Porteous Mob. At Pittenweem in Fife, on the night of 9th January 1736, three smugglers, Andrew Wilson of Kirkcaldy, George Robertson, an Edinburgh innkeeper, and William Hall, robbed the Kirkcaldy excise-collector of over £100. All three were at once arrested, and on 11th March were sentenced to death. In an attempt to break out of the Edinburgh Tolbooth (the 'Heart of Midlothian'), Wilson, 'a squat round man,' stuck fast in a grating, preventing also the escape of Robertson; but the following Sunday, being taken with him to hear the condemned sermon in St Giles' Church, he suddenly seized two of the four soldiers guarding them, and fastened with his teeth upon a third, at the same time crying, 'Run, Geordie, run for your life.' Robertson did get clear off; Wilson on 14th April was hanged in the Grassmarket. There was some disturbance and stone-throwing, when Captain John Porteous, the brutal commander of the City Guard, fired on the crowd, and killed or wounded sixteen or more men and women. For this he himself was tried and sentenced to death (20th July), but on 26th August was respite by Queen Caroline. However, on the night of 7th September an orderly mob burst open the tolbooth, dragged Porteous out, bore him, pleading for mercy, to the Grassmarket, and lynched him—hanged him from a dyer's pole, and slashed at him with Lochaber axes. A drunken footman of Lady Wenysay and one other man were tried next year for their share in the riot; but both were acquitted, and none of the ringleaders ever was brought to justice. A bill passed the Lords to disqualify the Lord Provost of Edinburgh from ever again holding office, to imprison him for a twelvemonth, to abolish the City Guard, to raze the Nether Port, and to fine the city in £1500 for Porteous' widow; but only the first and last clauses were carried in the Commons, and these only by a casting vote and after the fiercest opposition from all the Scotch members. Indeed, the Porteous Riot paved the way for the rebellion of the '45.
See vol. xvii. of the State Trials (1815); Scott's Heart of Midlothian (1818); and Criminal Trials illustrative of the 'Heart of Midlothian' (1818).