Punishment in Scotland, as in the rest of Britain, was long shared between the legal system and the religous houses and bodies. Largely, the church had responsibility for civil offences, such as non-attendance at church, adultery, or working on a Sunday. For such offences, the unhappy offender would be chained to the wall of the churchyard by the jougs collar, made to enter church in sackcloth and forced to sit on the repentance stool at the front of the church.
Of course, like all cities, Edinburgh has had its fair share of more serious criminals, from robbers to murderers to witches. These criminals were dealt with in the local tolbooths, which existed throughout what we now call Edinburgh. The tolbooth serving the main burgh was situated on the High Street, where it became known as the Heart of Midlothian. Like the other tolbooths in Leith, Broughton, Canongate and elsewhere, the Tolbooth was a place dreaded and feared by the inhabitants. In the early 19th century, the Old Tolbooth next to St Giles was demolished, with prisoners now accommodated on Calton Hill. In the twentieth century, the prisons moved out of town.
The crimes for which people were published were quite varied, and often seem more essential to survival than crimes to the modern eye. Despite the non-threatening nature of many of the crimes committed, punishment could often exceed reasonable limits. Prisoners might have found themselves sold to the New World as slaves in return for precious beaverskins, cast thousands of miles away for failing to attend church. On the other hand, Edinburgh has also played host to some notorious criminals; Deacon Brodie, a wright by day and an audacious robber at night, finally caught for robbing the Excise Office at Chessel’s Court; the witches, Major Weir and his sister Grizelda, who courted the black arts and were burned to death; and of course Burke and Hare, the grave robbers, or ‘revivalists’.

The image shows the jougs collar at Duddingston Kirk, and was first published in Edinburgh Old and New by James Grant

The image shows a set of thumbikins, a torture device designed to compress, smash and break offenders thumbs, and was first published in James Grant’s Edinburgh Old and New.

The image shows the repentance stool from Old Greyfriars Kirk, and was first published in Edinburgh Old and New by James Grant.