1. William Brodie, often known by his title of Deacon Brodie, was a Scottish cabinet-maker, deacon of a trades guild, and Edinburgh city councillor, who maintained a secret life as a burglar in order to support his mistresses and to fund a gambling addiction.
William Brodie was the son of Francis Brodie, Convenor of Trades in Edinburgh.
William Brodie socialised with the gentry of Edinburgh and met the poet Robert Burns and the painter Henry Raeburn.
William Brodie was a member of the Edinburgh Cape Club and was known by the pseudonym "Sir Llyud".
William Brodie used his daytime work as a way to gain knowledge about the security mechanisms of his customers and to copy their keys using wax impressions.
William Brodie used the money he made dishonestly to maintain his second life, which included a gambling habit and five children by two mistresses, who did not know of each other and were unknown in the city.
William Brodie had made a copy of the entry key using putty on an earlier visit and, having made a key, simply unlocked the door.
William Brodie was in high spirits and singing numbers from The Beggars Opera.
William Brodie hurried home, changed into more normal clothes, and went to the house of his mistress Jean Watt, on Libertons Wynd, hoping to create an alibi.
Smith and Ainslie were arrested, and the next day William Brodie attempted to visit them in prison but was refused.
William Brodie then boarded the Leith ship Endeavour under the name of John Dixon.
Endeavor was returning to Edinburgh, but William Brodie paid the ship to detour and drop him off in Flushing, the Netherlands, whence he travelled to Ostend.
William Brodie was buried in an unmarked grave in the northeast corner of the graveyard at St Cuthbert's Chapel of Ease, on Chapel Street.
Deacon William Brodie is commemorated by a pub of that name on Edinburgh's Royal Mile, on the corner of the Lawnmarket and Bank Street which leads down to the Mound; and a close off the Royal Mile, which contained his family residence and workshops, bears the name "William Brodie's Close".
In 1989, Bathgate rock band Goodbye Mr Mackenzie wrote and recorded a track titled "Here Comes Deacon William Brodie", which appeared on the B-side to their hit "The Rattler".
From 1976 to 1989, Deacon William Brodie was a figure in the Chamber of Horrors section of the Edinburgh Wax Museum on the Royal Mile.