Remembering Margaret Hall: the thread about the tragic murder and a half-forgotten cairn

This thread was originally written and published in March 2021. It has been edited and corrected as applicable for this post.

My attempt at an A-Z of Edinburgh places named after women highlighted to me just how absent their commemoration in street names is. It is also fairly well known just how few public statues there are in the city of named women – at the latest count: two! (Helen Crummy at Craigmillar and Queen Victoria in Leith). But there is another monument which is not so well kenned about and which has present-day relevance when we consider how this city commemorates women. The place of which I write of is Muschet’s Cairn. Attempts have been made to try and tell its back story and raise its profile, but statues and streetnames for sportsmen seem to have captured local attention much more readily.

This cairn is remarkable in that not only does it commemorate a woman, but it commemorates a woman who was the victim of male violence: Margaret Hall, also known as Ailie, a diminutive of Alison. Margaret was murdered by her husband Nicol Muschet of Boghall (sometimes Muschat or Mushet) near this spot on the night of October 17th 1720 and it is his name which is applied to the pile of stones.

n.b. What follows is a hard story to tell from the victim’s point of view. It was well covered in the sensationalist press at the time, but this was based on the letters and confessions of the perpetrators as they sought to absolve themselves and explain away their crimes. There was nobody to give a voice to the victim, there’s no victim impact statement from Margaret Hall’s family. Because of this, and because it was not the practice at the time for Scottish women to take the surnames names of their husbands; I will refer to the victim as Margaret Hall throughout this post and not of her as Mrs. Muschet. I have also sought to find out and share as much as I can about the short life of the victim, about whom very little is known beyond her husband’s attempts at character assassination.

Margaret Hall was born in Edinburgh on May 16th 1703 to Isobell Straitton and her husband Adam Hall, a burgess and spirit merchant. Her birth registration in the old parish register is the only official record of her I can find.

Nicol Muschet was born around 1695 at Boghall in Kincardine Parish, near Menteith in Stirlingshire, to Jean or Janet Henderson and her husband Robert Muschet, a schoolmaster. His mother raised him “in the true Presbyterian Principles of Religion” which the young Nicol complied with, but confessed to finding overbearing. When his father died he took the Laird’s title “- of Boghall” aged 15.

Sufficient money was left to him to complete his grammar school education and to study medicine in Edinburgh, far from his pious and strict mother’s watchful eye. Unleashed, he is described as being prodigal and consorting with company “without ever consulting God or eyeing his Glory.” Aged 21, he completed his studies in the city and was apprenticed to Thomas Napier, a surgeon in Alloa. Alloa however was not Edinburgh; with not much medical practice doing, few opportunities for advancement and only “walking, talking, idle discourse, reading…” to while away the hours, the profligate Nicol instead turned to drinking and abandoned his master and craft. He soon returned home to Boghall to live the life of a country squire with his mother, but found rural life equally boring and within a few weeks the draw of Edinburgh proved too much. Upon reading the notice of a public dissection in the city he returned to it in August 1719, now aged 24. On his first night back in the city, he was promenading on the Castle Hill as was the fashion at the time and came upon the house of Adam Hall and his 16 year old daughter Margaret. Recognising one of Hall’s maids from when he had been a student, he struck up a conversation. The pair rekindled their acquaintance over “a chopin of ale” until Margaret had the misfortune to join them, at which point the servant retired, leaving her mistress with Nicol.

The two became ingratiated that evening and she helped to arrange him lodgings in a good house. She said she would call on him once he was settled in and was true to her word. Nicol – whom Walter Scott termed “a debauched and profligate wretch” – would later claim that Margaret had made relentless designs on him and “to [his] sad and lamentable loss, she made me too many visits“. Other witnesses – including his own mother – countered this version of events. Never the less, only 3 weeks later Nicolformally asked Adam Hall for her hand in marriage. She was 8 years Nicol’s junior but Hall agreed, despite noting his daughter was “not yet fully educate for marriage“. As far as Hall would have been concerned, Nicol had prospects to offer his daughter; a small country estate, a modicum of independent wealth and steady work in the “shop” of the surgeon Mr Gibb. And so it was that on Saturday 5th September 1719, Nicol Muschet and Margaret Hall were married in the house of John Galloway, tailor in Peebles Wynd, by the Episcopal Reverend Robert Bowers. Note that this was not in the manner of the Presbyterian Kirk in which Nicol was raised and he would later repent that he had celebrated his marriage “in such a manner as corroborated and approved of the sinful Superstitions of the Church of England, contrary to my Baptismal and National Vows and, I must acknowledge, to the Light of my Conscience also.”

