History

1844–46 

ROBBERY AND RECOVERY OF PROPERTY.—Late on Friday night, a blacksmith, named Clark, from Elgin, allowed himself to be enticed into a disreputable house in Nottingham Terrace, by a woman named Beaton; but he had not been there many minutes, when he discovered himself minus a pocket book containing L.16.[1]

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, Pompeii was not the only casualty. 

Herculaneum – nine miles to the north – was likewise engulfed, a pyroclastic surge burying the town and smothering many of its inhabitants in a thick shroud of volcanic ash.

Emanuel Maurice, Prince d’Elbeuf, began excavating here in 1719, and it was from his posthumous estate that the Edinburgh diarist and lawyer James Boswell acquired ‘not cheap’ the plaster cast of a young female cat (shown foot of page) during his Grand Tour of Italy, Corsica, and France in 1764/66.

1839–43 

SOUP-KITCHEN.—We understand that a soup-kitchen was opened on Saturday at Greenside Row, which will be a great boon to the poor of that densely populated parish, among whom for some time back there has been much sickness, and many very distressing cases of fever. We learn that it is under the management of the excellent minister of the parish and his session.

Scotsman, 16 January 1839

*****

1837–38

Fire.—On Thursday night, about seven o’clock, the premises in East Thistle Street Lane, in which Messrs M’Crie & Co. carry on the business of paper-staining, caught fire, which, however, by the prompt attendance of the firemen, was soon got under with an engine, and with comparatively little damage.

Introduction 

Ever since the publication in 1886 of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, we have been accustomed to thinking of Edinburgh as a city divided. Its clefts are notionally between outward respectability and private vice, between modern Enlightenment and historic superstition, cerebral advancement and bestial instinct. 

In the weeks to come, as a diversion from current inconveniences and alarms, Spurtle will serialise a previously unpublished work compiled by A. J. McIntosh entitled News from the Mews. 

It is a selection of Victorian newspaper reports detailing events in the – generally overlooked – back streets and service lanes of Edinburgh’s New Town. 

A few of these have already appeared in the printed pages of the Broughton Spurtle. Most, though, appear here for the first time in over a hundred years.

NUISANCE, BAKERS, AND THE STATE OF THE NATION 

Edinburgh’s earliest zoo – the Royal Edinburgh Zoological Gardens – was established in 1840 in Broughton Park, on ground now bounded by West Annandale Street, Bellevue Street, Melgund Terrace, and East Claremont Street.

It was never a financial success and closed in 1857, amid widespread and long-standing concerns about the welfare of its specimen species. Financial concerns predominated.

The Lord Provost, Frank Ross, unveiled a commemorative flagstone this morning to honour the bravery of a First World hero. 

Sapper Adam Archibald, was born at 24 Shaw's Street in 1879, and later lived at Balfour and Hillhouse Streets. He was awarded the Victoria Cross by King George V in May 1919.

His citation read: 

 ‘What is this life if, full of care, 

 We have no time to stand and stare?’ 

What would the poet W.H. Davies have to say about so many who now seem umbilically affixed to their mobile phones, as if their very survival depended on them?

How many, while so engaged, never look up or around them when they might discover architectural marvels and throngs of silent watchers over our beautiful city?

And in Broughton Street, for example, how many ghostly survivals of its past will they have missed?