The “Beggar’s Opera,” the well-known work of the poet and dramatist, John Gay, appears to have been a special favourite with the Deacon, for it will be remembered that he sang a stave from it on the night of the robbery of the Excise Office. The opera was frequently performed at the Old Theatre Royal, Edinburgh, at this period, and he had, no doubt, had many opportunities of hearing it. Commenting on this incident, the _Edinburgh Advertiser_ remarks--“Brodie seemed to take the character of Captain Macheath as his model, and the day before his death was singing one of the songs from the ‘Beggar’s Opera.’ This is another proof of the dangerous tendency of that play, which ought to be prohibited from being performed on the British stage. It is inconceivable how many highwaymen and robbers this opera has given birth to.” The editor of the _Advertiser_ was evidently less gifted with a sense of humour than the Deacon, and had never read Fergusson’s lines “To Sir John Fielding, on his attempt to suppress the ‘Beggar’s Opera.’” * * * * * On the night before the execution, Deacon Brodie complained of the noise made by the workmen in effecting the alterations on the gibbet necessitated by the reprieve of the other prisoners, Falconer and Bruce; and it is stated in a contemporary report of the trial, published by Robertson on 2nd October, 1788, the day after the execution, that Brodie then said “he planned the model of the new place of execution, he purchased the wood, and gave his assistance in finishing it--but little did he imagine at the time that he himself would make his exit on it.” The _Edinburgh Advertiser_ of 3rd October, 1788, describing the execution, says--“It is not a little remarkable that Brodie was the planner, a few years since, of the new-invented gallows on which he suffered”; and Robert Chambers, in his “Minor Antiquities of Edinburgh,” (1833, p. 168), remarks--“As the Earl of Morton was the first man executed by the ‘Maiden,’ so was Brodie the first who proved the excellence of an improvement he had formerly made on the apparatus of the gibbet. This was the substitution of what is called the ‘drop’ for the ancient practice of the double ladder. He inspected the thing with a professional air, and seemed to view the result of his ingenuity with a smile of satisfaction.” William Chambers, however, in his “Book of Scotland” (1830, pp. 327-8), takes a different view, holding that the drop was first employed at Newgate in 1784, and had already been used in Edinburgh at an execution in 1785.