The derailment by strikers of the Flying Scotsman on May 10th 1926 has meant a much more serious and fatal rail accident in Edinburgh later that same day which claimed 3 lives and injured many has been somewhat overlooked 🧵👇🚂

https://twitter.com/radicaldaily/status/1789160524971917619

The 1:06PM train from Berwick-upon-Tweed to Edinburgh hit a goods train being shunted across its path at St. Margaret's Depot just west of the tunnel under London Road. Due to the General Strike, most signal boxes were unmanned and only a rudimentary signalling system was running

It's been hard to find time recently for any in-depth threading, but I think tonight we can sneak in the story of the lesser-known Leith shipyard of Ramage & Ferguson, builders of luxury steam mega-yachts to the Victorian and Edwardian elites. ⛵️🧵👇 In its working life from 1877 to 1934, the Ramage & Ferguson yard built 269 ships: 80, almost 1/3 of the total, were luxury steam yachts, built mainly to the designs of the 3 most prominent yacht designers in the world. It became the go-to shipyard for the rich and famous

As promised / threatened, there now follows a thread about the origins and abolition of the Tawse as the instrument of discipline in Scottish teaching. So lets start off with the Tawse - what is it and how did it evolve? 🧵👇

https://twitter.com/cocteautriplets/status/1775105544623190180

"Tawis" or "tawes" is a Scots word going back to c. 16th c., a plural of a leather belt or strap. In turn this came from the Middle English "tawe", leather tanned so as to keep it supple. Such devices were long the favoured instrument of corporal punishment in Scottish education

This pub has been in the news for the wrong reasons recently, but despite appearances it's a very important pub; a surviving example of only a handful of such interwar hostelries built in #Edinburgh - the Roadhouse. And these 9 pubs have a story to tell. Shall we unravel it?🧵👇 The short version of the Roadhouse story is thus: a blend of 1930s architecture and glamour used by the licensed trade to attract a new generation of sophisticated, Holywood-inspired, car-driving drinkers. That's partly true, but not the full story here

In 1839, Dr. Thomas Smith of 21 Duke (now Dublin) Street in #Edinburgh tried on himself a purified extract of "Indian Hemp" - Cannabis sativa. He "gave an interesting account of its physiological action!". He was most probably the first person in Scotland to get high. The medicinal and psychoactive properties of "Indian Hemp" had only just been introduced to Western medicine that year by Irish doctor William Brooke O'Shaughnessy, so it's unlikely anyone had done so before.

Between 1950 and 1973, #Edinburgh built 77 municipal, multi-storey housing blocks (of 7 storeys or more), containing 6,084 flats across 968 storeys. So as promised, I've gone and made a spreadsheet inventory of them all. Let's have a look at them chronologically 🧵👇 1950-51 saw the first such building - the 8 storey Westfield Court with 88 flats (and a nursery on the roof!) Built by local builders Hepburn Bros, it was heavily inspired by London's Kensal House by Maxwell Fry. It was a bit of a 1-off though and is rather unique in the city.

The potential eviction of long-sitting community groups and public services from #Edinburgh's South Bridge "Resource Centre" means it's time for a thread on the history of the South Bridge Public School itself, a useful case study in 150 years of inner city social change 🧵👇

https://twitter.com/morvc/status/1733410477219201033

It was opened by the Edinburgh School Board on Nov. 2nd 1886, Secretary of State for Scotland the Right Hon. Arthur J. Balfour (later PM) officiating, and had cost them £7,942 to build. The Board's architect, Robert Wilson, designed it in the favoured "collegiate gothic" style

On this day in #Edinburgh in 1861 a great disaster occurred, one immortalised in a single phrase literally set in stone. It had enormous repercussions at the time and yet it's also largely forgotten, its details vague. This is the thread about the "Fall of Heave Awa' Land" 🧵👇 It was a frosty Sunday morning, between 1-130AM. Two policemen on duty paced their beat between Baillie Fyfe's Close and Paisley Close on the High Street. Sergeant Rennie crossed the road to investigate a shout. As he did so, the entire building behind him suddenly collapsed.

Halowe'en is upon us and the hour is late. I hope you are all sitting comfortably, because tonight's thread is distinctly uncomfortable. Shall we begin?
📚Tonight's scary story is "THE DEMOLITION OF ROCKVILLE" and it's a Very Edinburgh Gothic Horror Story 🧵🔽 Once upon a time, there was a man. That man's name was James Gowans and he was a stone mason. He was also a quarry master. And a builder, an architect, engineer, railway contractor, a philanthropist and a local politician. And he was a theorist, with big ideas.

Recent threads about the Scotland Street Tunnel and the Granton Breakwater inevitably involved the railway which ran between the two, and brought up this striking image of a forlorn steam engine on the Wardie foreshore. So I had to find out more 🧵⤵️ The accident on the Edinburgh, Perth & Dundee Railway's short section of track on the south shore of the Forth took place on the evening of Sunday 8th August 1860. It would claim 4 lives, injure 6 people, and cruelly impact upon one family in particular.

