When this reprieve arrived at Edinburgh from the Secretary of State’s Office, under the hand of the Duke of Newcastle, the agitation that arose was almost beyond belief. The people, who had been thirsting for the death of Porteous, were like tigers baulked of their prey, and determined to take the law into their own hands. There is little doubt that the Lord Provost and city authorities were aware of what was going to take place, and also the General in command of the troops at the Castle. They did nothing to prevent it, for their sympathies were with the people. The night after the Queen’s reprieve arrived in Edinburgh, a fierce mob arose as if by magic, armed with pikes, bayonets, Lochaber axes, and any arms they could find, and headed by a man dressed in woman’s clothes. The rioters made themselves masters of the gates of the city, disarmed the guard, and marched to the Tolbooth, with shouts of “Porteous! Porteous!” The unhappy man within, who was entertaining a party of boon companions on the cheerful news of his reprieve, saw the glare of the torches, heard the cries, and recognised in them the shout of his doom. His friends made off as fast as they could, the turnkeys were seized with panic and ran away, and many prisoners escaped. Porteous concealed himself in the chimney of his cell. For some time the old door of the Tolbooth, which was of stout oak, heavily clamped with iron, resisted the onslaughts of the rioters, but at last they burned it down, and leaping over the embers rushed into the prison in search of their prey. The miserable man was soon discovered, dragged from the chimney, carried outside and hanged in the sight of the mob from an improvised gibbet made of a barber’s pole. The crowd then dispersed as suddenly and mysteriously as it had assembled; the method and precision with which the ringleaders carried out their work, and the celerity with which they dispersed, showed there was method in this rough justice, and that it was rather the result of a conspiracy than an ordinary riot. The next morning not a sign remained of the night’s dread work except the body of Porteous hanging from the pole.