Atmospherically misleading: the thread about Louis H. Grimshaw’s paintings of Edinburgh

This thread was originally written and published in July 2023.

Today’s (July 9th 2023) Auction House Artefact was this evocative and eerie late-evening painting of the High Street in Edinburgh, looking towards St. Giles after the rain. Painted by Louis H. Grimshaw in 1895, in the “moonlit cityscape” style he inherited from his father, John Atkinson Grimshaw.

The young Louis Grimshaw started working as an artist as an assistant to his father, helping with the details such as the people on moody and atmospheric late night scenes such as this one, “Glasgow, Saturday Night“, showing the hustle and bustle of the Broomielaw on the Clyde. The Grimshaws talent was one of capturing the ethereal glow of a sunset or moonlight as it reflected through clouds upon a wet cityscape and contrasting that with the bright, artificial lights of modernity. They also chose to deliberately avoid the dirt, grime and squalor of Victorian town life in their paintings, creating evocative but fundamentally sanitised scenes.

Father and son worked together until the former’s death in 1893. At this juncture, Louis continued the style and subject matter himself. In his painting of St. Giles, we see the historic and frequently decrepit Old Town portrayed as a modern and prosperous city, with glowing shop lights, busy shoppers, clean streets, neat rows of gas lamps a horse tram picking up passengers. (This was the brief 12 year period when the Old Town had a tram route up the High Street, which was lost the year after this scene was painted when the horse trams moved over to cable traction and the route was shifted down the Mound instead)

Despite his talents, Louis Grimshaw packed in the unpredictable and insecure life as painter in 1905, swapping it for the steady pay and regular work of a cartographer, for The Guardian, in 1905. As such he left a limited body of work and it commands high prices – £70-100k for the St. Giles painting when it last sold in 2008. He mainly depicted London but seems to have painted 3 Edinburgh scenes in 1895. Below we have the classic view up the High Street from “John Knox’s” House looking towards the Tron Kirk and St. Giles, the moon glowing somewhere above Auld Reekie’s smoggy cloak.

A small troop of Highlanders are marching downhill from the Castle to Holyrood. The gaslamps are lit, the shop windows are bright and on the right is the welcoming lamp and incongruous (for the Old Town) classical columns of Carrubers Close Mission.

Grimshaw’s scene matches *very* closely a photograph from the 1890s by John Patrick one can’t but wonder if it was the inspiration. The photo also shows the reality of the High Street compared to Grimshaw’s stylised, gentrified painting. Mixed in with the bustle and prosperity are the shoeless, malnourished children and obvious signs of the decaying, overcrowded accommodation of the Old Town that made life here so tenuous for so many children

In fact, it’s such a close match, I think that Grimshaw’s scene can only have been a tracing of Patrick’s photograph. See for yourself below:

Grimshaw’s last Edinburgh scene (that I can find) shows Holyroodhouse from the foot of the Canongate. Again the moon behind the cloud and smog casts an eerie glow over the damp road. Again the lights are bright and streets are clean. Again this is very sanitised scene compared to the reality of life in the Canongate at that time.

The reality was that in the 1890s, the Canongate – at one time long ago the suburban retreat of the City’s wealthy classes – was a crumbling, overcrowded and insanitary neighbourhood, where disease, malnourishment and poverty were endemic and child mortality was high.

Don’t get me wrong, I love these paintings and the artist’s skill in conjouring up the atmosphere. But they are a set-dressed fantasy, this thread on the diet of the working class of the Canongate in 1901 gives a window on what life was really like here for many. My Mum’s family lived this reality, at this time- flitting between the slums of the Canongate, High Street, St. Leonards and Stockbridge, constantly on the move; looking for something better or leaving behind something worse. They were Irish immigrant labourers, at the very bottom of the pile, and that reality was of their eleven children, eight predeceased their mother and four never made their 1st birthday. Of the children that survived to adulthood, five died as young adults from TB: even in the better times of the 1930s and 40s, the legacy of a childhood in the slums caught up with them.

Sorry. Ranty reality check over – please don’t get me wrong, these are very nice and evocative paintings. Stick a couple of dancers and a butler in them and they’d be quite like a Jack Vettriano scene. Do enjoy them; but they absolutely need a word of caution about how artificial the world is that they present us with.

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The Royal Mile: the thread about a street with no addresses

This thread was originally written and published in September 2022.

Apropos current events (at the time of writing), I thought it might be interesting, relevant or a bit of both to delve a little into the name of a certain street and dispel a few myths or misapprehensions about it.

The Royal Mile of course is well known as that ancient main street of Edinburgh’s Old Town, named for the mile long route between Edinburgh Castle and the Palace of Holyroodhouse. This is a route steeped in history and long trodden by monarchs of Scotland, yes? The history books (or some of them) actually will tell you this, so it must be true, yes? Well, not really, no.

OK, the bit about it being a mile long between the castle and the palace is correct, it almost exactly is – give or take a foot, yard or metre. But that’s a statute mile not the Scots mile which some sources claim (which is ~200m longer) so that should raise a slight suspicion as to how ancient a term it really is. Feel free to measure it if you don’t believe me! You also won’t find any property with a street address of Royal Mile and you won’t find it in any old Post Office directory listing.

No. The Royal Mile is a collective term for four distinct streets, which in days of yore were in two completely separate burghs. From the top of the hill at the castle to the bottom, which is from west to east, we have the Castle Hill, Lawnmarket and High Street of Edinburgh and the Canongate which was in the Burgh of Canongate. These are shown below with their separate names on Kincaid’s street map of 1784.

Stuart Harris, who wrote the book on Edinburgh street names, takes particular exception to the Royal Mile name: “to use this label for the combined length of the separate historic market streets [Edinburgh and the Canongate] it is at cost of blurring the distinction between the two“. He continues “it is not only meaningless historically, but unhappily gives an impression that this was a route created to link castle and palace, whereas the truth is that it came into being hundreds of years before the kings of Scots had anything to go with the fortress or the palace“. Harris notes that in medieval references it is given as “via Regia“, the King’s Way, but then that was given to any public highway, with the adjoining streets and closes all being in private ownership in their respective burghs. Using the “nickname” of Royal Mile, he bemoaned, was causing the erosion of the historic and distinct individual street names, “with a regrettable loss of civic dignity“.

The route is undoubtedly ancient, a track will have existed along the spine of the Castle Rock since as long as people scratched out a living on its summit as a defensible place to survive. But how old are the street names and how old is the objectionable term Royal Mile? The earliest medieval references to the High Street describe a vicus foralis or market street, because that’s what it was and why it was much wider than it is now. By the 16th century it’s the magnus vicus or great street and by the start of the 17th it’s the High Street (or Hie Gate in Scots). The below sketch reconstructs the 15th century birds’ eye view of the city on its ridge below the castle, with the prominent one-mile route from castle to Holyrood.

The name Castle Hill, now partly buried beneath the 18th and 19th c. Esplanade, dates to at least 1484. It refers to the hill you climb to reach the castle, the castle itself sits on the Castle Rock. There’s evidence to suggest that the Castle Hill predates the High Street as the main centre of populace of Edinburgh.

