The photograph [above] taken by Dr Francis Maxwell Chrystal, fascinates me. I admire the way he never excludes ‘passing life’ from his photographs. It is one of the ‘Chrystal collection’ that Trove has archived. Here is a close-up image taken by Dr Chrystal [also dated 1924]:
What follows is an attempt to share some of the life of St Mary’s Street, Edinburgh.
What is shared is taken from archives. It is starkly evident how incomplete any archives generally are. Above all, personal stories [narratives of life] are rarely found in archives. I agree with scholars, two millennials worth of scholars, that context is everything. Alongside such a fundamental reality, we must never ignore another frank reality: time passes. Context is lost without a sense of time. I fully support an evidence-informed approach to science, but I do worry how much of context and time are factored out of current ‘Evidenced Based medicine’ [EBM].
1 January 1859, Caledonian Mercury:
1867 Improvement Act: Edinburgh:
22 October 1869, Glasgow Evening Citizen:
1 August 1873, Edinburgh Evening News:
13 February 1875, North Briton:
22 November 1875, Edinburgh Evening News:
1875 Valuation Roll, St Mary’s Street:
7 February 1875, [infant mortality]:
29 October 1885, Dalkeith Advertiser:
16 March 1895, Edinburgh Evening Dispatch:
16 March 1893, Scottish Leader:
15 July 1897, Dundee Courier:
3 December 1897, Edinburgh Evening News:
13 May 1901, Edinburgh Evening News:
26 December 1901, Edinburgh Evening News:
27 October 1903, Edinburgh Evening News:
10 March 1905, Edinburgh Evening News:
4 November 1905, Edinburgh Evening News:
25 May 1911, Edinburgh Evening Dispatch:
25 May 1911, Daily Express:
6 September 1916, Edinburgh Evening Dispatch:
20 June 1918, The Scotsman:
1920, Valuation Roll, St Mary’s Street:
15 November 1924, Edinburgh Evening News:
1 May 1926, The Scotsman:
10 February 1937, Edinburgh Evening News:
6 May 1939, Edinburgh Evening News:
8 November 1951, Edinburgh Evening News:
St Mary’s Street,1960s:
17 June 1961, Edinburgh Evening News:
30 September 1961, Dundee Courier:
16 July 1962, Daily Record:
11 February 1969, Daily Record:
15 July 1970, The Scotsman:
1970s: St Mary’s Street, Edinburgh:
3 March 1973, The Scotsman:
3 March 1973, The Scotsman:
30 June 1976, The Scotsman:
25 February 1977, The Scotsman:
Buildings of Scotland, Gifford, McWilliam and Walker:
