Blimey!
What an eye opener. I cannot believe the conditions they must have been living in. Fountain Close is among a group of Closes between Niddry Street and St Mary's Street which included Toddrick's Wynd and World's End Close! My great great grandmother was brought up in Toddrick's Wynd (living there in 1851 when it was known as Murdoch's Close). This was apparently demolished because, and I quote from a builder's journal of 1861: -
"We devoutly believe that no smell in Europe or Asia can equal in depth and intensity in concentration and power, the diabolical combination of sulphurated hydrogen we came upon one evening about 10.00 in a place called Todrick's Wynd".
Before then she lived in Paul's Works, Leith Wynd and a paper states about this place : -
"From a precipitous, narrow, and filthy close, you look up to the heights of hugh mansions, honeycombed into the receptablces of a hundred inhabitants; and at a height which it makes the head giddy to look up to or to look down from, you see two or three heads of children projecting, or filthy and squalid figures of their mothers, or of the other female inmates.
You ascend through the dirt and darkness, stair after stair, every stair leading you in succession to a floor in which every miserable room contains a household, and where, by opening doors and barring up doors, and from the absence of sufficient light even in the day time, you hardly know when you turn yourself whether you are coming or going out of or going farther into the labyrinth. Into these places, parties in recent times have been dragged forcibly, stripped of their clothes and flung out again; and innumerable crimes have been committed of which the world remains in ignorance"
What sort of place was that? A workhouse?
I dare not tell my mother. She has always assumed that as her family came from Edinburgh off the Royal Mile she was posh
No the wonder the poor souls moved to Sunderland - Luxury
I've certainly got the "picture" now.
Blimey!!
Mo
