Cranston Street, looking towards Calton Hill

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Dec 182017
 

Cranston Street, Edinburgh EH8 8BECranston Street

In 1794, one Hyman Lyon is among the 18 Jews in the register of aliens. He is famous for two reasons: 1. his book Important Discoveries in Chiropody. 2. his purchase from the City Council of a burial plot on Calton Hill for himself and his wife. This private mausoleum was rediscovered in 2013 under the slope behind the Observatory. Infamously, Lyon was a defendant in a libel action where, ‘all parties were Jews’. Rose Nathan accused others of ‘spreading rumours that she had been found naked in bed with other men’. She won her case, but it must have caused much disturbance in this tiny community. On St Mary’s Street observe a plaque commemorating Henry Littlejohn, Edinburgh’s first medical officer of health, whose sanitary improvements transformed this part of the city.

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Drummond Street

 Jewish History  Comments Off on Drummond Street
Dec 182017
 

Drumond Street, Edinburgh EH8 9RWDrummond Street

The community expanded between 1880 and 1914, the years of the great westward migration of Jews from Eastern Europe. The Southside of the city became the place of residence for the recent immigrants who largely originated in the Lithuanian part of the Russian Empire. Bustling with people, the soundscape would have largely yielded Yiddish accents. In the 1891, 1901 and 1911 Censuses we find the Rudom Family at different addresses on the Pleasance. Jacob Rudom worked as a travelling salesman, or a ‘trebbler’ in Scots Yiddish. Polly Rudom gave birth to 9 children; the records reveal that only one of her children died in infancy, a better than average survival rate. After World War II, city planning changed this part of town such that both street layout and buildings today are different from those inhabited by Jewish immigrants.

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6 Millerfield Place: Sciennes Primary School

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Dec 182017
 

6 Millerfield Place, Edinburgh EH9 1LW6 Millerfield Place

6 Millerfield Place was the family home of Edinburgh’s most famous rabbi, Dr Salis Daiches, the father of literary scholar David Daiches. An immigrant himself, during his ministry from 1919 to 1945 he brought together recent arrivals and established residents, and built Salisbury Road Synagogue, which had room for approximately 2,000 worshippers. It remains home to the (now much smaller) Edinburgh Hebrew Congregation. At the end of this cul-de-sac is Sciennes Primary School. Until the founding of Calderwood Lodge Primary School in Glasgow in 1962 there was no Jewish school in Scotland. All Jewish children attended mainstream schools. From 1914 Hebrew classes were taking place in Sciennes School on weekday afternoons, the Education Board of the city offering the facilities of the school to the Jewish community free of charge.

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Bishops’ Close

 Jewish History  2 Responses »
Dec 182017
 

Bishop’s Close, 129 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1SGBishop's Close

We begin here in the Old Town, the heart of the medieval city, at Bishop’s Close, off the High Street between the Mitre and Royal Mile Tavern. In the early 19th century the Old Town was overcrowded and insanitary. The New Town, north of Princes Street, was built with open spaces and large windows. The first synagogue was founded by 20 families in 1817. In the 1841 census we can identify 50 Jewish households in Edinburgh. Of those, only eight households lived in the fashionable New Town area. The others settled in the Old Town or in the St Leonards district to the south. In 1841 the Emmanuel Family, having moved from England, lived here in Bishop’s Close: Ezekiel, Rachel, and three sons. There is no trace of them in later records. From 1880 until 1914, as the economic and social conditions in Eastern Europe worsened, many others took their place.

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Site of the first theatre in Edinburgh

 Scottish Enlightenment  Comments Off on Site of the first theatre in Edinburgh
Sep 192017
 

Playhouse Close.Playhouse Close, 196 Canongate, Edinburgh EH8 8BN

In the seventeenth century the Church of Scotland had traditionally taken a very negative view of the theatre, which they saw as promoting immorality. The first theatre in Glasgow was burned down as late as 1752 by a mob incited by hard-line ministers. It was therefore a sign of changing times when the Canongate Theatre, the first theatre in Edinburgh, was successfully opened in 1747 near what is now Playhouse Close without major incident. There was, however, a riot in the theatre in 1749 when some English officers requested that the orchestra play a song celebrating the battle of Culloden. When instead they played ‘You’re welcome, Charlie Stuart’ the officers attacked the musicians and chaos ensued.

Plaque in Playhouse Close.

Plaque in Playhouse Close.

