The Impact of Literature
JOURNAL
The Impact of Literature
15 March 2025
The Writers’ Museum, Edinburgh
The Writers’ Literary Museum in Edinburgh reminds me of three household literary names, directly linked within what we term classical literature.
Robert Burns (1759-1796)
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
These three writers, during their lives, towered over the literary landscape in Scotland and throughout the United Kingdom and the British Empire and Commonwealth. Their works stand the test of time and are in many languages. They are as popular three centuries on.
The Writers’ Literary Museum enables me to study these three lives, as I can study various books, manuscripts, portraits and objet d’art.
I had overlooked that Robert Louis Stevenson had written The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
The museum displays a curious item: a wardrobe with a macabre history, being carpentered by Dean Brodie.
By day, Brodie was a respected cabinet maker and locksmith. In the Watches of the Night, crime was his venture, using his skills to commit burglaries and also robberies.
As I recall from my old study manual in the 1970s Moriarty’s Police Law:
“Burglary is defined as unlawfully entering the property of another with malice aforethought express or implied and with the intent of stealing therefrom with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.”
Robbery, however, was all of that but armed with a weapon to aid the burglary.
Burglary and theft with violence, or theft in the street with violence meant that the police are dealing with the even more serious offence of robbery. Robbery means at its least the menace of threatened injury, or deliberate injury and calculated death, or death with regard to the consequences.
Thus, Dean Brodie’s activities eventually caught up with him and he was hanged in 1788.
Why his prominence in the the Writers’ Museum? Simply put, he is regarded as the inspiration for Jekyll and Hyde. Furthermore, the unknown commentator notes, this idea encapsulates two sides of Edinburgh - the one respectable the other extremely dodgy.
Nothing has changed. Except that policing is infinitely more difficult than during my own service in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Source: BBC THE HISTORIAN page 87 March 2025 edition
Moriarty’s Police Law (1970s) and thus of historical note only
15 March 2025
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LIVERPOOL
© 2025 Kenneth Thomas Webb
Images are by KTW IBM unless otherwise credited
The image is of the author at the Police Training Centre at Royal Air Force Dishforth, Northumbria in June 1973 ~ wonderful memories