After initially staying in the Hall residence, the newly-weds soon moved to their own lodgings in St. Mary’s Wynd. However Nicolsoon “tired of her” and also of the goldsmith who was chasing payment for the jewellery he had bought for her and set upon a course to “improve himself abroad“; he intended to desert his wife and his creditors. That could have been that – and the end of our story – if the greedy and dishonest Nicolhadn’t decided to first “defraud his wife of her legal aliment from his estate“. Rather than just abandoning her, he would first divorce her so she had no recourse to his inherited wealth via alimony. And so he began to conspire with an acquaintance – James Campbell of Burnbank, the store keeper at Edinburgh Castle – over how he could achieve his ends. Burnbank was an equal scoundrel to Nicolwas; “a noted gambler and libertine, [he] was well known to all the reprobates in Edinburgh by the familiar sobriquet of ‘Bankie’.” There was an old family debt between the pair, the settlement of which was used as leverage in their scheming. Nicol arranged to pay Bankie 900 Merks in old Scottish currency (£50 sterling) thus cancelling the debt if he could procure (fabricate) sufficient evidence against Margaret to allow him to divorce her. Not content to make a gentlemen’s agreement, the two signed a formal deed to this effect.

Be it kend till all men by thir present letters, me, James Campbell, Ordnance Storekeeper at Edinburgh Castle : Forasmuch as Nicol Muschet of Boghall is debtor to me in three years rent of his lands, viz. cropt ninety-five, and precedings, and that I have transacted the same for nine hundred merks, Scots money, for which there is bill granted me. Therefore, I hereby declare I am not to demand payment of the said sum untill a legal offer be made him of my discharge of all I can claim of him, and give him up, oi’ offer so to do, all his papers on oath : As also, of two legal depositions, or affidavits of two witnesses, of the whorish practices of Margaret Hall, daughter to Adam Hall, merchant in Edinburgh, and three months thereafter. In witness whereof, I have written, with my own hand, on stamped paper, thir presents, at Edinburgh, the twenty-eighth day of November, one thousand seven hundred and nineteen years.

The conspirators first tried to trick Margaret into breaking her marriage bond by faking a letter from Nicol that he had ridden to London, never to return. To improve the deception they had it posted to her from Newbattle in Midlothian, on the road to London – where in actual fact Nicol was lying low in the Debtors Sanctuary at Holyrood. The plan failed however as Margaret resolved to visit her mother-in-law at Boghall to discuss the matter. Bankie was unable to dissuade her from this course, despite his best attempts. To prevent this meeting taking place, he hiring an unscrupulous writer (Scots, a lawyer) to draft a phony warrant for Margaret’s arrest, on charges of theft, and to pursue her to Linlithgow, where she was lodging on the road to Boghall, to serve it. When the writer served the warrant, who should conveniently appear at the perfect moment to act as the good Samaritan but Bankie. He arranged to accompany her back to Edinburgh with the writer where he would bail her and be her guarantor.

Bankie effectively had Margaret under house arrest, but she was not a willing captive. Suspicious of the whole charade, she managed to escape and stole away to Boghall by horse a few days later, being careful not to stop again at Linlithgow. Once again however, Bankie used letters of coercion and false promises to draw her back to Edinburgh but it was clear that this first plan to gain a divorce was never going to work. So the conspirators upped the stakes and determined that they would instead embark on a course against the unfortunate Margaret that we would now call “date rape“; forcibly breaking her marriage vows.

It was arranged that Margaret should be lodged in the Abbey Sanctuary when she returned from Boghall and “on a Monday night in December” she was compelled to drink a punch of Brandy and sugar that was laced with laudanum, rendering her unconscious. An acquaintance of Bankie – John MacGregory – was procured to take advantage of the incapacitated Margaret. However this scheme was foiled at the last minute when they found out from their dishonourable writer friend that it would not be sufficient grounds for divorce “unless we could Evidence a Tract of Conversation betwixt MacGregory and her either before or after the fact“. The plan was re-hatched. Instead, they acquainted Margaret with James Muschet, probably Nicol’s younger brother, and his wife Grizel Bell. James and Grizel were in “reduced circumstances” and in return for money they agreed to a scheme where they would get Margaret drunk when MacGregory was in the house and engineer a seduction upon her. However despite repeated attempts, Margaret kept her virtue and Nicol, tiring of the constant demand for expenses from James and Grizel, gave up on this plan too.

