Alexander Howland Smith - Rillbank Collection

Rillbank Collection

In May 1891 manuscript collector James Mackenzie decided to sell some of the letters of his Rillbank Collection by auction in Edinburgh. Before the start of the auction, the auctioneer stated that some people had claimed that the items were forgeries and refused to personally vouch for them, which significantly decreased the prices.

Three months later Mackenzie published one old letter, supposedly from the poet Robert Burns, in the Cumnock Express newspaper. One reader of the paper found out that the person the letter had been addressed to, weaver John Hill, had never existed and begun to suspect the authenticity of the whole collection. Colvill Scott of Surrey, historical document expert, also announced that there were dozens of letter forgeries all over Scotland.

Mackenzie answered by publishing two unpublished poems purporting to be by Burns in the paper. Another reader noticed that one of them, The Poor Man's Prayer, had been published when Burns had been only a child and was the work of William Hayward Roberts, who had also written the other poem.

When Mackenzie was asked how he had acquired the letters, he claimed that he had found them in a secret drawer in an old cabinet. Contemporaries did not believe him. He had probably bought all of them in Edinburgh and it is unclear whether he knew them to be forgeries or not. He was not charged with anything.