Declares that, since the mace was stolen, as the declarant thinks, the
declarant, along with Brown and Ainslie, laid a plan of breaking into
John Tapp’s house and taking his money; that this business was
suggested, and pressed, by Brown, the declarant rather being averse to
it; that Brown told the declarant that he knew the key of Tapp’s shop
opened the door of his house, and brought it to the declarant to look
at, which, upon seeing, the declarant said there was nothing in it,
meaning by that, that the lock to which it belonged could easily be
opened.
Declares that, accordingly, soon after this, and, as he thinks, about
Christmas or near to it, Brown kept Tapp in his shop drinking, and the
declarant and Ainslie, betwixt nine and ten o’clock at night, opened the
door of the house with a false key and took out of his drawers eighteen
guinea notes and a twenty-shilling one, a silver watch, some rings, and
a miniature picture of a gentleman belonging to Tapp’s wife, which
picture they broke for the sake of the gold with which it was backed.
Declares that in the month of August last, as he thinks, the declarant,
in company with William Brodie and Andrew Ainslie, went to a shop in
Leith, which they broke into by means of two pick-lock keys, one for the
padlock and another for the stock-lock; that the declarant and Ainslie
went into the shop and Brodie kept watch, to give an alarm in case of
danger; that from this shop they carried off two pair of wallets full of
tea, which were taken from four chests; that Ainslie was ill at this
time, and Brodie being weakly, Ainslie and he could scarcely manage one
of the wallets, which obliged him to put it into an old press bed (as
the declarant took it to be) which they found standing in a shed in a
field adjoining to the Bonnington Road to Leith; that it was proposed to
lodge the tea in Brodie’s, but he afterwards objected to it, which was
the reason that they never inquired after it more.
That about two months ago the declarant, in company with Andrew Ainslie,
broke into the shop of Inglis, Horner & Company, and took therefrom a
large assortment of valuable goods, composed of silks and cambricks;
that the silks were mostly black, excepting two pieces, a piece of plain
white sattin, a piece of variegated ditto, and a lead-coloured silk, in
quantity about ten yards, which Brown gave to a girl, an acquaintance of
his, of the name of Johnston; that the silks were all sent to England,
except the silk before-mentioned, a piece of black silk of about two
yards and a quarter, in two odd bits, which the declarant gave to his
wife to make a cloak to her child, and about twelve yards and a half of
thick tweel’d black silk for gentlemen’s vests and breeches, and two
yards and a half of black florentine sattin, with about six yards of
cambrick.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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