Nicol – later claiming he was led to it by Bankie – now set upon the ultimate course of action and resolved to have his wife murdered; but as the scheme required that he would get away with it, so it was decided that James and Grizel would be paid to poison Margaret. They settled on “corrosive sublimate” – Mercury Dichloride – a highly poisonous substance used at that time as an insecticide and in treatment for syphilis and therefore a substance Nicol had access to through his work. The first attempt was administered to Margaret in a dram mixed with sugar and made her so violently ill that “life was not expected for her“, but she survived. They tried again. Again she was ill, but again it did not kill her. They next tried the same poison but mixed with nutmeg in a punch, but still Margaret clung to life. Grizel now tried, mixing the poison with warm ale and administering it to her under the pretence of caring for her in her sickness. Again she was made ill, yet again she refused to die. They even poisoned the cordials administered to her in her sick bed, this time Nicol himself administering them to his poor wife, but despite causing her immense torment and sickness, they were unable to kill her.

Once again, the plotters gave up. They allowed Margaret to recover sufficiently that they could try to kill her again by some other means. The next scheme was that James and Grizel should take Margaret to Leith for a day of drinking and on their way home she would be drowned in a pond, quite probably one of the Quarryholes on the road back to Edinburgh. James however refused to go along with this and so various other plans were discussed; she would be pushed from her horse when fording a river near Kirkliston; she would be hit across the head and her body dumped in one of the Quarryholes outside the Town. Nothing came of any of these and eventually Nicol and Bankie fell out with each other.

In the New Year of 1720, the 3 remaining plotters finally settled on causing a fatal head injury to Margaret. It was agreed that James and Grizel would be paid 20 Guineas to undertake the act in Dickson’s Close, where by now Nicol and Margaret were lodging. Grizel’s part was to invite the victim to her house and entertain her with “meat and drink” until the late hours, before sending her home on a final journey. At this point, James would attack her within sight of the “safety” of her own door, a hammer being procured for the deed which James made a wooden handle for. This weapon was chosen as its head could be thrown into the Nor’ Loch and its handle burned to destroy the evidence post mortem.

However, Old Town Edinburgh was a busy place and despite multiple attempts, they were never able to follow through to conclusion as Dickson’s Close was always too busy with witnesses to attack Margaret. The year wore on without the incompetent assassins being able to complete their task. Eventually, Nicol resolved to bring matters to a fatal conclusion by himself. On the morning of October 17th 1720, Nicol Muschet stole a knife from his landlady. After a day of wining and dining with James and Grizel, he sent for Margaret to join them. She duly arrived and he implored her to ask no questions and instead join him on a night time walk to Duddingston Kirk. They walked- reportedly in silence – down the Canongate, past the Palace of Holyrood House and its ghostly Abbey, and into the King’s Park.

On that fateful evening, at a spot near the cairn, Nicol Muschet murdered his innocent wife, thus ending the torment he had caused her for the entirety of their short marriage. By his own confession, after having attacked her and left her for dead, he returned with the knife to make sure of it. The next morning, Margaret was found with her throat cut and “many other wounds received in her dying struggle“. There were signs that she had fought to defend her life; from her wounds, from the hair of a man in her hands and from Nicol’s own confession. At the scene, a man’s silk sleeve was found ripped off, embroidered on it the letter “N“.

Nicol fled the scene, first to consult with Grizel and then on to Leith where he reportedly spent the next day in the company of a sailor, one can assume making arrangements for flight. He returned to the city to meet again with Grizel, but found the noose was slowly tightening around him – despite Grizel’s assurances to the contrary. His landlady had been taken to the city guard house for questioning, so he returned to Leith, but over the next 3 days made repeated incognito visits to the city to consult with acquaintances about his best course of action to try and dodge justice.

Grizel soon tired of Nicol’s repeated visits however, it was clear to her that she was not now going to get her 20 guineas and she was surely beginning to fear for her own neck, and so she decided to tip off the authorities as to the whereabouts of Nicol. She ensured his capture by setting up a social occasion where he was apprehended and immediately thrown in the Tolbooth – the civic building that functioned as a court and jailhouse. Under questioning he at first denied everything, but when presented with the known facts of his crimes, the gruesome details of his assault on his wife and the injuries he inflicted upon her, he confessed “and signed a deceleration to that effect“.

