Looking up something else, my eye was caught by an entry for the "Canadian Home for Friendless Girls", which existed from the 1870s - 1890s in the long built-over Lauriston Lane
Also known as the "Edinburgh Emigration Home" it was an institution that took in "young women who have fallen from virtue and desire to redeem their character" or "young girls who have lost one or both parents or have living parents... of loose character."
Ultimately the purpose was to "reform" and/or "train" these girls or women to be placed in domestic service in Canada. It seems over its 20 or so years of existence some 300 were "assisted" to emigrate.
It was founded by one Mrs Margaret Blaikie, wife of The Very Rev. William Garden Blaikie, a Free Church minister, writer and temperance proponent
As minister, it was Blaikie who commissioned the bulding of Pilrig Free Church and a rather grand new manse for himself
Blaikie formed a society which commission the Pilrig Model Buildings to provide model workers housing, one of the first such instances in Edinburgh. These were a sort of progenitor of the later Colonies housing. They are now known as Shaw's Buildings or Shaw's St./Terr/Plce.
Blaikie later moved on to teaching at the New College, and he and his wife moved to a villa in the Grange on Palmerston Road
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