Margaret Nisbet

Margaret Nisbet aka Margaret MacLeod aka Mrs M'Leod (? - 1727) was a forger, executed in Edinburgh in 1727. Life She was married to Alexander MacLeod, a wigmaker in Leith. In 1726, she tried to pass a forged bill, which she claimed to have been signed by Lady Henrietta Mordaunt, wife of Alexander Gordon, 2nd Duke of Gordon. In May 1726, Mr Petrie, a town-officer in Leith, held the Duchess of Gordon's bill for £58, which had been blank endorsed by MacLeod as a security for £6, a sum which MacLeod was going to use to get her husband released from prison. George Henderson, an Edinburgh merchant, had drawn the bill for £53. Both MacLeod and Henderson were arrested, and the trial was to determine which of them had originally forged the bill. Henderson was about to have verdict decided when the judges decided to delay until the Winter Session. During the delay it was revealed that MacLeod had in fact engaged David Household, a seventeen-year-old servant, to write up the bill, disguising him as Henderson while he wrote in order to deflect guilt from herself onto Henderson. The court found only MacLeod guilty and sentenced her to death. Scandal The notoriety of the case, partly because of the unwitting involvement of a member of the aristocracy, and partly because of MacLeod's comportment at her execution, resulted in a flurry of ballads and verse libels being produced about the trial and MacLeod's execution. Several of these depict MacLeod as a pimp (bawd) and a prostitute, although the trial provides no evidence for this. In a letter from John Boyd to Reverend Robert Wodrow, Boyd says about MacLeod, "She was a very lewd woman, in keeping disorderly houses at Edinburgh, Cowgate, and Leith, and it is now concluded she will die for this crime." Execution MacLeod was hanged on the Grassmarket in Edinburgh on 8 March 1727. By all accounts, she went to her death with flair; Hugo Arnot wrote: