Um das mal ganz deutlich zu sagen: Jede*r, der die unsichere #ePA #ePD #eGD nutzt ist asozial, weil er den Menschen, die auf Privatheit anwiesen sind eine grosse Zielscheibe aufmalt.

In #Niedersachsen ist der #GenderPayGap wieder angestiegen. Strukturelle Ungleichheiten und Diskriminierung sorgen dafür, dass Frauen deutlich weniger verdienen als Männer. Anlässlich des #EqualPayDay ist klar: Die Ursachen müssen endlich entschiedener angegangen werden.

Konkrete Maßnahmen in unserem aktuellen #schlaglicht 👉 https://niedersachsen-bremen-sachsenanhalt.dgb.de/aktuelles/news/gender-pay-gap-her-mit-equal-pay-every-day/

#DGB #Gewerkschaft #StarkMituns #EqualPay #EPD #Tarifwende #Gleichstellung #Gleichberechtigung #Care #Carearbeit #Minijobs #Kita

Illicit goings-on beneath the New Town sett: the thread about the life and crimes of the Scotland Street Tunnel

This thread was originally written and published in November 2023.

Scotland Street, on the northern firnge of Edinburgh’s Second or Northern New Town; not the grandest or longest such street, but certainly one of the more interesting. But what draws me to it is what you cannot see – the 1,052 yard long tunnel running a few tens of feet beneath its granite setts. Previous threads have looked in detail at the construction, engineering and operation of the tunnel, its terminus at Canal Street Station or tragic accidents during its service life. No, as the title suggests this story is about the various criminal goings-on that it attracted in its short service life from 1847-1868.

Things start getting going in our story in February 1858 when an urgent telegram arrived at the Leith Police station with a description of a man wanted in Aberdeen for thefts and who had fled that city on the steamer Sovereign, bound for Granton.

Two detectives were despatched from Leith to Granton station which was adjacent to the steamer quay. Here they managed to identify their mark but instead of clapping him in irons then and there, they boarded the same compartment on the Edinburgh train as him, and only announced themselves to him once they started heading south towards Scotland Street.

They made the suspect “aware of his predicament” but did not handcuff him. At Scotland Street Station their train was detached from the locomotive and attached to the haulage rope which would pull it up the tunnel incline to its destination at Canal Street. With a jerk, the train moved off into the darkness – there was no carriage lighting.

So you can imagine the look of surprise on the detectives’ faces when they emerged into the light at Canal Street Station only to find they were now alone in the compartment! Their man had somehow managed to slip silently out of the carriage in the pitch darkness of the tunnel! After alerting the railway authorities, the detectives trudged off back down the tunnel to search Scotland Street Station. On arriving there and interrogating the staff, it was found that a porter had seen a man emerging from the tunnel who had climbed over a fence, never to be seen again. The police had to be consoled in retrieving their suspect’s luggage, in which the items he had been accused of stealing in Aberdeen were found.

You would think that police accompanying prisoners through the tunnel would have been more careful in future. You’d think, but they weren’t, and in January 1864 a prisoner by the name of Peter Brown managed to pull off the same trick. Brown, (aka John Graham, aka John Farrel, aka Robert Young) had been detained in Larbert a few days previously by Superintendent Gray for the crime of stealing a silver watch, a pair of trousers, a vest and a shirt from the house of Widow McKay in the High Street of Falkirk. He had been cooling his heels in Perth Prison ever since, but was now to be brought to Edinburgh for the purposes of identifying him for other offences. A single officer was to accompany him, who at least took the precaution of handcuffing him. They took the 145PM from Perth, which had to cross the Forth by steamer from Burntisland to Granton, before picking up the train again for the short ride into the city centre via the tunnel. Once again, an unlucky officer emerged at the Canal Street terminus without his charge.

He had actually noticed his prisoner missing while in the tunnel but groping around in the dark for him, all he had managed to do was to upset his understandably surprised fellow passengers. Telegraphs were sent off and the policeman ran off down the tunnel in pursuit. Half way back down, the prisoner’s cap was retrieved. Back at Scotland Street Station, a porter once again described seeing a man emerge from the tunnel before existing the station, never to never be seen again. Once again, the Police were left empty handed and with egg on their faces. The Stirling Observer expressed surprise that a felon who was so “peculiarly dull-looking” could have managed to outwit the authorities with such “a daring piece of cleverness.”

Thefts were common on the railway. That very same day that the fugitive from Aberdeen had given the Leith Police the slip in the tunnel – Friday 12th February 1858 – James Ross, “a perfect adept in the light-fingered art” plead guilty at the Edinburgh Police Court to pickpocketing eight half-crowns from a lady at the station the previous day; for his efforts he received 60 days hard labour. In July 1859, a woman travelling from Leith to Edinburgh was relieved of £6, 17s 3d from her purse by three “Cockney gentlemen” who joined her in a first class compartment at Bonnington Station and left again in peculiar circumstances at Scotland Street, loudly claiming to all in the carriage that they had bought the wrong tickets and wanted instead to go to Granton. The victim arrived at Canal Street to find her purse empty, and immediately gave a description to the Police. There was a problem with a “Swell Mob” of Cockney pickpockets in Edinburgh that summer and the Police knew where they liked to hang out in the howffs of the West Port. Detectives Youdall and Leadbetter were efficient in their duties, picking up Richard Myars in a “thieves den” before finding John Tonner and James Clark hiding under a bed in their lodging house in the nearby Grassmarket. They had £7 between them, despite previously pleading to the Police that they had insufficient funds to leave the city. For their troubles their £7 was given to the victim in compensation and each got 60 days in the Calton Gaol, before being run out of town.

In October of that year, a most unusual “crime” took place in the tunnel – the transport of illicit cookies! A Mr Nottman had bought six cookies from Mr Robert Young, the licensee of the refreshment rooms at Canal Street Station and was observed to do this by PC Donald Bain. Nottman and his cookies boarded the train for Scotland Street Station and was followed by PC Bain, followed in fact all the way to his house in Bonnington where he intended to eat said cookies. The consumption of the cookies “off premises” was a clear violation of the Forbes Mackenzie Act under which premises were licensed.

The Procurator Fiscal (in Scottish law, the Public Prosecutor), Mr Linton, was keen to enforce this particular act to the full extent of his powers and had Robert Young and Nottman sent before Sheriff Hallard to explain themselves. Despite a good defence by the solicitor Mr Rollo, WS, and good character references, the Sheriff said he had no alternative but to fine Young £1 5s for his crime of selling off-sales cookies (the alternative was 10 days imprisonment!); Nottman escaped with a ticking off. This was the third such conviction within a week in Edinburgh, on Friday October 7th, Bailie Cassels at the Police Court applied the same fine to David Doull of Princes Street for selling “a few penny tarts” and Mr Ridpath of the North British Railway refreshment room for selling “a number of muffins” for consumption off premises.

This was not the only time the railway found themselves on the receiving end of the Edinburgh Sheriff Court. On this day, November 29th, in 1861 the Edinburgh Evening Courant reported that Sheriff Jameson awarded 5 guineas damages to Mr Robert Riddel, a merchant of Blairpark, Ferry Road. The defendant in the case was the Edinburgh, Perth & Dundee Railway company which ran the Scotland Street tunnel. Riddel sued the Railway for their treatment of him on the 6th November when, after buying a 1st Class ticket from Bonnington to Edinburgh with friends, they found the carriages full so they sat instead in 2nd class. Riddel was annoyed that this sort of thing happened too often, and so at Scotland Street station he asked the ticket collector to refund him the difference. When the collector declined, Riddel kept hold of his ticket (he was meant to hand it in) and said he’d take the matter up instead at the Canal Street terminus with a higher authority. The ticket collector was having none of it, fetched the station master and the pair physically ejected Riddel from the train. He was “severely sprained in one of his hands” and detained against his will at Scotland Street before being refused a refund or onward transport. In finding for Riddel, the Sheriff set a precedent that passengers were entitled to a refund if they could not travel in the means which they had paid a ticket for due to a fault of the railway. Riddel let it be known that he was contributing his damages to the relief fund for the victims of the recent “Heave Awa Land” disaster.

Our last “crime” goes back to the previous year, a “laughable incident” that was widely reported in July 1858 under the tongue in cheek heading of “A Merchant’s Last ‘Stroke of Business’“. It involved an unfortunate but persistent woman of “prepossessing appearance“, one who ultimately had the last laugh. Our heroine arrived in Edinburgh from London in early July by steamer. Her purpose was marriage to “a commercial gentlemen belonging to this city“, their courtship having taken place by correspondence. She had with her all her possessions and with these boarded the train for Scotland Street where she was met by her lover.

“After many tender words were said” her fiancée went to retrieve her luggage from the van only to find it was empty. Both were astonished and after an hour of enquiries the man began to start having doubts about his bride and came to believe she was not whom she claimed to be. He imagined he was to marry a comfortably off woman, but now feared she had nothing to her name besides the clothes she stood up in. They had planned to be married then and there but he managed to put her off and “excuse himself” on account of his business arrangements. His jilted bride-to-be retreated back up the tunnel to the City to make more enquiries at Canal Street and find herself a hotel. From here, she sent word to her lover to please come and join her when he was done with work. But he never did. Distressed by her lack of spouse and lack of luggage, she returned to the station and was advised to take the train back down the tunnel to the steamer quay at Granton in case it was there. Imagine her surprise when at Scotland Street she saw all her belongings on the platform!

Disembarking from the carriage, she hurried up the stairs and down again to the other platform. To her horror she found not only her luggage but also her late fiancée, “waiting evidently to proceed on a long journey” and directing a porter to load her things onto a train for Leith! “He could make no answer when interrogated by the lady“, being “completely dumbfounded” at seeing her. In the most persuasive terms, she made him agree to “put off his journey” and marched him and her luggage back up the hill to Edinburgh and married him on the spot! His “business speculation over”, he instead was obliged to “retire to spend the honeymoon in the quiet seclusion of the country“.

The Scotland Street Tunnel soldiered on for a few years more but its new owners, the North British Railway, couldn’t wait to get rid of it when the acquired the Edinburgh, Perth & Dundee Railway. They built and opened a diversionary line and closed the tunnel on May 22nd 1868 with all traffic through it ceasing immediately. The tunnel spent the next 20 years doing nothing and was largely forgotten about, but popped up in the newspapers every now and again. Commander J. C. R. Johnston wrote to the Scotsman in April 1870 suggesting that it be used for horse carriages and carts, to bypass the gradients of the New Town, an idea still suggested for cycling and walking.

Ten years after closure Robert Kerr & Co., a whisky broker and blender in Leith, announced in the Scotsman that they intended to use the tunnel as a bonded warehouse for Wine and Spirits. Nothing came of this idea either. It would be almost another decade before a permanent use was found for the tunnel – from 1887 to 1902 the Scottish Mushroom Co. used it as an industrial-scale mushroom farm! Two tons of mushrooms a week could be harvested (when mould wasn’t killing them off).

The mushrooms grew on immense quantities of manure which was hauled straight into the tunnel by a steam engine on the old rails. Workers deep inside and working in the darkness with only the flicker of candles banked it up in huge piles as mushroom beds. The railway yard at Scotland Street was used as a manure transfer, storage and mixing depot. Horse manure was the main source – it came straight from Piershill Cavalry Barracks and also from the council’s manure depots where the “scaffies” deposited their collections.

The manure was mixed when it was at the peak of fermentation, resulting in “a strong effluvia aris[ing]“. As you can imagine this did not go down too well with the residents of Scotland Street and their neighbours. The city’s energetic Public Health officer, Dr Henry Littlejohn, was also alert to the danger it posed and had the midden relocated to Warriston, 500 yards from human habitation. After these initial teething troubles, the Scottish Mushroom Co settled down to business and once again the tunnel faded from popular consciousness. And that might have been that for our story had it not been for a rather amusing and farcical occurrence in 1889.

In November of that year it was announced that Arthur James Balfour, the Irish Secretary, was due to attend a banquet dinner of Unionists and Tories in the Waverley Market on December 5th.

Balfour was from the Maitland Balfour family of Whittingehame, East Lothian, and a distant relation of the Balfours of Pilrig and enjoyed significant local interest and popularity. The organisers could not find an establishment large enough to host the event and so had turned to the city’s covered fruit and vegetable market, with fully three quarters taken over for the banquet. The same could not be said of Balfour’s popularity back in Ireland where his ruthless actions against Irish Nationalists earned him the moniker “Bloody Balfour“. The authorities therefore feared the dinner at Waverley would be targeted by Nationalist reprisals and become “a modern Guy Fawkes“. They feared a bomb would be smuggled into the undercroft of the Waverley Market, or even worse, into the Scotland Street Tunnel itself. Such a device it was said “would extinguish Unionism and Toryism in Scotland perpetually” given “every member of any note” was to be present.

A significant police detail was therefore imported to provide protection for Balfour and the dinner, and set about combing the venue for signs of anything untoward. It is important to note that these were not local officers and so were naive about local matters. The police were able to obtain duplicate keys to the gates of the tunnel at its southern end, and entered to search. They neglected to tell the North British Railway what they were up to and set off down the dark tunnel with only a few lamps to guide them. The police didn’t understand what the funky piles along the tunnel were. They boldly pressed on down but their courage failed them when some of the men working the mushroom beds suddenly popped their heads up from behind the manure banks and enquired “Wha’s there?” The officers fled back up the tunnel and could not be convinced to return until it was explained to them what went on down there those days. A thorough search was made of the operation, but all that could be found was manure, mushrooms and the “spawn” used to sew the beds

The Evening News reported that “the mushroom men were left laughing both at the timidity of their visitors and the fruitlessness of their visit”. Balfour’s dinner passed off uneventful with a banquet for 3,000, “1,000 ladies in the galleries” and seats for 8-10,000 public spectators.

You may wonder why I’m writing about the Scotland Street Tunnel yet again. Well I do have an ulterior motive, as my learned friend Leslie Hills just so happens to have a new book out now about two centuries of life above ground in Scotland Street. Most conveniently, it’s out in all good bookshops and is launched on Friday 1st December! “10 Scotland Street – the story of an Edinburgh home and its cast of booksellers, silk merchants, sailors, preachers, politicians, cholera and coincidence“. If you are reading this and you like my threads about Edinburgh and Leith history, then you probably like going down the sort of historical rabbit holes and off on tangents, so you’re sure to like Leslie’s book too as it will take you from a door on Scotland Street and around the world! I find a pleasing symmetry that Leslie’s book details what was going on just a few tens of feet above the tunnel at the same time as the shennanigans I have just been relating to you were going on tens of feet below the people in her book. Be there! I was very honoured to be able to contribute in a small way to this book and am only too pleased to commend it to you too.

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‪
„Wir blicken mit Sorge auf die Ankündigung der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche in Bayern, sich aus der Finanzierung des Evangelischen Presseverbands für Bayern e.V. - EPV zurückzuziehen“, sagt der BJV-Vorsitzende Harald Stocker.

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