Confined within the Tolbooth, he wrote to his mother begging for her forgiveness and support. Lady Boghall was having none of it however. In her excoriating reply, she condemned any attempt that would be made in his defence and left him to his fate and upon God’s Mercy, urging him to seek divine forgiveness. The details of her reply were reprinted in a sensationalist broadside:

Abandoned by his mother to God, Nicol Muschet went to trial on 28th November.

The judges present were Lords Royston, Polton, Pencaitland, Dun and Newhall; the Solicitor-General (Walter Stewart) and John Sinclair, advocate-depute, with Duncan Forbes and Andrew Lauder, appeared for the Crown. The libel having been read, the panel craved the Court to appoint counsel for his defence, and John Horn, John Elphinstone, and Charles Erskine were accordingly empowered to plead for him.

Having signed his own confession and entering no defence, he was found guilty on December 5th and sentenced to death on the 8th. The press had a sensational time and various letters, broadsides and confessions were printed. I will not reproduce them here as they lend a voice to the murderer and tormentor of Margaret Hall, a chance stolen from her by him. Nicol Muschet was hung from the scaffold in the Grassmarket on the afternoon of 6th January 1721, between the hours of 2 and 4 O’ Clock in the afternoon.

His body was then taken down, the hand with which he murdered his wife was cut off and his corpse hung from the gibbet at the Gallowlee (near to present day Shrubhill on Leith Walk). That was not quite the final end for Nicol Muschet however; a Grassmarket butcher called Nicol Brown gained notoriety for reputedly eating a pound of flesh cut from the rotting corpse in a drunken bet. In an extraordinary coincidence, in 1753 Nicol Brown was tried and convicted for the murder of his wife and was hung from the same scaffold until dead and his body hung from the same gibbet afterwards. His trade incorporation, shamed by his actions, cut his body down and tossed it into the Quarryholes in disgust.

Grizel and James escaped justice by turning King’s Evidence against Bankie, who was tried for the Scots crime of “art and part” (aiding and abetting). He was found guilty and sentenced to transportation to the West Indies as a plantation labourer for life, although not before spending at least 5 years in captivity in Edinburgh Castle. He would later write an “Elegy on the Mournful Banishment of James Campbell of Burnbank to the West Indies” by way of an explanation and to deflect blame from himself; I will not repeat it here as again it gives a defending voice to the criminal which he helped steal from his victim.

Margaret’s body was carried to the Abbey Sanctuary after it was discovered, but after that we do not know where she was buried (it may be that as an Episcopalian she was buried outside the city at Restalrig Kirk). There was a public outpouring of grief about her fate, an anonymous elegy was published and circulated around the city.

The people of Edinburgh “to mark their horror of the event, in the old Scottish fashion raised a cairn on the spot where the murder was perpetrated”. The cairn remains to this day near its original spot, but was initially removed in 1789 when the Duke’s Walk footpath was widened. This was on the instructions of Lord Adam Gordon – the Governor of Edinburgh Castle, Commander-in-Chief of the Army for Scotland and the principal resident of the Palace of Holyroodhouse – and was probably to better connect his residence to the barracks at Piershill. The cairn was restored again in 1823 using stones from an old wall which was being removed ahead of the visit of George IV in 1822, again to further widen the Duke’s Walk.

The reason behind its restoration was possibly the romantic influence of Walter Scott – all pervading in Scotland at the time – who wrote of the cairn as a moonlit meeting place in his Heart of Midlothian novel; the Deans family in this book living in a cottage on the other side of the park at St. Leonards.

So if you are passing this spot in the future it’s worth taking a moment to pause and to consider the otherwise anonymous pile of stones marked only with the name of the victim’s murderous husband. And consider if the cairn needs something by way of a board or plaque to better explain what it is, why it was there and who it commemorates. It is named Muschet’s Cairn, but it commemorates Margaret Hall and not her murderer, should it not be Margaret’s Cairn? This country can be very good at dignified public memorials when it chooses to be, but this is not one of them. Margaret Hall may have died in 1720 and even though so much has changed since then, in many ways not a lot has.

