Marshall's Court, Greenside

Image: © kim traynor Taken: 8 Jun 2009

The sole surviving residential block from the time when Greenside was a densely packed, slum-ridden area at the foot of the Calton Hill, largely hidden from sight by the better maintained buildings facing Leith Street. An older, now demolished tenement near the building pictured here was the scene of a notorious double-child murder in 1953. On 11th December, the streets came alive as volunteer search parties assisted the police in the hunt for two missing girls: Lesley Sinclair* and Margaret Johnson. They were eventually found strangled. The perpetrator, who lived in the same common stair as one of his victims, was hanged at Edinburgh's Saughton Prison on 23rd April 1954, the penultimate person to be executed there. http://www.scotsman.com/news/evil-drama-in-shadow-of-playhouse-1-845106 *Lesley was my best playmate at nursery, so I'd be interested to hear from anyone who lived in Greenside at the time and remembers the incident.

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