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Site of the house of Lord Monboddo

 Scottish Enlightenment  Comments Off on Site of the house of Lord Monboddo
Sep 192017
 

Site of the house of Lord Monboddo13 St John St, Edinburgh EH8 8DG

James Burnett, Lord Monboddo (1714–99), was a judge and pioneer of comparative linguistics. He discussed his theories at ‘learned suppers’ held in this house where he entertained many of the leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment. As well as expounding his ideas on the origins of languages his also speculated on the relationship between apes and humans, which has led some to see him as an early evolutionary thinker. His beautiful daughter Elizabeth, who died of tuberculosis in 1790 at the tragically early age of 24, was the subject of a poem by Robert Burns, ‘Elegy on the late Miss Elizabeth Burnet of Monboddo’.

Portrait of James Burnett, Lord Monboddo (1714–99).

Portrait of James Burnett, Lord Monboddo (1714–99).

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Adam Ferguson’s House (Sciennes Hill House)

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Sep 192017
 

Adam Ferguson's House.3 Sciennes House Place, Edinburgh EH9 1NN

Adam Ferguson was professor of moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, and, as the author of the Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), is often considered one of the founders of sociology. He regularly entertained many of the leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment at his house in Sciennes. In Ferguson’s day the house was on the very edge of the city and, because of its remoteness, his friends jokingly referred to it as ‘Kamchatka’ after the peninsula in Siberia. In the winter of 1786/7 he hosted a dinner here at which the two most famous Scottish writers of the period, Robert Burns and the young Walter Scott, met for the first and only time.

Portrait of Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Portrait of Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Plaque commemorating the meeting of Robert Burns and Walter Scott at the house of Adam Ferguson.

Plaque commemorating the meeting of Robert Burns and Walter Scott at the house of Adam Ferguson.

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National Records of Scotland – Adam Ferguson (1723-1816)

The Meadows

 Scottish Enlightenment  Comments Off on The Meadows
Sep 192017
 

The MeadowsMelville Dr, Edinburgh EH9 9EX

This large public park used to be a lake known as the South Loch until the early eighteenth century. The loch provided much of the city’s drinking water until 1621, when the first piped water supply was established. Its draining and conversion into a park by Sir Thomas Hope in 1722 is a good example of the Enlightenment enthusiasm for ‘improvement’. Later in the century it became a favourite place for James Hutton, the geologist, Adam Smith, the economist, and Joseph Black, the chemist, to take a stroll and discuss the latest ideas in science and philosophy.

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Friends of the Meadows and Bruntsfield Links – History and Archaeology

Grave of William Smellie

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Sep 192017
 

Grave of William Smellie,Greyfriars Kirkyard, 1 Greyfriars, Edinburgh EH1 2QQ

William Smellie was a printer, naturalist and friend of the poet Robert Burns at the height of the Scottish Enlightenment. In 1768 Smellie was hired to edit the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1768–71). It was envisaged as a more conservative answer to Denis Diderot’s Encyclopédie (1751–72), which embodied many of the more radical ideas of the French Enlightenment. He not only edited it but wrote large parts of it himself, while also borrowing liberally without acknowledgement from other great writers including Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Johnson. He was a keen natural historian, writing several well-known books on the subject. In 1779 stood for the chair of natural history at the University of Edinburgh, but was pipped to the post by John Walker.

William Smellie (1740–95), engraved by Henry Bryan Hall after George Watson (1840).

William Smellie (1740–95), engraved by Henry Bryan Hall after George Watson (1840).

Inscription on WIlliam Smellie's grave.

Inscription on WIlliam Smellie’s grave.

 

Title page for first edition (1771) of Encyclopaedia Britannica, or, A Dictionary of Arts and Sciences.

Title page for first edition (1771) of Encyclopaedia Britannica, or, A Dictionary of Arts and Sciences.

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Statue and grave of Robert Fergusson

 Scottish Enlightenment  2 Responses »
Sep 192017
 

Statue of James Fergusson.153 Canongate, Edinburgh EH8 8BN

Writing in English and Scots, the poet Robert Fergusson lived in Edinburgh at the height of the Scottish Enlightenment. Although he died at the tragically early age of 24 in 1750, he nonetheless left behind an important body of work. His poetry deeply influenced the work of his younger contemporary, Robert Burns.His collection of poems Auld Reekie, a vivid portrait of his home town published in 1773, is generally considered to be his masterpiece. He died from an injury sustained in a mysterious accident. His headstone in Canongate Kirkyard was designed and paid for by Robert Burns, who also wrote the epitaph that it bears.

Portrait of Robert Fergusson (1750–74) by Alexander Runciman.

Portrait of Robert Fergusson (1750–74) by Alexander Runciman.

Grave of James Fergusson, Cannongate Kirkyard.

Grave of James Fergusson, Canongate Kirkyard.

Epitaph to James Fergusson by Robert Burns.

Epitaph to James Fergusson by Robert Burns.

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