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Law and Order in Enlightenment Edinburgh |
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© Scran |
The officers were thought to be those soldiers of the Highland regiments who still had the physical strength to withstand policing duties, if not professional military service. The men were paid reasonably well for the times, fully clothed in a red uniform of coat, waistcoat, breeches and white-taped cocked hat, and also armed with a 'Lochaber axe'. This was a lengthy woodcutting implement with a hook fitted to the tip of the staff, ostensibly to aid the guards in climbing over gateways and other obstacles in pursuit of offenders.
The garish uniform and cumbersome weapon made the Guardsmen an obvious and frequent target, and increasingly made them a figure of fun, a reputation not helped by their propensity to drink on duty, becoming inebriated to the point of uselessness. The men tried to further protect themselves against intimidation by arming themselves with rusty flintlock pistols - but the poor quality and age of the weapons rendered them almost obsolete.
These inadequacies soon led to the men being commonly known as the "Auld Toun Rottens" and the "Toun Rats". Many citizens despised the 8 o'clock ritual of beating the leather drum in more built-up areas, as a form of curfew. Townsfolk found to be drunk and disorderly would routinely be tied to a huge wooden horse outside the Guard's building. Their punishment, a poor man's form of torture, was to straddle the horse in riding position - but with lead weights or muskets tied round their ankles.
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