John Porteous

John Porteous (d. 1736) was captain of the city guard of Edinburgh during the riots of 1736. He was the son of Stephen Porteous, an Edinburgh tailor. Having served in the army, he was employed in 1715 to drill the city guard for the defence of Edinburgh in anticipation of a Jacobite rising, and was promoted later to the command of the force.

On April 14th 1736 a smuggler named Andrew Wilson, who had won popularity by helping a companion, George Robertson escape from Edinburgh's Tolbooth prison, was hanged for robbing a customs officer. At his execution there was a slight disturbance, upon which the city guard fired on the mob, wounding many people and killing some. Porteous, who was said to have fired himself, was brought to trial and sentenced to death on July 20th, but then reprieved on 2nd September. The reprieve was hotly resented by the people of Edinburgh, and on the night of 7th September 1736 an armed body of men in disguise broke into the Tollboooth prison, seized Porteous, and hanged him in the Grassmarket.

Despite the rewards offered by the government, and although General Moyle wrote to the Duke of Newcastle that the criminals were "well-known by many of the inhabitants of the town," no one was ever convicted of a part in it. Two men were tried as accomplices; one William M'Laughlin was able to prove that he was too drunk at the time to even know what was happening, and was gound not guilty, as was Thomas Linning, who was tried in 1738. The sympathies of the people, and even, it is said, of the clergy, throughout Scotland, were so much on the side of the rioters that the original stringency of the bill introduced into parliament for punishing the Edinburgh had to be reduced to a fine of £2000 for Porteous's widow, and the disqualification of the provost from holding any public office. The incident of the Porteous riots was used by Sir Walter Scott in his novel The Heart of Midlothian. In the notes to that novel, Scott writes:

“The order, regularity and determined resolution with which such a violent action was devised and executed, were only equalled by the secrecy which was observed concerning the principal actors. Although the fact was performed by torch-light, and in the presence of a great multitude, to some of whom, at least, the individual actors must have been known, yet no discovery was ever made concerning any of the perpetrators of the slaughter.”

John Porteous is buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh.

References

• John Porteous Encyclopaedia Britannica eleventh edition