History

HIGH COURT OF JUSTICIARY.

This Court resumed yesterday—the Lord Justice-General, Lord Deas, and Lord Ardmillan on the bench.

Elizabeth Adams and John M’Intyre pled not guilty to the charge of stealing, on the 5th or 6th of April last, from the pocket of Alexander Ferguson, house-painter, when in Catholic Chapel Lane, leading from Broughton Street to St James’s Place,[1] a silver watch and gold pencil-case. The jury found the charge proven, and the prisoners were each sentenced to six years’ penal servitude.

April 1858

POLICE COURT—Wednesday

(Before Sheriff Hallard.)

A PUBLIC-HOUSE CONTRAVENTION CASE.

“A SCENE.”

 1857 

DISTRESSING FATAL ACCIDENT—Yesterday, a portion of an old wall in Jamaica Street Lane fell upon two children at play beside it; one of them was killed on the spot, the other much hurt.

The wall, which was not in good repair, is perhaps a little more than three feet high from the pavement of the lane, but on the other side there is a sunk area in front to the house No. 21, the depth of which from the ridge of the wall must be fully six feet.

1847–48 

 DARING ROBBERY. 

It is with regret, that we have to record another of those daring outrages which have of late been the disgrace of our city.

On Thursday night, about twelve o’clock, a gentleman who resides in Broughton Place was knocked down on his way home, in the lane which branches off from the east side of Elder Street,[1] and robbed of his watch and five pounds.

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]

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.