OUT OF CONTROL
From the Caledonian Mercury, 16 May 1785:
Wednesday afternoon, one of the flour carts belonging to the Mills at Canonmills, in passing through a toll-bar in the neighbourhood of that village, which made a noise in opening, the horses took fright, and ran most furiously till at Beaverhall.
A young woman, sitting on the front of the cart, was thrown down between it and the horses, where her cloaths had been entangled, and bruised in such a manner, that her life is despaired of.
From the same newspaper, 11 May 1776:
On Wednesday evening last, as two gentlemen’s servants were returning from airing their master’s horses on the sands of Leith, one of them, on coming to the new made road leading from the New Bridge to Broughton, set off at a gallop, and, opposite to the downmost houses at the head of the Walk, accidentally rode over a woman, the wife of one Peter Balfour journeyman weaver at Broughton, who was on her way home from the town, by which she was killed on the spot.
The man, whose name is William Pinckston, was immediated seized; and, after a precognition taken by the sheriff, he was committed to jail; and we hear, from undoubted authority, will be prosecuted for damages and assythment to the woman’s husband and family.
[Top map: R. Kirkwood, 'Plan of the City of Edinburgh and Its Environs', 1817. Bottom map: A. Kincaid, 'Plan of the City and Suburbs of Edinburgh', 1784.]