14 Facts About Jeanie Deans

Jeanie Deans is a fictional character in Sir Walter Scott's novel The Heart of Midlothian first published in 1818.

Jeanie Deans was one of Scott's most celebrated characters during the 19th century; she was renowned as an example of an honest, upright, sincere, highly religious person.

The name "Jeanie Deans" was given to several pubs, ships, railway locomotives, an opera, a play, a poem, a song, a hybrid rose, an antipodean potato, and a geriatric unit in a hospital.

Jeanie Deans's plan is to appeal to Queen Caroline and receive a pardon for her sister who languishes in prison awaiting execution.

Jeanie Deans begins walking on her bare feet to save her shoes but puts them on when she passes through towns and villages.

Jeanie Deans impresses the Queen with her eloquence, spoken in broad Scots.

Jeanie Deans is overjoyed to find that her fiance, Reuben Butler, has been appointed Minister at the neighbouring kirk of Knocktarlitie.

Jeanie Deans subsequently marries Butler and raises three children named David, Reuben and Euphemia.

Jeanie Deans later learns that her sister's child had not been murdered but was sold to a Highland brigand and was reared to a life of robbery and violence.

Jeanie Deans is shot by his own son, who escapes to America, gets into trouble, joins a tribe of Native Americans and is heard of no more.

The original of Jeanie Deans was Helen Walker, whose experience was more austere than the fiction Scott wrote.

The so-called Jeanie Deans Cottage was situated at the southern end of St Leonards Bank, Edinburgh.

Several pubs in Scotland were named after Jeanie Deans, including Jeanie Deans Tryste in Edinburgh, and three in Glasgow.

The Jeanie Deans potato, resembling the old Lothian Flake, was advertised as a seed potato in a New Zealand newspaper in 1895 as being awarded "First at Invercargill Show for Best White Potato, any variety".