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.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

The Edinburgh Hostels for Women Students: the thread about their wartime role as Internment Camps for “Enemy Aliens”

This thread was originally written and published in January 2023.

An intriguing image was tweeted today, with the caption “WWII Prisoner of War Camp, Scotland, November 1939“:

Where was this camp? The soldier is very obviously equipped by the British Army, but the building doesn’t look very Scottish, does it? In fact it looks more like a French chateau. Is it a school, a hospital wing or a sanatorium? I didn’t know, so I shared the picture and quickly the answer came back (thanks Sean McPartlin, Graeme Dickson and Ian “Silverback”). It is the Suffolk Road Halls of Residence or to give them their proper name, the Edinburgh Hostels for Women Students. These were used as an internment camp for “enemy aliens” at the start of the war.

A 20 acre site in Newington, which had formed part of the the Craigmillar Golf Course, was purchased in 1913 for £10,000 by the Edinburgh Association for the Provision of Hostels for Women Students for a purpose-built accommodation hostel – or halls of residence. The Association was a joint venture between the Edinburgh Provincial Committee for the Training of Teachers, Edinburgh University, the Edinburgh College of Art, the Edinburgh Merchant Company and the Edinburgh Episcopal Training College. The hostels were “for the more satisfactory housing of women students” and were intended to eventually have a capacity for 350, with 250 reserved for teaching students at Moray House College. There already existed two small halls of residence for women medical students, converted from houses, on George Square.

Each hostel had a common room, library and dining room and 52 separate study bedrooms. They were grouped around a quadrangle which had a hockey field and tennis courts. The architect was Alan Keith Robinson. This was the first large commission for Robinson and his partner Thomas Aikman Swan, but would be his last. Both volunteered to fight in WW1 and Robinson refused a commission so that he could fight “in the line”. He was severely wounded and was invalided out of the army in 1917. He attempted to restart his practice and partnership but his wounds prevented him properly realising this and he died from them in May 1925.

The first three hostels (Buchanan, Balfour and Playfair) were opened in June 1917 by Sir J. Alfred Ewing, Principal of the University at a cost of with £79,000; £44,000 from the Treasury and the bulk of the remainder from the Carnegie Trust. The running costs were to be met entirely by fees, in 1917 this was an annual £30 (about £2,600 in 2023).

The glory of the Scottish Universities is that they are open not simply to the rich but to those of very moderate means indeed. In Scotland we have always been proud of the fact that we have to cultivate the Muses on a little oatmeal, and even at the present price of oatmeal a Scottish University Education is cheap! There will, I feel sure, be a great satisfaction to all that a comparatively new side in university life will be developed in Scotland, namely the communal life; true education is not simply a matter of listening to lectures and studying books.

Two further hostels – Carlyle and Darroch – were added in 1928 to Robinson’s original designs by Frank Wood, at a cost of £60,000, adding 120 additional bedrooms.

So how did the hostels end up in the photo at the top of this page, fenced off behind barbed wire and with armed guards in watch towers? A brief notice in the Edinburgh Evening News of 30th October 1939 states that the hostels had been “taken over for national purposes.” But the “prisoners of war” in the picture are not servicemen, they are interned civilians. Most were sailors who had been caught in – or en route to – British ports, or in service on ships of Allied-aligned nations at the outbreak of war. Others were simply people of German birth who had been resident in Scotland but now found themselves to be undesirables; “enemy aliens“.

One of the latter category was Adolf Theurer, an hotel chef at the North British Hotel in Edinburgh who “hated the war, and hated the Nazis, but was a German.” Theurer, 61, had lived in Scotland for 44 years and had been at the NB for 37, but had never become naturalised – with war approaching he felt his poor health and good record as a citizen would stand in his favour. He had been interned during WW1 for 4 and a half years and had declared to his family that we would “rather be put against a wall and shot than be interned again“.

However, when he appeared at the “Aliens Tribunal” on October 12th 1939 they found against him and interned him at East Suffolk Road. Those subject to appearance at the tribunal were allowed no legal representation, but Theurer’s manager at the hotel had attended and spoke in his favour. He never saw his family again, and died 5 days later, “broken hearted”, from a heart attack. His family, at 16 Claremont Crescent, were only informed after his death and had not been allowed the opportunity to visit him during his final illness.