The Lawnmarket is nothing to do with lawns or selling fodder. Lawn is a corruption of the Scots Laund or Laun; in English – Land; it was the Landmercatt, where people from the lands outwith the burgh could trade. The main city markets were restricted to only being for the traders of the burgh. In the 1765 town plan by Edgar (below) it’s even spelled as Land Market.

And the Canongate, the principle thoroughfare of the burgh of that name dates to not long after the foundation of the Holyrood Abbey in 1128, first being recorded in 1363 as the vicus canonicorum or “Canoungait“, the way of the Canons (of the Abbey). The Burgh of Canongate, whose superiority was held by the Abbey until the Scottish Reformation, post-dated the street name and was established at some time in the 15th century.

And so what of The Royal Mile? Well, it’s a term that first appears in newspapers in the late 19th century. There are a couple of references to it in articles in The Scotsman in the 1880 and 1890s, written in a manner that implies it was clearly a term already understood locally. But crucially, it’s not given as a proper noun, it’s in quotation marks as the “royal mile“, it’s being used as a descriptive nickname. It first appears in book print that I can find in 1901, in “Edinburgh in the Nineteenth Century” by W. M. Gilbert. Again, with the quote marks and no capital on mile, again it’s clearly a nickname.

From here on, use of the term grows. A burgh councillor, C. J. Mcarthy, gave a talk illustrated by magic lantern slides of the title to the Edinburgh Architectural Association in 1905. By 1920, it’s the title of a historical guidebook published locally, by Robert T. Skinner

And by the 1930s, the name and its mythical genesis is firmly embedded in the popular history books.

So there you have it. Yes, the Royal Mile or royal mile is a well accepted and established local name for the area between the Castle and the Palace, but as is sometimes the case the accepted history is a relatively modern invention to fit the facts and is divorced from the historical reality.

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Shifting boundaries: the thread about 600 years of Edinburgh’s expansion at the neighbours’ expense

It’s late O’ Clock, so what better time for a brief, 600 year whirlwind tour of the boundaries of Edinburgh. By this I mean the civil boundaries (by various definitions), not church parish or electoral ones (although they may overlap and be one and the same at times).In the 15th century, the extent of Edinburgh is a small place, whose civil reach is defined by the King’s Walls. Immediately to its east is the 12th century Burgh of the Canongate (owned by Holyrood Abbey), and to its north the Burghs of Barony of Broughton and the Barony of Restalrig.

After the national calamity at The Battle of Flodden, the town walls are “hurriedly” rebuilt (it takes about 45 years to complete!) due to the imminent threat of English retribution. This “Flodden Wall” encircles the southern suburbs of the city that had grown outside the wall and expands the boundaries significantly in that direction.

As defensive structures, these medieval style walls were not suitable for the realities of 16th century warfare and both English and Scottish armies strolled into the city without too much effort in the 1540s, 50s and 70s. Nevertheless, the walls were useful in defining and regulating the city, particularly as a protective trade barrier, something the city guarded zealously and jealously. In 1618 the walls were reinforced and expanded again by the mason John Taillefer – the Telfer Walls – and in 1636 the superiority of the Burgh of Canongate was purchased by Edinburgh, although it would remain quasi-independent for the next 200 or so years.

In 1649, the city got a new neighbour on its western fringe as the little village of Portsburgh outside the West Port (a port being a gateway in Scots placenames) was raised to a Burgh of Barony. Note, at some point, Portsburgh was extended to include an island to its east outside of the city walls, known as Easter Portsburgh. I am not sure when this occurred but you will find its boundaries in the 1817 image further down.

n.b. a Burgh of Barony was a type of burgh in Scotland, distinct from a Royal Burgh like Edinburgh granted to a feudal landowner. They gave the landowner certain rights and privileges regarding holding markets and/or dispense local justice. They may also have had their own incorporations of trades.

In 1685, the Town Council defined 16 districts in the city, each to be “watched” by a company of the Trained Bands. Effectively these were law enforcement areas, the Trained Bands being a sort of militia force for protecting the city. This extended the civil reach north. In 1673, Restalrig was changed from a barony to a burgh of barony, Restalrig and Calton or Easter and Wester Restalrig under the Master of Balmerino.

The City reiterated these districts in 1736 and in 1785 an Act of Parliament by King George III formalised these boundaries area as defining “The Ancient Royalty of the City”. The 17th century story of the decline of the Barony of Restalrig is a different story, but in 1725 the superiority of the ancient Calton district was bought from it, the west portion by Edinburgh and the east by the Heriot’s Hospital (a far bigger landowner than the City). Calton became a “bailiery” and thus retained some of the trappings of being a burgh of barony, such as some of its own trade incorporations (including cordiners, or shoemakers) and its own burial ground.

In 1767 the city finally squeezes itself beyond its ancient boundaries with the 1767 Police Boundaries Act that defines both the 1st New Town and attached exclaves. At this time Policing was a civic notion concerned with public sanitation, lighting etc., not law enforcement.

These boundaries can be seen to be a complete mess, and resulted in parts of Calton being in the South Leith parish for worship, parts of Edinburgh in Broughton, etc. Nevertheless, things proceeded in a haphazard manner, with individual Acts of Parliament in 1785, 1786, 1809 and 1814 slowly attached bits on to the city, the most contiguous being the incorporation of the Second New Town and later the Moray Feu at the start of the 19th century. The northern exclave shown below was for the Edinburgh Academy.

As noted previously, when I first created these maps I had not found the boundary for Easter Porstburgh, but it is recorded on Kirkwood’s 1817 town plan. I have shown it below and its relationship to the original boundary of the Canongate.

In 1825, the Bailiery of Calton was formally incorporated into the city and ceased to exist. In 1832 there was a huge change, with the Edinburgh Police Act (for “watching, lighting, cleansing and paving”) tidying up and greatly expanding both the civic boundary and the municipal responsibilities.

Much of the new boundary aligned with the new parliamentary boundary defined in the Representation of the People (Scotland) Act 1832 – the Scottish Reform Act. But not totally, as the section north east of Broughton was actually in Leith for electoral purposes (map from NLS).

In 1833 another new neighbour appears, with Portobello being raised to a burgh by Act of Parliament. Note that Broughton, Portsburgh and Canongate still exist for certain civic functions at this time, although Edinburgh had the Police powers over them. In 1854, the Edinburgh Police Amendment Act extends the boundary of the city to include all of the extent of the Queen’s Park, including Duddingston Loch.

In 1856 the Edinburgh Municipality Extension Act swallows up the remaining civic functions of – and thereby abolishes – the old Burghs of Broughton, Canongate and Portsburgh. In return Edinburgh loses a northern slice as Leith realises its 300-odd year campaign for burgh recognition.

At 7.8 square kilometres, the new Burgh of Leith is 60% smaller than Edinburgh by size, but is seen by the City as a huge threat to its prosperity. They hadn’t spent the last 400 or so years in more or less direct control of the port and its two parishes for no good reason. Edinburgh now goes on a growing spree. The 1882 Municipal and Police Extension Act widens the city to the south and west.

