1st April - 7th April in Victorian Edinburgh

3rd April 1887

Noisy Dancers at Oddfellows’ Hall - Magistrates considered a complaint by residents involving a nuisance caused by dancing in the Odfellows’ Hall.  A petition signed by 24 residents in Forrest Road, detailed that the dancing took place between the hours of 11 o’clock at night and 6 o’clock in the morning, causing unacceptable noise levels and creating the additional nuisance of the shouting and swearing of the cabmen coming to collect people.  The Magistrates however, decided that there was no nuisance and the complainers merely had ‘a prejudice against dancing’.

3rd April 1844 

A Brutal Murderer Executed - In the presence of an immense crowd of spectators, James Bryce was executed for brutally murdering his brother in law, John Geddes, after he refused to lend him money.  The remorseful Bryce, had gone to the gallows at the top of Libberton’s Wynd, having finally confessed to the crime the day before his execution.   It was reported that the mass of spectators stretched a considerable distance up the Lawnmarket and along George IV Bridge, with the windows in the vicinity, the roofs of houses, and every other available spot, thronged with onlookers.

5th April 1875

An Extension for Leith Hospital - Leith Hospital, formed from the combining of the Dispensary of the Humane Society Institution and the Casualty Hospital, saw the addition of a large extension, featuring additional wards, nurses quarters and operating facilities.    This important hospital, situated in Mill Lane, additionally made its mark by later granting the application from female medical students previously refused elsewhere, to attend for clinical instruction.

7th April 1861

The Introduction of the One O’Clock Gun - Work began on the famous Edinburgh One O’clock Gun.  The idea was to introduce the firing of a cannon at one o’clock every day in order to give an audible time signal by which ships could set their chronometers.  The one o’clock gun accompanied the daily dropping of the time ball which had been in operation for many years at the top of the Nelson Monument on Calton Hill, but which had its limitations, due to the potential for sailors missing the exact time the ball dropped.