First edition of the self-serving confessions of the Edinburgh born arsonist inspired - so he claimed - by a desire to support the American Revolution. He began his career as a painter but once he got to London he drifted into a life of crime, burgling shops and homes and committing highway robberies. "Dreading the consequences of a detection," he says, he worked his passage to Virginia. He went from one colony to another, heading to Boston when he heard of the troubles there, "and I cannot deny being very active in these riots, particularly in sinking the tea, and insulting the friends of government." On hearing of an English fleet on its way to Boston he returned to England, and once arrived in Liverpool went back to his life of crime. By the summer of 1776 Aitken decided to strike a blow for the American revolutionary cause and destroy all six of the royal dockyards. Having set fires in Portsmouth and Bristol to little effect he was arrested on 27 January and tried and executed in March 1777.

ODNB