Edinburgh's Tron-men were members of an especially powerful society whose privileges included receipt of an annual allowance from the city. This fee was paid in exchange for their services in various demi-official capacities, including occasional assistance at public executions.

The offence committed by Robert Hunter, the Tron-man who suffered the punishment of professional exile to the neighbouring port town of Leith, was to accept an additional payment of five pounds for assisting the public hangman at the execution of a particularly notorious murderer, a gentleman and British Army officer named Patrick Ogilvie, on top of that standard honorarium. By accepting the money, Hunter was judged to have offended against the honour of the society, whose members were expected to freely offer their services whenever stipulated by their agreement with the town.

To understand why all this was so, we need to know a little bit more about the Tron-men themselves. Their society was formed in 1741 as a result of the passage of Edinburgh's Burgh Act. One purpose of the Burgh Act was to regularise and professionalise sweeping in order to minimise the risk of a catastrophic fire. The so-called "Lesser Great Fire" that had destroyed large swathes of the city in February 1700 had been blamed on a chimney fire, and by creating an exclusive, uniformed society of chimney sweeps, and granting them a monopoly on work inside the town, Edinburgh's city council sought to ensure that this vital work was carried out safely.

There were 12 Tron-men, or "Custodians of the Flues," to do all the chimney sweeping work within Edinburgh's Old Town (the New Town area to the north was not covered by the Burgh Act). They worked in a rather different way to the sweeps of London, who famously swept from the ground up and used boys to climb up the stacks and dislodge soot. Tron-men scaled the roofs of the houses they were working in and swept from the top down, using bundles of twigs on ropes secured with lead weights. They wore a uniform comprising a bonnet, fitted coat and buckled shoes, and acquired their name from their meeting place at the public weighing beam outside the Tron Kirk in the Old Town. Those who wished to hire their services could meet representatives of the society at that spot and make the necessary arrangements.

Each Tron-man paid a five pound initiation fee and quarterly fees to the society were 3s.8d., which – given the value of money at that time – gives some indication of how lucrative their monopoly was. In exchange for their work in ensuring all sweeping met minimum safety standards, they received a guinea (21s) a year each from the city, together with the right to sell their soot.

The tasks that the Tron-men performed for the city were not limited to assistance at public executions, which was in fact pretty uncommon for them. Their main additional service was to work as night watchmen, standing in pairs on rooftops to keep an eye out for fires, and raising the alarm where necessary. To mark their association with the city, and give them premises from which to organise their watch-work, they were given a room in Edinburgh's City Guard House on the High Street.

Hunter's offence makes more sense, I think, when viewed in the context of the close and mutually beneficial relationship that had grown up between the Tron-men and the city of Edinburgh between 1741 and the time of Lieutenant Ogilvie's execution in November 1765. In addition, though, we should note that the crime that Ogilvie had committed was an especially disgraceful one, which made Hunter's willingness to profit, in effect, from it notably dishonourable.

Ogilvie had begun an affair with his sister-in-law, Catherine or Katherine Nairn (spellings differ), who was only 19, the daughter of Sir Robert Nairn, and closely linked to the cream of Sottish society. Their relationship, in Scottish law, counted as incest. Together, the lovers conspired to poison Katherine's husband, and Patrick's brother, Thomas – who was considerably older than either of them.

Ogilvie was sentenced not only to be hanged, but also to the additional disgrace of having his body conveyed to Edinburgh's surgeons for dissection. Katherine was spared only because she was pregnant with her lover's child. She was sent off to prison to await the birth, after which sentence of death would be carried out, and her behaviour after the trial was considered absolutely beyond the pale:

On her arrival at Leith in an open boat... her whole bearing betrayed so much levity, and was so different from what was expected by a somewhat pitying crowd, that a storm of just indignation was aroused, and she was with some difficulty rescued from rough treatment by the authorities.

As it turned out, Katherine Nairn had good reason to be in such high spirits. She subsequently managed to effect an escape from Edinburgh's Tolbooth prison by conspiring with her midwife, a Mrs Shields. Shields pretended to be afflicted by severe toothache, and took to turning up at the prison groaning loudly, and with her head swathed in a shawl. After establishing this pattern of behaviour over several days, she exchanged clothes with Nairn, who exited the prison with her face concealed and managed (one presumes with the help of her friends and family) to get out of Edinburgh and make it to Dover, and thence, supposedly, eventually to the Americas. There she changed her name and disappeared but, according to James Grant, was rumoured to have "married again and died at an advanced age."

As for Hunter, exile to Leith meant he was banished from the elite ranks of the Tron-men and deprived of the both prestige associated with them and the security of their monopoly on sweeping work. Chimney sweeping in Leith was far less lucrative, and far less prestigious, as a result.

Sources

Newcastle Chronicle 24 August 1765

Benita Cullingford, British Chimney Sweeps: Five Centuries of Chimney Sweeping (Chicago, 2000)

James Grant, Old and New Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 6 vols, 1880, vol.1)

John Kay, A Series of Original Portraits and Caricature Etchings (Edinburgh 1838) vol.1 part ii

Follow up question: why did the guild (if that's the right word) have the power to exile someone from a city?

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