Theurer had been an active member of the German Congregation of Edinburgh, which had been forced to disband during WW1, and had assisted in the sale of its chapel to the Brethren after the war, an order in which he was also active. His wife – Johanna Becker – was also German (although her mother was Aberdonian and she was born in London) and they had three children in Edinburgh; George Adolf, Christina and William. His family were not allowed to take possession of his body, instead it was kept in the police mortuary. He was tragically unlucky; at this early stage of the war, relatively few Germans had been incarcerated. In May 1940 the Minister of Home Security, Sir John Anderson, informed the House of Commons that of 73,535 “aliens” in the country, only 569 – less than 1% – had been interned. There was an outcry of public sympathy for him and his funeral at Piershill Cemetery was well attended. John Mcgovern, the Independent Labour Party MP for Glasgow Shettleston raised a question in the House of Commons about the circumstances surrounding his death. Anderson replied that a “report would be prepared“.

This was not even the end of the Theurers’ travails however; on Friday 10th May 1940, two detectives knocked on the door of the Theurer house in Edinburgh while the family were eating a meal and requested that Johanna Theurer pack a case and follow them. Despite her protest, she was taken to Saughton Prison and sent into internment too. Her younger son, William, was a promising footballer who played with Blackpool and in Edinburgh, St. Bernards and later Hibs. He was a British citizen and was exempted from war service as a conscientious objector, telling his tribunal “I am not a member of any church, but my father was a member of the Plymouth Brethren. The horrors of war have been brought to my own door by his death“. He accompanied his mother to the prison gates.

William’s younger brother, George Adolf, went on to become a successful wigmaker in Edinburgh after the war. He was usually known as Adolf, one wonders if this was a direct tribute to his late father given the connotations such a name would have had at the time. He became a local politician, town councillor for Broughton Ward for the Progressives, 1959-74, senior Baillie and Deputy Lord Provost of the city and, after political reorganisation, Lothian Regional Councillor 1974-82.

An observation about the photo was made (by Adam Brown of the Scottish Military Research Group) that some of the men were dressed rather like sailors; zooming in we can definitely see men dressed in what look like peaked caps, sweaters and trousers tucked into sea boots! Contemporary newspaper reports confirm that all inmates were required to sew a circle of contrasting coloured cloth on to their outer garments and that most of the 100 kept at East Suffolk Road at this point were merchant seamen – unsurprising given the trade between the Port of Leith and the Baltic.

On November 18th, three men escaped from the camp, described as “a bow-legged boy of 15 and two others aged 17” The 15-year old was Rudi Platta and the other two were Walther Bartels and Gunther Berger. They were merchant seaman and had managed to steal khaki uniforms – including caps and boots – from off-duty guards while they slept, climb through a window, climb the barbed wire fence and a 10 foot high wall to escape under cover of darkness. Without money, with no English spoken amongst the three and with no real idea where they were going, their chances were not high. They were found 10 hours later walking along the road to Peebles some 20 miles away after a motorist who had passed them heard of their escape on returning home.

Further embarrassment was caused to the authorities (and further sensation was reported in the papers) just 3 days later when two men escaped on the night of 21st November. The pair – George Sluzalek (24) and Franz Feltens (22) were in their civilian attire and again had no money or food, little English, and no plan of where they were going. They became lost, thinking they were heading for the sea but actually they were moving inland. They resorted to eating turnips from a field that had been left out for wintering sheep and were later found nearby, cold and wet, hiding in a yew tree near Dalkeith by an alert gamekeeper.

A second pair of men – Eber Hord Rolf Fischer, aged 23, and Max Waderphul, aged 38 – also escaped that night, parting company with Sluzalek and Feltens after their breakout. Again they had little idea where they were and had no resources with them, but managed to make an impressive distance on foot. Around 430PM the following day they knocked on a cottage door to the south of Edinburgh to beg for tea in broken English. Although they aroused the suspicion of the householder, she showed them kindness and welcomed them in to her house and made them a small meal of bread and butter, cheese and cold mutton, telling reporters “I never saw anyone so grateful in my life“. They left after 15 minutes and she phoned the police; the men had disappeared by the time they arrived. They were on the run for 36 hours and a man hunt of hundreds of police and soldiers combed the Lothians looking for them. They were recaptured cold, wet, hungry and exhausted by the search parties near Heriot, some 22 miles south of Edinburgh and seemed glad to have been found.

