Classic Crimes: A Selection from the Works of William Roughead
By William Roughead
(New York Review of Books Classics, 2000 — 560 pages)
Reviewed by Ina R. Bort
From the New York County Lawyers' Association Newsletter
June 2001
Nonfiction doesn't get much better that this. Classic Crimes, a compilation of 12 essays by William Roughead, is as packed with plot, character development, and artistic prose as the finest novel.
This is attributable less to the subject matter than to the man who brings it so vividly to life. Roughead, a Scottish writer who lived from 1870 to 1952, was an attorney, whose "passion for the law," according to the book's introduction by Luc Sante, "extended well beyond his actual duties." Roughead was a "frequent spectator at major trials and an indefatigable collector of newspaper clippings on criminal cases that interested him."
Roughead's fascination with the criminal mind and disposition and the machinations of the criminal justice system, pervades the pages of Classic Crimes, as does his humor, wit, and charm. Perhaps most impressive about Roughead's technique is his ability to describe events that long pre-dated him with the attention to detail that only a contemporaneous observer would seem able to possess. Admittedly, Roughead is lax, at best, about citing his sources, and perhaps artistic license was the source from which he drew most freely. But regardless of its historical accuracy, Classic Crimes reveals Roughead's indisputable status as master story-teller.
Of the essays compiled in this volume, none is more memorable than that entitled "Deacon Brodie." Its subject, William Brodie, has been the subject of at least one play and a full biography by Roughead, and for good reason. As described in Classic Crimes, Brodie is, by turns, reminiscent of John Hinckley, Jeffrey Archer and Sean Puffy Combs.
Brodie, before becoming a "celebrated criminal," was an unsurpassed cabinetmaker, and an avid fan of opera — specifically, The Beggar's Opera, by John Gay. Brodie's Travis Bickle was "the bold Macheath." Like Macheath (whose song in the opera was allegedly on Brodie's lips the day before Brodie was hanged), Brodie had "easy good humor, dignity upon occasion, reckless contempt for consequences," as well as a gang of accomplices and two lovers at once. Indeed, unlike his fictional hero, Brodie managed to keep each of his lady friends, as well as his wife, ignorant of the other, and bore children with both mistresses. In so doing, he has won the respect of Roughead, who comments that "[i]t takes a man of genius to maintain for years so nice an equilibrium."
As might Jeffrey Archer's future biographers, Roughead tracks Brodie's ascent, in the 1780's, to the highest echelons of his society and his subsequent, infamous decline. Brodie, like the best-selling author and member of Parliament now at the center of a criminal investigation, had earned the admiration and respect of his community as Burgess and Guildbrother of Edinburgh, and the heir to a considerable fortune at the time of his arrest.
As it turned out, Brodie's societal and economic stature proved powerless in the face of his "fatal weakness:" gambling. His gambling debts (combined with the expenses of supporting three women at once) led him to a life of crime; first petty thefts, then, and with the help of his band of "scoundrels," more significant robberies.
Throughout it all, Brodie embodies "high romance" to such a degree that one can't help rooting for him. On the night that he and his cohorts plan to rob the Excise Office (a botched effort that landed them all in jail and Brodie on the gallows), he arrives an hour late to the designated meeting-place, as "he had been giving a little dinner in his house." And once arrested, he "bore the rigors of his incarceration with the cheerfulness and good humor" — to the point that, in a letter from jail to one of his lawyers, he wrote, "You'll be sure to find me at home, and all hours are equally convenient." Most of all, he retains an impeccable sense of style, even at his trial, which began on August 27, 1788. A contemporaneous account of Mr. Brodie's appearance on that date sounds not a little like the New York Times's lengthy descriptions of Puff Daddy's 100 Centre Street attire: "Mr. Brodie was genteelly dressed in a new dark-blue coat, a fashionable fancy waistcoat, black stain breeches, and white silk stockings, a cocked hat, and had his hair fully dressed and powered." Unfortunately for the Deacon, 18th century jurors hadn't yet learned that glamour is a sure sign of innocence.
Brodie is but one of the colorful characters that people Classic Crimes. Often the victims of these classic crimes are as interesting as those by whom they have been robbed, poisoned, or bludgeoned. Roughead's accounts reveal the unsurprising truth that the same motives that drive today's men and women to step over the threshold from lawful activity have driven them there from time immemorial: jealousy, poverty, anger, boredom, madness, greed. And, while one might disagree with his quip that "one cannot have too much of a good murder," it is quite possible that one cannot have too much of William Roughead.
