Deacon Brodie was likely the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. William Brodie was a respectable Scottish cabinetmaker and pillar of Edinburgh society by day- and a criminal by night. He was the son of a cabinet maker, who grew to be a highly respected member of Edinburgh society. He was a skilled craftsman, a member of the Town Council, and Deacon of the Guild of Wrights. However, his great passions were for the seemier side of Edinburgh life, visiting the theatre, gambling, and keeping two mistresses. His leisure pursuits led to the necessity of augmenting his finances through a life of crime. His profession, with a range of tools that could be used for picking locks and the easy access to people's homes and business, led itself to his secondary career as a theif. Eventually his thefts started recieving notice and he fell under suspicion, so he fled to the Netherlands, although he was soon captured and sent to trial. He was sentenced to be hanged in 1788 at the Edinburgh Tolbooth. Although he wore a steel collar to save his neck and arranged for his body to be retrieved and revived, it appears that his neck was still broken by the fall, and he was buried in an unmarked grave in the old Buccleuch Parish Church.