The 1885 Edinburgh Extension and Sewerage Act gives it Blackford Hill.

The 1889 Local Government Scotland Act brings in new powers that allow expansion under certain circumstances without recourse to an Act of Parliament each time. In 1890 this gives the city Braid Hill and an extra chunk of Inverleith when this was acquired from the Rocheid family.

Note that the Braid Hill acquisition included the pathway up from the Hermitage of Braid, so this was a contiguous part of the city and not an exclave in the County of Midlothian.

Hearts were broken in the People’s Republic of Portobello and Joppa in 1896 when Edinburgh acquired that particular Burgh. The London and Portobello Road axis between the two was also part of the deal as a connecting corridor and so again this was not an isolated municipal island. The western boundary also pushed further out again at this time.

In 1901, the lands of Craigentinny, once part of the Barony of Restalrig, between South Leith and the London Road were incorporated. This area at the time was largely unpopulated farmland and “irrigated meadows” (intensively-cultivated pasture land fertilised by raw sewage). Granton too, previously part of the Parish of Cramond in Midlothian County, joined the City Burgh in 1901.

A year later in 1902 the remains of the old Parish of Duddingston were also acquired between the London Road in the north and the Niddrie / Brunstane Burns in the south.

In the twentieth century, a huge changed occurred with the Edinburgh Boundaries Extension and Tramways Act 1920. This saw the city get revenge on the Leith Independence movement as it reacquired the entire burgh against widespread popular opposition. This is something which Leith has still not forgiven, over a century later. But this expansion didnt stop at just Leith, the same act gave the city the Barony of Corstorphine and the civil parishes of Cramond, Liberton and Gilmerton from Midlothian. This boundary still defines a lot of what we think of as Edinburgh (and some bits we don’t, like Straiton and Old Pentland). Things would stay more or less as they were for the next 54 years, until the 1974 local government reforms established a two-tier system of local government, with a greatly expanded Lothian Region, with Edinburgh, Mid-, West and East Lothian being District Councils within that. But that’s outwith the scope of this thread and a story for another day.

The City coat of arms of Edinburgh was registered with the Lord Lyon King of Arms in 1732 and has the castle and its rock as the central heraldic symbol, for obvious reasons. The crest is an anchor and cable, symbolising the Lord Provost also being the Admiral of the Forth. The supporters on either side are to the dexter (the shield’s right) a maiden “richly attired with her hair hanging down over her shoulders” – the Castle and its Rock was once known as the Maiden Castle and to the sinister (shield’s left) a doe, a deer, a female deer. This animal represents the life of solitude of St Giles in the forest, the city’s patron saint. Much earlier versions of the Common Seal of the City included a representation of St. Giles himself on the reverse but this depiction of a saint was removed after the Scottish Reformation. The use of the castle as a heraldic symbol of the city dates back to medieval times.

The Latin civic motto of “Nisi Dominus Frustra” is an abbreviation of Psalm 127. Roughly speaking it translates to English as “Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.” Appropriate for a God-fearing and staunchly Presbyterian 1640s Edinburgh.

The Canongate Burgh Coat of Arms features the white stag and cross that give rise to the popular story of the Holyrood placename – recall that Canongate once belonged to the Holyrood Abbey. The motto “Sic Itur Ad Astra” translates to “Thus one goes to the stars“

The Coat of Arms of the Burgh of Leith was altered from the old seals of the Burgh of Barony, which dated back to 1630. And represents the Virgin Mary (for whom South Leith’s Kirk was dedicated) and baby Jesus in a ship beneath a cloud.

The version on the seal shows them beneath an ornate canopy. The date of 1563 is sometimes shown on the seal, this being when Mary Queen of Scots gave written permission for Leith to raise its own Tolbooth, one of the civic institutions required for the old Scottish burgh.

The motto “Persevere” is well kenned but has relatively modern (Victorian) origins and was not formally adopted until the arms were matriculated in 1889. Its exact origin is obscure but at this time it already had an association with Leith – and formally was probably first used with the formation of the 1st Midlothian Rifle Volunteers in Leith in 1859, who adopted the old Burgh Seal and the motto “Persevere” on their badges. It had also been in use by other local institutions such as the Perseverance Lodge of the Independent United Order of Scottish Mechanics – one of the various fraternal societies that flourished in Victorian Scotland – and the Junction Street Young Men’s Society. It should be noted however that when the Grand Lodge of Free Gardners in Scotland (yet another fraternal society) established a lodge in Leith in 1864, they picked the motto “Persevere” on the basis that it was the motto of the Town. So it’s very much a case of chicken and eggs where the origins truly lie. The older Latin sometimes seen – “Siccilum Oppidi De Leith” – means nothing more than “Seal of the Town of Leith“.

The Portobello arms were granted in 1886. “the ships represent the port (Porto) and the cannons, war (Bello)” The castle refers not to Edinburgh but apparently to that of Puerto Bello and the battle thereof, from where the name of the Burgh is derived. The Latin motto “Ope et Consilio” translates as “With help and counsel” and refers apparently to “the skillful manner in which Admiral Vernon and his colleagues cap­tured [Puerto Bello].”

As far as I’m aware Portsburgh never had a coat of arms, but its seal survives in the collections of the National Museum of Scotland. Appropriately it shows a town under a clifftop castle, a city wall and two gates (ports). And a heap of doves. This has been used in lieu of the arms in the stained glass of the Edinburgh City Chambers, the symbols around the edges represent the independent incorporated trades of the Portsburgh.

I am unaware of arms for Broughton or Restalrig, I assume that instead the Baron used their own to seal municipal documents. For much of their time for Broughton this would have been the Bellendens (no sniggering at the back, it’s the old form of Ballantyne) and for Restalrig this was the de Lestalrics and then the Logans. Likewise for the Calton, Edinburgh had the superiority after it was detached from South Leith so it likely used the Edinburgh seal for official documents, the incorporated trades using their own.

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City of Brewing: the thread about 150 years of brewery opening and closure in Edinburgh

In December 2019, the Edinburgh Evening News ran an article about a new brewery planned for the city which it claimed “will be the first major brewery to be built in Edinburgh for 150 years.” (and also the biggest).

By my count (luckily, I keep a handy spreadsheet of such things for such counting eventualities) there were actually fifteen major breweries built in Edinburgh in the last 150 years and a good number of these were larger. So let’s take a closer look at them.

Starting us off at number 15 is the Caledonian Brewery – universally known as The Caley – it was opened by Lorimer & Clark 150 years ago (at the time of first writing) in 1869 in Shandon. This was one of the first Edinburgh brewers taken over by an English firm, Vaux, in 1947, who closed it in 1985. It reopened soon after in a management buyout and was one of the pioneers of the real ale revival locally. It was still going strong currently under threat of closure closed by then owners Heineken in 2022 and will likely be sold off for housing.

At number 14, G. & J. Machlachlan’s Castle Brewery opened in the Grassmarket in 1875, some 144 years ago. It relocated out to Craigmillar in 1901 as the New Castle Brewery (not to be confused with the Newcastle Brewery!). The Grassmarket site was sold in 1913 and was used as a mines rescue and research station by a consortium of Lothians mining companies. It is now part of the site of George Heriot’s School.

