City's Mr Average 'was first modern terrorist'

EDINBURGH painter and decorator James Aitken felt trapped in his average life.

Like many poor but well-read 18th-century Scots he strove for something more.

But his desire for a life less ordinary saw him become the first international terrorist.

The intriguing story of Aitken, or John the Painter as he became known, is revealed in a newly published book.

It charts how repeated rejection of his singular ambition to become an army officer, both in Britain and America, led him to commit desperate acts of terrorism.

That ambition culminated in a one-man fire-raising campaign aimed at bringing down the British Empire by destroying every key naval port in the country.

He hoped to win approval from American army chiefs, with whom he sided against Britain over the American Revolution.

His actions caused nationwide hysteria and sparked what could be seen as the first attempt to legislate against terrorism, when the legal notion of Habeus Corpus ("show me the body") was temporarily suspended as the nation’s police hunted him down.

He was, briefly, the most famous man in England, with 20,000 people gathering to watch him swing from the gallows at just 25.

But he was a failure, managing only to burn down a single rope house at Portsmouth Docks in 1776 after bungling the job despite nine months of planning.

In her book John the Painter - The First Modern Terrorist, Canadian psychiatry professor Jessica Warner tells his story.

"In many ways John the Painter was an 18th-century everyman," she says. "He was born James Aitken in Edinburgh’s Old Town in 1752, the eighth of 12 children to his father, George, a [black]smith and mother, Magdalen.

"He was sent to George Heriot’s, then an orphanage school, after his father died when he was seven. It was there that he developed a love of reading, in common with many Scots at that time who were relatively well educated.

"It was also there that he first heard a minister named John Erskine, who was very sympathetic to the American Revolution. It may well have been then that the seed was planted."

It was his later experiences which drew Aitken into a world of crime and violence. "He was apprenticed to an Old Town painter but, realising there were no prospects, he left Edinburgh to head for London when he was 20," said Warner. "Like everyone else, he went with high hopes that he would make his fortune.

"There was a lot of anti-Scottish sentiment at the time, and although he found work he supplemented it with petty crime.

"Later he went to America, partly in fear of being caught after reading a description of himself [as a highwayman] in the paper, but also with a certain degree of romanticism."

The American dream eluded him too, however, and he found himself effectively in slavery in a tobacco plantation in Virginia.

He escaped, fled back to England in 1775 and began plotting his arson campaign. But despite nine months of preparation his attack on Portsmouth Docks failed spectacularly, with the candle and turpentine incendiary device he had designed failing to work.

His outsider personality shows strong parallels with a modern-day terrorist, shoebomber Richard Reid, said Warner.

"Both were fighting the superpower of their day. Both men were very much outsiders, people no-one took seriously. Richard Reid has a ridiculous accent, John the Painter was a stammerer with no social skills who endured widespread anti-Scottish sentiment [outside Scotland]."

While Reid idolised Osama bin Laden, John the Painter had his own mentor, said Warner.

"I think the real bin Laden [in John the Painter’s time] was a man named Silas Deane, who was the US ambassador in France and who to some extent validated his actions [giving John financial support for his plan]."

• Jessica Warner talks about John the Painter - The First Modern Terrorist at this year’s Edinburgh Book Festival.