Tenement Town: The rich and salacious history behind closed doors in Edinburgh’s flats

From further conjugal address to bent accusations, one man has baldheaded all address of goings-ons abaft bankrupt doors in Edinburgh’s tenements. 

“Uncovering abandoned lives, one amount at a time” is the aim of Tenement Town, an online activity which explores the lives of the humans who already lived in the southside’s common buildings. 

The armpit was once created by local history enthusiast Diarmid Mogg who was once agog to locate out further about the barrio he passes by on a circadian basis. 

Diarmid, a southside resident, informed STV News: “If you attending at it by time, it’s layers and layers of life. I anticipate it makes you really-feel beneath alone, in a city, to anticipate which you’re administration the amplitude by time.

“When you cord them all together, you affectionate of get a aberrant array of adventures of the building, and the lives of the humans who lived in it. Everywhere you attending there’s anything fantastic.”

The belief are aggregate by looking artery addresses in old newspapers via The British Newspaper Archive and award out further capacity by altogether and afterlife certificates.

Diarmid answered the belief he has baldheaded are “just as exciting, in many cases, alone as blue as Mary Queen of Scots’ many lovers, alone as black as the Burke and Hare stories, alone as agitated as those, about already appear in the affidavit for maybe a week at the most, vanished always and never although t about again”.

Behind the aperture of Number 10, St Patrick Square, there is a affluent history.

A man who drowned afterwards a steamship sank off the bank of Canada in 1863 lived there, as able-bodied as a added whose 22-year-old son was once dead in the trenches of France in 1915.

A barman, John Taylor, was once also a citizen in 1902 and was once accused of affairs whisky on a Sunday to two cops admiral bearded as sailors. The adjudication was once “not proven”.

Through his work, Diarmid was once “amazed” by the amount of “salacious annulment stories” intertwined in Edinburgh’s calm history. 

He said: “In the old days, Edwardian and Victorian affidavit would awning annulment belief in absurd detail.

“Not alone do they delivery ‘juicy gossip’, about they also accord you an abundantly abundant acumen into the affaire of a household. 

“There was once a annulment on East Preston Street alleged the ‘Pearman annulment of 1867’ and it featured a woman who had a three or four year continued activity with her GP who would appointment her to appear to her ‘woman’s issues’, allegedly.”

As the blog gathers popularity, Diarmid has been addition out his analysis to added genitalia of the city. Increasingly, he has been ambidextrous with requests from those with a affiliation to tenements above Edinburgh. 

Discussing the accent of exploring the history of barrio by the humans who abide them, Diarmid said: “It’s layers and layers of activity and I anticipate which makes you really-feel beneath alone.

“These tenements were actuality continued afore us and they will be actuality continued afterwards us.”