A non-mover at number 13, Jeffrey’s opened the New Heriot Brewery at Roseburn in 1880. This replaced a facility in the Grassmarket along from the Castle which was known, unsurprisingly, as the Heriot Brewery and took its name from that nearby school (see picture). Brewing took place at Roseburn until 1992, by which time it was an outpost of Glaswegian lager manufacturer Tennent Caledonian. Coincidentally the Grassmarket brewery was built on top of the Crawley Pipe which brought water into the town. That little brown wooden door you can see to the left of the gateway gives access to the conduit in which the pipe runs.

Holding steady at number 12, brothers Thomas & James Bernard opened the New Edinburgh Brewery on Robertson Avenue in Gorgie in 1888. For obvious reasons the firm used a St. Bernard dog as its mascot and logo (a Saint that has a local connection too), except with a bottle of their beer around its neck instead of a flask of brandy. They were bought up by the industry giant Scottish Brewers in 1960 who shut them down in order to reduce the competition and industry over-capacity.

At 11, the Edinburgh United Breweries of 1889. This company consolidated the existing smaller brewers of David Nicolsons; Robin, McMillans; Dishers and George Ritchies. The Robin, McMillans site at the Summerhall was demolished to make way for the new buildings of the Royal Dick Veterinary School, Dishers’ facilities were sold to rivals Aitchisons, and brewing was consolidated at Nicolson’s Palace Brewery at Abbeyhill and Ritchie’s Bell’s Brewery at the Pleasance. EUB’s remaining assets were acquired by Jeffrey’s in 1935 after what was (at that point) the UK’s largest tax duty scandal; the firm had been brewing off the record out of hours for years and avoiding taxation.

Sneaking in at number 10, the Craigmillar No. 1 Brewery was opened in 1891 by the firm of William Murray & Co. Murrays were an old, established brewer in the town of Jedburgh at the Caledonian Brewery but Mr Murray and his Wife died on the same evening on Wednesday 6th January 1886 leaving no living partner to take the firm on. The business was sold and its new owners relocated it to just outside the (then) city boundary at Craigmillar in 1890, where transport links were good, as was the water, and land was plentiful. This was the first brewer to locate to what would become a hotspot of this industry in this district. This operation was bought by United Breweries in 1960 and closed in 1963 by which time they were United Caledonian.

Holding steady at number 9, Drybrough’s were one of the bigger Edinburgh brewers. They were long established on the North Back of the Canongate but followed the lead of Murrays and joined them in the Craigmillar suburb in 1892 at the Duddingston Brewery. They were bought out by the firm of Watney Mann in 1965 as the big English brewers moved north of the border to expand into the Scottish market and were closed by Allied Lyons in 1987. Most of the brewery buildings remain here, in various uses as workshops, storage and offices .

A new entrant at 8, Daniel Bernard was a son of the T. & J. Bernard family, but fell out with the other partners in that business in 1889 in an acrimonious dispute that ended up in him leaving the firm and taking them to court. He set himself up in business in the Canongate as Bernards Ltd, and moved to a site in the Damhead area of Gorgie in 1893 where there were some good wells, just down the road from the family’s New Edinburgh site. When Daniel died in 1901, there was nobody to take it over. It was used for a while as a distillery before pharmaceutical company T. & H. Smith of Canonmills moved there in stages between 1904-1908. It is still in use for those purposes by their successor company.

At number 7, Pattisons were a big new name in the Leith whisky distilling, blending and bottling industry. Formed from the dairy of Pattison, Elder & Co., they were also the sole Scottish agent for St. Anne’s Well beer from Barnstable in Exeter and decided to enter the brewing market for themselves. This they did in 1896 at Craigmillar, the third such operation in the district. They were known for lavish spending on facilities, advertising and their directors personal lives. But their empire was built too quickly and built on sand; sand sitting atop a huge financial bubble which collapsed in spectacular stile 1899, bringing down much of the Scotch whisky industry with it. The Pattison brothers ended up in court for mixing cheap grain whisky with malt and passing it off as mature malt to increase their profits and ended up in jail. Their brewery assets were taken over by Robert Deuchar, a name now associated with Edinburgh brewing but actually from the northeast of England. Deuchars were closed by Scottish & Newcastle in 1961.

Up one at 6, Somerville’s joined the growing brewing suburb at Craigmillar in 1897 when they opened the North British Brewery. Messrs. John Somerville & Co. were an established wine and spirits merchant on Quality Street in Leith who amalgamated with Blyth & Cameron, a company formed that same year by business partners of Somerville to build the new brewery at Craigmillar. The consolidated firm was known as John Somerville & Co. Ltd. Neighbouring Murray’s took it over as the Craigmillar No. 2 in 1922 and when United Breweries took over Murrays in 1960 they quickly shut it down.

We’re in the top 5 territory now. Robert Deuchar (whose name would later be given to that pioneer India Pale Ale of the 1980s real ale revival in Edinburgh) built their own premises at Craigmillar in 1899 to complement those they had recently taken over from Pattisons. Deuchar is an old Scottish family name from Lauderdale in the Borders, but their brewery was established in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1888. They made the move up the railway to Edinburgh when they bought Pattisons and would transfer all their brewing operations north in 1920, but kept their tied public houses in the northeast of England. They were bought by Newcastle Brewery in 1954 and closed by that firm’s successor, Scottish & Newcastle, in 1961.

Straight in at number 4; T. Y. Paterson & Co. opened the Pentland Brewery, the smallest of the Craigmillar breweries, in 1898. Thomas Yule Paterson was a brewer and maltster established in Glasgow’s Bridgeton in 1884 who decided to move to Edinburgh when the advantages of the Craigmillar location became obvious. They were bought out by Edinburgh brewer Aitkens in 1936 and the site was used for other purposes thereafter. Only the gates remain now.

Another entry for Maclachlans in at 3. They moved from the Grassmarket to Duddingston (a bigger site, a more modern brewery and a rail connection beckoned) in 1901 at the New Castle Brewery. In 1960 the company were bought by Glasgow’s Tennent’s, a move which made sense as Maclachlan’s main market was in that city (as was their head office). But this was a period of rapid industry consolidation and Tennent’s in turn was in turn taken over by London’s Charrington United in 1963. A further reorganisation took place, with Charrington merging their Scottish subsidiaries – United Caledonian – with Tennent’s to form Tennent Caledonian. But it did not end there; in 1967 Charrington merged with Bass of Burton-upon-Trent to form Bass Charrington, under whose ownership the New Castle was shut down, Edinburgh operations of Tennent Caledonian were instead concentrated at Jeffrey’s former New Heriot Brewery in Roseburn

At number 2, W. & J. Raeburn were the last to open a brewery at Craigmillar, in 1901. Raeburn’s Brewery relocated from Merchant Street off the Cowgate in the Old Town where they had brewed since 1863. They were bought over by Robert (not William!) Youngers in 1913. They in turn sold it to the Brewer’s Food Supply Company of Fountainbridge in 1919, formed by a syndicate of Edinburgh brewers. They turned it over to dry waste brewers malt, enriched with surplus yeast, for use as cattle and poultry feed. The Inland Revenue took exception to the missed tax potential of turning a waste product into a commodity and took them to court, but lost. The War Office requisitioned the site over in 1939 to produce industrial yeast. It was returned to the BFSC and later found its way into the Scotish & Newcastle empire and the site seems to have closed around 1975.