I took a punt in the charity shop and splashed out 79p on a nondescript but intriguing little book. And boy, am I glad I did, because it relates the most incredible life story, which I will now relay to you. This thread is about Bessie Watson, the Suffragette Piper Girl 🧵 Elizabeth (Bessie) Banner Watson was born in Edinburgh 1900 to Agnes Newton and Horatio Watson - a bookbinder. The family lived at 11 the Vennel, off the Grassmarket, in Bessie's own words "in the very shadow of the castle".

Despite Ned Holt turning out to be a total wrong'un, that doesn't take away from the quality of his sketches. They still merit being shared on account of the interesting people they portray. So let's meet some of the street "Worthies" of 1870s-80s Edinburgh 🖼️🧵👇 Let's begin.
"Black Mary of Happy Land Fame".
Little is recorded of her, but she is of course notable for being one of the few black residents of Edinburgh at that time.
"Happy Land" was the ironic name for a house of ill repute on Leith Wynd, demolished in the 1850s

Have you ever wondered why at its far western end, where it meets North Charlotte Street, the regular Georgian, right-angled grid of the First New Town does something odd and has a bevelled corner? You have? Great, lets find out why. A quick 🧵👇



No, the Georgians weren't future-proofing the street corner here for a 20th century traffic engineer's filter lane. This has to do with something much more predictable than that - land disputes! 👨‍⚖️🗺️

Door renumbering happened frequently in 19th c. Edinburgh. On Hamilton Place, development started at both ends in 1830s then stalled. The street was numbered in a consecutive series from west to east but when middle was completed in 1870s-90s, intermediate numbers were required

https://twitter.com/diarmidmogg/status/1673304684239437825

Longer streets in particular often took generations to complete, and if the initial numbering hadn't made allowances for infill or extension then they had to be re-numbered.

June 2023 is also the 120th anniversary of the Floral Clock itself, it was unveiled to the public on 11th June 1903 and was the first such clock attempted in Scotland. It was the work of City Superintended of Parks & Gardens, John W. McHattie,

https://twitter.com/EdinCulture/status/1666401554000166912

McHattie enlisted the help of famous Edinburgh clockmakers (who built and wound the city's clocks), Messrs Ritchie, who installed a drive shaft from the clock on the Alan Ramsay monument above the flowerbed to turn the hands of the display

Today is the 79th anniversary of the 1944 D-Day landings, the largest seaborne invasion in history. The huge assault was supported by a vast logistical operation, at the core of which were to be 2 "Mulberry Harbours". This is the story of Leith's significant part in these? 🧵⬇️ Mulberrys A & B - 1 each for the British-led Gold and US-led Omaha beaches. Were temporary, prefabricated harbours to rapidly offload supplies onto land after the initial assault, until other ports could be captured. Each enclosed an area larger than the harbour of Gibraltar.

When the first through electric tram ran from Leith to Edinburgh on June 20th 1922, a minor riot ensued when a student "rag" got out of hand, pelted the party of councillors with flour and forcibly entered the tramcar full of dignitaries on South Clerk Street.

https://twitter.com/EdinburghTrams/status/1665720584989179906

"The Battle of South Clerk Street" as I like to call it saw students ride the lead car - No. 123 - all the way to the terminus at Liberton, despite the best effort of the Polis to eject them at Church Hill

Dobbie's has long been a familiar name for gardeners, certainly around the Lothians. Back in the day they had their headquarters and a substantial nursery and greenhouses at Craigentinny, on Moira Road. Their telegram short code was "Pansies, Edinburgh"

https://twitter.com/Mikeashworth12/status/1665633863257784320

Moira Terrace. Whoops! The Moira name comes from the village and parish in County Down. There's a few suggestions as to how it came to be named as such, perhaps from the 2nd Earl of Moira, Francis Hastings, who was one time resident of Duddingston House

Here's one for you that I bet you probably never heard of.
Did you know that in 1928, a proposal was put forward to make crossing the Firth of Forth by car easier by building a dam across it?
A short thread, by nature of the complete lack of information available. 🪡👇 The scheme was the brainchild of Matthew Steele, a Bo'ness-born architect (whose work focused on retail and housing in an Arts & Crafts and later Moderne style and includes the Hippodrome cinema) - and John Jeffrey, a Bo'ness hotelier and burgh councillor

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 Canongate and followed the food purchased and eaten over a week by 15 families, totalling 94 mouths. It meticulously catalogued everything in great detail and then analysing its equivalent nutritional content back in the lab. 🏷️👩‍🔬

The Chalmers Territorial Free Church and its associated school was established in 1844 in the early days of the Free Kirk as a "Territorial" church, that is a church with its own defined territory to serve, but not one that had a legally defined parish

https://twitter.com/SChurchesTrust/status/1663453825322168323

h/t @NeilBriogaisean for the explanation: "rapid urbanisation left many city communities entirely unchurched. Limitations on how churches and parishes were authorised hampered "planting" churches... So Territorial churches were established to meet the need."