Remarkably, a further three men almost escaped on the 21st but were spotted by a sentry who fired his rifle in their direction, raising the alarm. They were quickly captured by the camp defence unit. Some of the escapees were allowed to answer questions by press. when asked if they “had anything to complain about of the treatment they were receiving at the camp, one of them said emphatically, ‘No‘”. All of the men were reluctant to be drawn into answering questions about the quality and availability of food in Germany vs. Britain.

The Corporation of Edinburgh was deeply unhappy about the location and security of the camp, and at a meeting on the 23rd November it was resolved to make a formal request to relocate it out of the city boundary; Lord Provost Steele was able to tell the assembled councillors that he had already been given notification of the intention to move it. On Monday 4th November, the Aberdeen Evening Express announced that a “motley company” of almost 200 German men had left Edinburgh at Waverley station from “an internment camp on the south of the city – the camp which has been so much in the news recently because of escape bids.” The prisoners were reported to be in good spirits and waved and smiled to morning commuters. Some conversation was made between men who could speak English and railway employees, and cigarettes were shared with the captives.On Tuesday 5th, the Daily Record reported that in total 300 German internment prisoners had left Scotland for England “for the duration of the war”.

On 28th December, the Edinburgh Evening News reported that the camp would now be formally closed, with transit accommodation for processing prisoners “for no more than 48 hours” having been arranged at an unspecified hospital. The East Suffolk Road Hostels were turned over to the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) officer cadets; the women’s branch of the British Army.

The requisition had caused something of a crisis for University Accommodation, which also saw 200 cadets billeted in its other accommodation. As a result most students who kept up their studies in wartime had to stay “in digs”, with the Scotsman reporting they were now sharing 3 and 4 to a single bedroom. The hostels were quickly returned to civilian use post-war, with adverts being taken out in the local newspapers for new wardens in August 1945. Later, they became the Newington Campus of Moray House Teacher Training College, closing in 1997 when this institution merged with the University of Edinburgh. They have since been converted into private housing.

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.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

New poster for #GuillermoDelToro upcoming film #Frankenstein, which hits theaters on #October17, 2025, and begins #Streaming on Netflix #November 7, 2025. 👀🖤

#Netflix #GuillermoDelToro #frankenstein
#bahdlex

Happy birthday #MatthewMacfadyen 🍡
Happy birthday #FelicityJones 🎉
#Happybirthday #normmacdonald 🥂
Happy birthday #MargotKidder 🍿

🎊🎉 #bahdlex 🥂🍬🎈 #HBD 🎈🎉#bahdlexEmpire 🎂#Bahdlexbirthday #october #October17 #Oct17 🍭🎉🍡 #birthdayboy #celebrities #birthdaygirl

It's world 🌍 #EveEssien Day 🍷🥂👑

#Happybirthday! #EveESIN Another birthday today 🎂🎉♥️🎊👑 #nollywood
#bahdlex #bahdlexbirthday,🎈 🍷🥂🍬🎈 #bahdlex #bahdlexEmpire 🎂#Bahdlexbirthday #october #October2025 #October17 #Oct17 🍭🎉🍡
#celebrities #birthdaygirl #Actress

It's world 🌍 #Wyclef Day 🍷🍰🥧🍬

(#Rapper/ #Musician & #Actor) Turns 56 Today. #Happybirthday, #birthday 🍰🎈🎁#wyclefjean🥂🎁🍷🥳
#bahdlex #bahdlexbirthday
#bahdlexEmpire 🎂#Bahdlexbirthday #october #October2025 #October17 #Oct17 🍭🎉🍡 #birthdayboy #celebrities #singer

It's world 🌍 #ZiggyMarley Day 🍷🥂🎈

#Happybirthday, #ZiggyMarley🍷🍰🎀
#birthdaycelebration #bahdlex #ziggymarley #happybirthday,🎈 🍷🍰🥂🍬🎈 #bahdlex #bahdlexEmpire 🎂#Bahdlexbirthday #october #October2025 #October17 #Oct17 🍭🎉🍡 #birthdayboy #celebritie #reggae

It's world 🌍 #Eminem Day 🍷👑🎉🎀

#SlimShady! 🗣️ Happy 53rd #birthday to #Eminem. 🎉🎈Another birthday today #bahdlex #bahdlexbirthday #musician #hollywood🍷🍰🥂 🍷 #bahdlexEmpire🎂#Bahdlexbirthday #october #October2025 #October17 #Oct17 🍭🎉🍡 #birthdayboy #celebrities