History

A Compendium

of

New Town

Noir.

*****

Viz.

North Edinburgh’s

Back-Streets & Dark Corners

as Reported in

Scottish Broadsheets

during His Late Majesty’s Reign

from 20 January 1901 to 6 May 1910.

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Compiled from Original Sources

& Most Attentively Annotated

for the Convenience, Elucidation & Entertainment

of Generous Subscribers

by

A. J.

The article below, apparently written on Christmas Day 1790, appeared in the Caledonian Mercury on 1 January 1791.

It is possible that the subject matter appealed to some Presbyterian editor sucking in his cheeks at the celebration of a Rome-ish mass south of the Border. But it is more probable that the Editor enjoyed the deadpan humour of a supposed 'member of the Church of England' urging abstemiousness in terms that would have struck many disapproving or hypocritical Scots as excessive.

This morning we woke to a third day of miserable damp gloom.

It may seem grim. But Edinburgh has known worse.

The following article is extracted from a longer piece published in the Scotsman on 16 November 1929 – the day after weather conditions had combined with smoke from coal fires to spectacular effect.

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As a companion piece to last month's 'Desecration of the Calton Hill', we reproduce this article from the North Briton (8 December 1877).

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Below is the full version of an article which appears in condensed form in the October printed issue of the Spurtle, published today.

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The common people of this country must certainly have the organ of destructiveness enormously developed. Nothing that they can possibly lay their hands upon escapes demolition.

Friends of Warriston Cemetery have recently uncovered the headstone of Owen Duffy, a merchant and ‘champion athlete’ who lived from 1848–96.  Duffy has been on Spurtle’s radar for some time.

Duffy was born in Ireland, but at the time of the 1891 census he sold china from his business at 45 Carlyle Place. His home was just down the road at No. 1, where he lived with his wife Isabella and four Edinburgh-born children.

The columns of 19th- and early 20th-century Scottish newspapers carry items of national and international importance, as you’d expect. But surprisingly, they also teem with the business of myriad social and sporting clubs operating in every town and city across the country.

Two examples of local topical interest illustrate this below.

1900–01

NEARLY A TRAGEDY.—James Douglas, a labourer living in the Canongate, was convicted in Edinburgh Police Court to-day of creating a disturbance in a house in Gilchrist Lane on Tuesday, and threatening to stab Catherine Staiton or Murphy with a pocket knife.

Douglas knew the woman, and called at the house under the influence of drink and created this disturbance, dramatically pulling out a pocket knife and exclaiming, “It’s a knifing match.”

1900

The (last year of the) XIXth Century Concert.[1]

SATURDAY, 7.30 p.m., MUSIC HALL PROGRAMME[2]

PIANIST … Mr JAS. BOOTH.

SONG … “Mona” … Mr. J. W. Bowie.

SONG … “Our Jack” … Madame J. W. Craigie.

1899

TO-DAY’S POLICE NEWS.

EDINBURGH CITY—Before SHERIFF MACONOCHIE

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS’ CRIME.

There were 30 new prisoners brought to the bar. The charges were: Incapable; 12, assault, 5; disorderly, 4; loitering, begging, and theft, 5 each; and drunk in charge of horse, drunk in charge of child, and cruelty to children—one each.