And no surprises and still at no. 1, for the umpteenth year in a row since 1973, Scottish & Newcastle built the then ultra-modern Fountain Brewery in that year to replace the older William McEwan brewery of the same name on the other side of the road. S&N dominated the Scottish brewing scene and, along with the big English brewer, bought it up bit by bit then slowly tried to kill it. They very nearly almost did.

The graph below charts the rise and fall of the brewing industry in Edinburgh – note there would have been many more brewers operating prior to 1800, but small concerns rather than on an industrial scale. Treat the earlier end of the timeline with caution therefore. It can be seen that by numbers alone, the 1890s were the peak but there was a long, slow decline thereafter, with things falling off a cliff after the 1950s.

It’s worth noting too that many of these were, even by the standard of the day, relatively small concerns and overall production would actually have increased into the 1960s even though numbers were dropping due to modernisation of the larger breweries on the periphery of the city and closure of older, smaller, less-efficient city-centre sites.

If you look in the right places, it’s not hard to find the evidence of many of those old breweries not already covered in this post. Alexander Melvin’s at the Boroughloch Brewery has surviving outer walls and buildings, with tenement flats long ago built within its courtyard. If you get a chance to see it, the former brewery office off of Boroughloch Lane has a cracking Melvin’s frosted glass window still in place.

Robert Younger , one of the three Youngers of Scottish brewing, brewed at St. Ann’s in Abbeyhill. Their brewery site was converted into sheltered housing, with some of the original buildings preserved. Look out for the RY monogram above the former office door on Abbeyhill.

Archibald Campbell, Hope & King were an ancient name in brewing and distilling, they brewed at the Argyle Brewery off of Chambers Street, but which was at one time Argyle Square. They were one of the last old surviving city centre brewers when they were closed in 1970 by their new English owners, Whitebread. Many of the buildings have now been incorporated into the University of Edinburgh.

Someone later built the King’s Theatre on top of it, but Taylor, Macleod & Co. brewed on the old site of Drumdryan House at the Drumdryan Brewery, an old placename that you can still find in a neighbouring street. Drumdryan comes from the Gaelic – Druim drioghion – a ridge covered in thorn bushes, describing the local topography at one time. Interestingly the nearby street Thorniebauk comes from Scots and means exactly the same, also called Brierybauk at one time.

Steel, Coulson & Co. brewed at the Croft-an-Righ Brewery at Abbeyhill, next door to Robert Younger’s at St. Ann’s. Croft-an-Righ, named for the adjacent old house, at first glance seems an ovbvious Gaelic name meaning “King’s field” but is actually romantic corruption of an older Scots name, Croft Angry – with a possible German root. Some of the buildings were preserved and are in use by Historic Environment Scotland as workshops. These are called St. Ann’s, despite note being on the St. Ann’s brewery site, as St. Ann’s Yards is an even older placename for this area.

Charles Blair started brewing in the Canongate around 1886 at a site known as the Craigwell and within a few years it was rebuilt and expanded into a model Victorian brewery; the Craigend Brewery. In 1898, Blair combined with his relatives James and Charles Blair who brewerd in Parkhead in Glasgow and with James Gordon, a wine merchant in that city, to form Gordon & Blair Ltd. The firm was taken over by local firm Mackay’s in 1955 and closed before 1963 when the latter were bought by Watney Mann. It was used as a cash & carry warehouse before being sympathtically convereted into flats in 1986.

Thomas Carmichael’s Balmoral Brewery was on what is now Calton Road but was then the North Back of Canongate. This place appears to have always struggled financially (apparently due to water supply problems) and the site was used principally for its maltings or sublet to other brewers before being bought by Charles Blair in 1895 for use as the maltings for the Craigwell over the road.

And lastly, until recently you could still see the ground storey of the Calton Hill Brewery on Calton Road in use as a rental car garage. The brewery went through a variety of ownerships, apparently founded in the first half of the 19th century by John Muir & sons before it too was taken over by Charles Blair in around 1890 to be incorporated with the Craigwell. The remains were demolished around 2019 to be replaced by student flats.

In terms of numbers and production, Edinburgh was second only to Burton-on-Trent as the Empire’s second city of brewing. Most cities had breweries but to serve their local market, Edinburgh was notable as serving not just the whole country but also world. The McEwan’s logo, before the recognisable Laughing Cavalier, was a self-confident declaration of the Globe being supported by the strong hand of the Union Flag and the Royal Standard. This was as a result of the importance to McEwan’s business of export and military sales.

Long story short. Don’t let your local paper fool you into believing things about the history of brewing in Edinburgh!

Footnote. My personal ambivalence towards S&N is sincere; I believe they were a good company who lost their way and lost sight of what they did, and tried to grow fat by eating themselves; in the end nothing much was left worth mourning. I also have absolutely nothing against Innis & Gunn. Personally I think their beers taste of a mix of soap and marshmallows, but I also really like Tennent’s lager so I’m no authority on the matter of what “good beer” tastes like.

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In Scotland: The £25,000 Trivedi Science Book Prize 2025 Shortlist

From a pool of 254 initial submissions, the Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize jury names six 2025 shortlistees in Edinburgh.
https://publishingperspectives.com/2025/08/in-scotland-the-25000-trivedi-science-book-prize-2025-shortlist/

#Awards #Canongate #Faber #HachetteUK #Nonfiction
@indieauthors

The real Ned Holt: the thread about the darker side of a colourful Victorian street artist

In preparation for writing up some summaries of the caricatures of “Old Edinburgh Worthies” by Ned (Edmund) Holt, I decided to dig a bit deeper into the life of this mysterious Victorian street artist. Not much is known of his life, and much of that is popular legend. Sources will tell you he was a street artist of some talents, a familiar and well loved character of Old Edinburgh and one who was limited in life only by his love of a drink. A “boon companion in the common lodging houses and in public houses.” However, with a little work digging through newspaper clippings and Scotland’s People, I hope that I am able to add a few details to his story, but also find to offer a different, and ultimately less favourable, interpretation of his character.

While he illustrated profusely -usually to earn his beer money – he never seems to have turned his attention on himself, so we known not what he looked like (although a newspaper article of 1922 claims that a likeness was published at the time of his death). Capital Collections (the wonderful online image gallery of the collections of the Edinburgh City Libraries, Museums and Galleries) uses a self portrait of John Kay to represent any artists for which they do not have a likeness. Kay is one of the best known caricaturists of old Edinburgh, leaving behind an amusing and invaluable visual and written record of the worthies of the Georgian city. Collections of his works are still reprinted and are a must-have on any self respecting bookshelf of Edinburgh local history.

