Approaching St. Mary's Street on a No.35 bus
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Approaching St. Mary's Street on a No.35 bus by kim traynor as part of the Geograph project.
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Approaching St. Mary's Street on a No.35 bus
Image: © kim traynor Taken: 19 Sep 2012
The buildings here date from the Edinburgh City Improvement Act of 1867. Before that, the area was desperately poor with many of the inhabitants leading a hand-to-mouth existence. "In one very small pawnshop, level with the street, a few doors below St. Mary's Wynd, the crowd of people passing in and out was positively surprising. We stopped for a short period, and counted that, on average, three people came out of the shop every minute, being at the rate of about 180 for every hour. If this lasted for five hours - that is, from seven to twelve o'clock - it would give a total of 900 visitors. This was only in one shop, but in this neighbourhood there are about ten pawns of this kind, and if they all did business to a similar extent (and we have no doubt some of them do more), it gives the astonishing result of nine thousand visitors to the pawnshops of this district alone!" -- a doctor describing the area in 1851
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Image Location
Latitude
55.950446
Longitude
-3.184965