, found out by the Cadies … and they are of great utility, as without them it would be very difficult to find anybody, on account of the great height of the houses, and the number of families in every building. [They] faithfully execute all commands at a very reasonable price. Whether you are in need of a valet de place , a pimp, a thief-catcher, or a bully, your best resource is to the fraternity of Cadies. In short, they are the tutelary guardians of the City, and it is entirely owing to them, that there are fewer robberies, and less