At the other end of the social spectrum and 70 or so years later, we have Holt. His work is certainly cruder than Kay’s, but as an observer of the human condition he is an equal. For two good reasons, his ouvre is particularly valuable. Firstly, he painted in bright colours, which pop out when compared with the faded sepia of old photographs or the monochrome of Kay’s engravings, vividly capturing that Victorian life was much brighter than we might imagine. Secondly, where Kay lampooned Lords and Gentlemen, Holt painted almost exclusively the people of the street, men and women, and in a much more sympathetic manner. These were folk who were well known in their time but who would otherwise have slipped from popular memory but for a few sentences in old newspapers (much like the artist himself).

So who was Ned Holt? The National Galleries of Scotland embarrassingly say he was English – he was definitely a son of Edinburgh, probably born in St. Cuthbert’s parish as Edmund Holt, to Jean Mitchell and Robert Holt, a master chimney sweep. He may have been born in 1830 if we believe his entry on the register of deaths, or 1836 if we believe his census entries. Holt also goes by the names Edmond and Edward. Many accounts will tell you he signed his work E. P. Holt – I think if they looked closer they will see it is ED. HOLT, with the D raised above the full stop in the fashion of Victorian typography. His obituary in the Dundee Courier confirms his works bear the “well known signature Ed. Holt“.

It would have been expected for Holt to follow his father’s trade, but perhaps on account of the early death of the latter this did not happen. Apprenticed to a baker, he never settled to that trade and in 1851 is recorded on the census as a “carrier”. He is aged 15, living with his grandmother in Gilmour’s Close off the Grassmarket, probably the property he is described as inheriting. Three years later, still living at the same address, he married a woman from a neighbouring close by the name of Jane Black, the daughter of a coal miner from Ayrshire. At this time his occupation was “artist” and the anecdotes of town Bailie (magistrate) Wilson Mclaren recall that at this time he kept a street booth in the Grassmarket where he exhibited various attractions for a penny-a-view, including a “petrified mummy”, claimed to be 4,000 years old but actually a skeleton he had procured and doctored. Street entertainment and showmanship is a recurring feature of Holt’s life, he was known to act at the “penny gaffs“, cheap theatres where popular, raucous edits of Shakespeare would be performed. By 1855 he had moved to a small shop on Lothian Road where he traded as an artist. Two years later, he took out a newspaper advert in the North Briton that he would teach the “whole art of photography” on application to an address on Haddington Place, Leith Walk. He is reputed to have joined the Edinburgh City Artillery at this time, a volunteer militia regiment raised in the wake of the Crimean wars that included an unusually high proportion of artists in its ranks. He was a favourite of the officers, who would summon him to the mess to amuse them with his antics.

In 1860, Holt announced in the North Briton that he had taken “these large photographic rooms, no. 3 Catherine Street, [part of Leith Street] where he is carrying on a First-Class business“. In the census of the following year he is recorded as a “photographic artist” but is to be found boarding with the Reilly family in Selkirk. His wife Jane is living at the Catherine Street address with their children – Edmond (age 2) and baby Georgina – along with an older relation of Jane’s, a lodger (Holt’s assistant) and his daughter. In 1866 Holt re-appears in Edinburgh, performing as a clown in Price’s Spanish Circus with “considerable success”. But he is back to being a photographer in Selkirk in 1868 when one David Mcdonald is fined £5 (or 30 days prison) for assaulting him with a walking stick. The same year, a spinner by the name of William Jeffrey was found guilty of assaulting him in the Salmon Inn public house in Galashiels by hitting him and biting off the end of one of his fingers. He was sent to prison for 60 days.

Holt, it was said, “was known everywhere; he mixed in all classes of society, high and low“. This included the landscape artist Sam Bough, who lived in Edinburgh from 1855 until his death in 1878. It was because of his connection with Bough that his work survived and found its way into the ownership of the City of Edinburgh. Holt had presented Bough with a bound copy of 22 of his sketches, which was inherited by Bough’s sister on his death. A collector later bought them from her estate, from whom Councillor Gorman acquired them and presented them to the city to prevent them being sold to an American.

At 1870, the story of Holt’s life begins to take a different, darker path. In May that year it is reported in the North Briton that he was convicted at the Sheriff court and sentenced to 60 days hard labour for having assaulted his wife “by seizing violent hold of her by the hair of the head, dragging her from a place upon which she rested, and kicking her when upon the ground to the effusion of blood.” Come the 1871 census, he is aged 36 and living with his son at no. 41 North Richmond Street off of the Pleasance. There is a servant girl, Annie Shields, living with them but of his wife and daughter Georgina, there is no sign. His occupation remains as a photographic artist. One of his obituaries will recount that “he could not rest with his family” and that “in the course of time he took to a wandering life“. This it would seem is a somewhat economical view of the truth. A decade later the census finds him in Glasgow, with a new “wife” – Annie Shields; he has run off with his servant, 16 years his junior. They have a 9 year old daughter Margaret, a 6 year old son Joseph and an 11 month old daughter Selvester. Jane Holt, aged about 36 is living in the City Poor House at Craiglockhart, working as a seamstress.

By 1885, he has returned to Edinburgh and is practising as a photographer from his address at 27 Canongate, White Horse Close. He was convicted in September of that year at the Police Court and sentenced to 30 days imprisonment for “having offered for sale obscene drawings and paintings in Princes Street.” The prosecutor was not specific as to what the depicted, but “said the pictures were very disgusting“. Sadly Jane remains in the Poor House. She was still there 6 years later for the 1891 census, by then working as a laundress.

Holt died on Tuesday 20th September 1892 in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, having been knocked down and fatally injured by a horse cab near Joppa on his way home from the Musselburgh horse racing. His death was mourned across the Scottish regional newspapers. Despite being obviously estranged from his wife on unfavourable terms for decades, his death certificate was witnessed by her. She sadly died of bronchitis and heart disease as an inmate of the Poorhouse just two months later, described simply as a hawker and a widow. Ann (or Annie) Shields (also known as Holt or Spaven) was left to a similar life of poverty by Holt. In 1891 she was a hawker, lodging in Penicuik. She died in 1908 in the Govan Poor House, having spent the final years of her life flitting from poor house to poor house, debilitated by neuralgia and rheumatism.

The implications are clear from newspaper writings that while Holt was publicly convivial, well liked and had certain artistic talents, he was too partial to drinking to ever make a success of himself. Obituaries describe his “great failing was a love for liquor, which in course of time, mastered him so completely that he sunk from one degree to another till he was down in the very gutter of society“. A mark of the popular mourning of his death is the story of the confectioner in Leith, who decorated a cake in his honour with a sugarwork representation of one of his illustrations and placed it in his shop window alongside the following verse:

Poo, old Ned has gone to rest,
We know that he is free
Disturb him not, but let him rest
Way down in Tennessee

Edmund Holt may have lived the life that he chose for himself happily enough, but the same cannot be said of his wife, who never shared in his popularity or any of his occasional financial successes, and quite clearly suffered at his hands. She spent the best part of half her life as an inmate in the poor house for which it would not be unreasonable to blame the actions of Holt. When he died without a penny to his name, friends and admirers raised enough to pay for a respectable burial and the newspapers made sure he did not pass forgotten. A well-curated exhibition of his work at the City Art Centre in 2014 enhanced the favourable, lovable rogue version of his character by commissioning pen poems to accompany his work. We cannot say the same privileges were accorded to Jane, who has been entirely written out of the story – until, hopefully, now.

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site – including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget to find further stories to bring you – by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

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The thread about the “Study of the Diet of the Labouring Classes in Edinburgh”; what the poor of Canongate ate in 1901

In 1901, the Public Health Committee of the Town Council of Edinburgh paid £50 to commission a then remarkable and pioneering bit of research: they asked three doctors to go out into the working classes and poor of the city and find out what they actually ate. This study took place in the city’s Canongate and followed the food purchased and eaten over a week by 15 families, totalling 94 mouths. It meticulously catalogued everything that was consumed and discarded in great detail and then analysed it for its equivalent nutritional contents in a laboratory.

The authors were Dr. Diarmid Noël Paton, a pioneer in physiology and its links with nutrition; Dr. James Craufurd Dunlop, a paediatrician, pioneer of combined medical and social research and later Superintendent of Statistics, then Registrar General, of the Registry Office for Scotland and; Dr. Elsie Maud Inglis, one of the first female doctors in Scotland; a specialist and pioneer of the medical care – and medical education – of women; a leading suffragist and later founder of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals in WW1.

“A Study of the Diet of the Labouring Classes in Edinburgh” was published the following year (1902). It runs to 104 pages, but I have read it and summarised some of its key findings so that you don’t have to. So lets go find out what people in the city ate 120 years ago

The 15 subject families were categorised into 3 classes:

• A. Workmen’s families with irregular wages under 20s (20 Shillings or £1, approximately £98 in 2023) per week
• B. Families with regular wages from 20-23s per week
• C. Families with men in “good” trades and regular wages from 28-40s per week.

There were 15 adult men, 17 adult women and 62 children in the study. Two of the test households were notable for having no man in the house – as a result these were by far and away the financially worst off of the group. The average income of households in the stufy was just under 25s (£1 5/-) a week, about £122 in 2023.

The make-up of each household was corrected for age and sex of occupants to turn it into a standardised equivalent number of adult men, based on the understanding at the time of the relative dietary requirements of men, women and children of different ages. For instance an adult woman counted as 0.8x an adult man for the purposes of calorie requirements. The weekly spend on food was counted to the nearest farthing (¼d, d being 1 old penny, with 12d to the shilling and 240d to the £). The average spend on food was 15s 9¼d per week (£77.35 in 2023 money), or 79% of household income. Per “equivalent man”, each house spent on average 6¾d per day on food (~£2.74 in 2023).

Standardised equivalent “Number of Men” per test household and weekly expenditures on food

One of the few “advantages” in life that the poor had was just how cheap accommodation was (even if it was in a slum condition) in Edinburgh in 1901. Per household it averaged 37¼d per week, or about £61 per month in 2023. Some families made half or all their rent by their Co-op dividends alone – a measure of both just how cheap the rent was and also how important the Co-ops were to their members.

We come now to what our subjects ate. Let’s just say that their diets were monotonous. 35% by weight of what people ate was bread, a whopping 494g per “man” per day. 80% of everything eaten was one of only 6 food types – bread, potatoes, milk, sugar, beef and veg (mainly cabbage and onion, some carrots and turnips, although the study noted that many of the women didn’t seem to know about any other vegetables than potatoes). For reference, in 2013-15, the average Scottish person consumed just 80g bread (84% less), 64g of potatoes, 22g of beef per day. But milk was almost the same at 201g.

People ate quite so much bread because it was cheap: that 35% of bread by weight gave them 41% of their daily calories but cost only 19% of their daily food budget. You can read more about the Scottish working class’s love affair with the Plain Loaf in this thread. In contrast, the beef consumed gave just 6% of daily calories but was 23% of expenditure. Clearly this was a luxury foodstuff relative to the others, and it was eaten for the protein content – and mainly by the man of the house. The authors pointed out an anomaly in that the traditional Scottish meat of mutton was largely lacking in the diet, even though it was cheaper and offered more protein per unit cost than beef.

People got about 11% of their daily calories from butter, jam, “syrup” (canned golden syrup or treacle) and cheese, eaten on slices of bread as a piece (an open sandwich, they weren’t closed back then!). Cheese consumption in 1901 was almost identical to Scotland’s 2013-15 average. Unsurprisingly, oatmeal was important in the diet, eaten as porridge – giving 6% of daily calories for 2.5% of expenditure. Eggs were commonly eaten, although they were relatively expensive they offered a reasonable amount of protein. The amounts of suet, dripping, sausages and offal are notably low. Small amounts of pulses and barley were eaten (in soups and broths).

The subjects ate almost no fruit, except small amounts of raisins and currants in the slightly better off households or in jam. It was potatoes that stopped them getting scurvy. Some teabreads were eaten (a sweetened bread, with dried fruit in it, usually spread with butter), almost nothing was spent on biscuits or sweets. Seasonally they probably did get access some fruit, when there was a glut of cheap apples etc., but it is not recorded. Confections may have been eaten on special occasions.

Mealtimes were not coordinated or regular, the report called this the old Canongate style. The man usually kept a schedule aligned to his work, with the largest meal in the evening. Children fitted theirs around schooling with lunch the primary meal, topped up with endless bread to keep them full, if not nourished. The women had to fit in between both It has been noted that much of the meat consumption was by the man of the house; in many of the homes, the children and woman made do mainly with porridge, potatoes, broths and soup topped up with and their endless pieces. One house recorded spending 6d a week on lemonade as a luxury, otherwise children drank milk (fresh, canned or buttermilk) but also lots of tea, coffee (from essence) and cocoa. Women seemed to drink a lot of cocoa – they probably needed the sugar content to keep constantly on the go with heavy domestic labour.

Fish, although it was easily accessible from the fishing fleets of Granton, Newhaven and Fisherrow, and long part of the diet of the Scottish lower classes, was not popular or valued. While it was relatively cheap, it was not felt to be a valuable source of daily calories for the money and it was most prevalent with the poorest households. Dried and smoked fish were particularly lowly thought of and very little was consumed.

In many households the women had either part time or “piece work” (usually cleaning, “charladying” and also making bags) to make ends meet. Although they earned much less than men, in many of the households this was the only regular income on account of irregular wages for the man. The two households with no men in them paint a revealing and sorry tale of life for working class women at that time. In the first, a mother (51) and daughter (15) exist on just 8s 4d per week (£41 in 2023). The daughter made a few shillings selling papers, the rest came from a Benevolent Fund as the son/brother was away in the army in the Anglo–Boer War. They existed largely on white fish (3.3kg per week, gotten cheap through the kindness of neighbours), bread (3.3kg/wk), potatoes (3.4kg), cabbage (2kg) and buttermilk (1.1kg), plus 850g sugar and 880g oatmeal.

The other house with no man resident was described as being that of a “poor, small old woman who lived alone, chiefly occupied in sewing“. She was unable to do other work, was “very weak” and her husband was in the lunatic asylum. Her income was unknown, but she spent only 14¼d per week (!) on food (£5.80 in 2023). When standardised, that’s just over 1/3 of average expenditure on food of all the other study subjects. This pittance bought her a meagre diet, per week, of 840g milk, 840g bread (about 1 modern loaf), 310g beef, 300g dried peas, 300g leeks and carrots, 200g barley and 90g butter, and almost nothing else. This was the equivalent of 1123 calories per “equivalent man” day, less than 1/2 of the average of 2900 per day of all the study subjects. The paper noted that 1527 calories per day was the garrison’s emergency diet at the end of the 4 month Siege of Ladysmith from 1899-1900.

This 2,900 per man per day calorific intake measured for Edinburgh in the study was compared to averages for the working classes of other countries. It was:

• 4,170cal in Germany
• 4,080cal in Sweden
• 3,061cal in Russia
• 4,415cal in the US

The working poor of the slums fared better than those in the poorhouses, who in Scotland at that time got 2,380 calories per day, but worse than in the country’s prisons were it was 3,315 calories per day (or 3,717 on hard labour) and in pauper lunatic asylums where 3,435 per day was provided. The Seamen’s Federation at that time had recently secured a diet for men at sea of 4,526 calories per day. This was the sort of intake needed to live comfortably and healthily for a man (or woman) indulging in heavy physical labour.

I do want to keep this thread focussed on food, and I could go on, and on, and on into ever more detail from the study, but this isn’t really the best place for that, so I’ll look at a few more things before wrapping up. Firstly, lets look at relative costs for some foodstuffs when the report was published compared to now. I’ve worked out an approximate inflated cost of the staple food prices to compare and contrast with typical May 2023 UK grocery prices. The differences speak for themselves.

Secondly – apart from rent and food, what else was money spent on? An obvious thing was coal, required for all domestic heating, cooking and hot water. Many got it cheap through their churches or social groups, who had schemes to buy it in bulk and disburse it at a heavily discounted rate to their members. In winter, consumption of coal averaged about 1.5 bags per house per week, costing 1s 9d (about £34 a month in 2023). Some houses had a gas light and paid for that, but the use and cost was small – about £5 per month in 2023 equivalent. Other houses purchased lamp oil. After coal (and sometimes before it), the next biggest expendisture was on subscriptions to societies. Most households paid a few shillings per week towards such societies; these were either to cover sickness or funeral costs, clothing clubs, or even children’s holiday clubs for a week at the sea or in the country for them. The other main noted expenditure was “soap, black lead, etc.”, i.e. household cleaning products, about half a shilling a week (£2.45 in 2023) per household.

Most of the men smoked (women at this time mainly did not); about half a shilling again per week in pipe tobacco. Some were teetotallers, others drank. In only one family was it noted the woman drank and it was implied that both parents in this household were alcoholics. No costs were given for money spent on drink.

In most families the entire wage was turned over by the husband to his wife to manage, with 2s or 3s a week reserved by him for his tobacco, papers and drink. This was most prevalent were wages were reliable and regular. Where the man’s work was irregular, the pattern was different. His wife often had little idea what was in his wage packet from one week to the next. He often turned over just enough for the food and rent but little else, reserving the excess in better weeks for his vices. Very few of the families had enough to keep anything by for a “rainy day” and lived week to week. It was noted some lived day-to-day, buying items of food as and when they were needed throughout the day. This meant they often paid a premium compared to a weekly bulk buy, a problem just as common now for those on limited incomes as then.

I will finish off with two last points. Firstly, the study probably would have failed without Elsie Inglis’ involvement; it was her and her female medical students who convinced reluctant families – usually the housewife – to allow them to intrude on their lives. Misses G. Miller, H. Bell, Isabel Simson, May Simson, Pringle, Cunningham, Robertson, H. Maclaren and Colly and Mrs Shaw Maclaren were the students credited with gathering the actual study data from each family (down to collecting every discarded bit of potato peel to be weighed)

And secondly, one little snippet of insight into the life of these families that really gave a lump to my throat when I read it. It came from family number 14, the mason’s labourer, his wife and their 9 children, who lived in a tiny 2 room house, “clean but bare-looking“. The report goes on, “the eldest girl died of consumption [TB] last year. They still keep little frames and bits of fancy-work she was doing. They gave her a grand funeral that cost £10 13s. Black suits had to be bought for the father and eldest boy“. This family had very little, yet they spent everything and more than they had and could afford to give their daughter a decent and dignified send off – over 10 weeks wages – and on account of paying off their debts could no longer pay into their own funeral society. I feet this really hit home how unpredictable life was for people 120 years ago, people living exactly where my own family was living at the time and in exactly the same circumstances. And it brings home a real sense of human dignity to the lives of people in bitter and crushing circumstances, at the bottom of the pile. Their next eldest daughter, 17 but only 4ft 10in tall, now looked after the house and 8 other children when her mother went out to work to make paper bags for 8s a week. Such were the realities of life in the Canongate at the end of the Victorian age and dawn of the 20th century.

Here’s the link to “A study of the diet of the labouring classes in Edinburgh” on Archive dot org for you to read and think about for yourself. I’ve only scratched the surface of it, and there are many other stories and insights contained within it’s yellowing pages.

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#Canongate #Edinburgh #Food #HolyroodCanongate #Nutrition #OldTown #Poverty #PublicHealth #Slums

Today! At last!! Aud in the UK!!!

Buy

Bookshop.org | Amazon UK | Waterstones | WH Smith

Today, for the first time, the Aud trilogy (The Blue Place, Stay, Always) will be published in the UK. It only took 27 years. I know I’m not even remotely an impartial observer but these books kick ass. I love them with a crazy love. And I would dearly like UK readers to go buy a copy—and then tell me what you think.

Do you know any other queer noir/not-noir novels 1 praised by Dennis Lehane, Val McDermid, Dorothy Allison, Lee Child, Manda Scott, Francis Spufford, Laurie King, Ivy Pochoda, Robert Crais, Alex Gray, Elizabeth Hand, James Sallis, and more? No? Then maybe you should go find out what brings together such disparate writers in their love.

You can buy now or borrow from your local library. Enjoy!

Buy

Bookshop.org | Amazon UK | Waterstones | WH Smith

#always #aud #audTorvingen #books #canongate #crimeFiction #noir #stay #theBluePlace #uk

The fascinating People's Story Museum in the Canongate Tolbooth on Edinburgh's Royal Mile, looking at the lives of the ordinary residents of Edinburgh from the late 1700s until the present day. More pics and info: https://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/edinburgh/peoplesstory/index.html

#Scotland #PeoplesStoryMuseum #Canongate #Edinburgh

#WhatWereReading : Joe recommends Omar El Akkad's One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This from Canongate

Not comfortable reading, but it is incredibly *important* reading for today's world, and raises issues we should all be thinking about.

#books #livres #politics #morality #Gaza #OneDayEveryoneWillAlwaysHaveBeenAgainstThis #Canongate #bookstodon #RecommendedReading #NewReleases #OmarElAkkad