Longniddry to Edinburgh Great British Railway Journeys


Longniddry to Edinburgh

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For Victorian Britons, George Bradshaw was a household name.

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At a time when railways were new,

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Bradshaw's guidebook inspired them to take to the tracks.

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I'm using a Bradshaw's guide

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to understand how trains transformed Britain -

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its landscape, its industries, society and leisure time.

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As I crisscross the country, 150 years later,

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it helps me to discover the Britain of today.

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I've arrived in Scotland

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to conclude my journey along the old route of the Flying Scotsman.

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Today, I'll seek self-improvement

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and women with muscles before pursuing

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serial killers in Edinburgh.

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I'll navigate new tracks across the city and scale the heights in memory

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of a romantic novelist.

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My journey has brought me up the East Coast Main Line from

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London's King's Cross,

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through the counties of Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire,

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via Peterborough to Newark in Nottinghamshire.

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I visited the former port of Stockton-on-Tees and the seaside

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towns of Alnmouth and Dunbar. I will finish in Edinburgh.

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The last leg of my trip takes me to the coastal village of Longniddry in

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East Lothian and seven miles west to the old fishing town of Musselburgh,

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before I arrive at my final destination, the Scottish capital.

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On this journey, I'll need plenty of brawn...

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HE GROANS

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-It's quite heavy, isn't it?

-It's very heavy.

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..a strong stomach...

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Here we have a book made from the skin of a murderer.

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My goodness.

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..and a musical ear.

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Here goes, everybody.

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THEY WHOOP

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I'm alighting at the seaside village of Longniddry and travelling inland,

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but I can't proceed by train as the line closed almost 50 years ago.

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Bradshaw's has brought me to the charming town of Haddington,

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which, it tells me, has two churches, five chapels,

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a school of art, a museum,

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Gray's Public Library and a grammar school.

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Notice the emphasis on religion and on knowledge.

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In the Victorian world, the two ingredients for self-improvement.

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That philosophy was developed by one of Haddington's most notable sons,

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Samuel Smiles, who would write a bestseller.

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I'm meeting the local council's archive manager - Alex Fitzgerald.

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Samuel Smiles has gone down in history as the great advocate of self-help.

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-Who was he?

-He was born in Haddington in 1812,

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the son of a local merchant.

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His father died in 1832 in a cholera outbreak, which helped Smiles see he

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had to help himself because help was removed from him at an early age.

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You have got Self Help there, the book.

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What is the essence of the message?

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I think we can let him speak with his own words, to start off with.

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" 'Heaven helps those who help themselves' - is a well-tried maxim embodying in

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"a small compass the result of vast human experience.

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"The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual."

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As a journalist, Smiles campaigned for Parliamentary reform,

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before deciding that the individual's self-improvement was

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the key to social progress. When Self Help was published in 1859,

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he became a respected thinker and, as time went by, a celebrity.

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20,000 copies were sold in the first year and, by the time of Smiles's

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death in 1904, sales had reached a quarter of a million.

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This message about getting ahead in life, was it materialist or moral?

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I would say it was very moral.

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Religion was the centrepiece to Smiles's life.

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He referred to how God was pivotal in methods for self-improvement.

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That is part of the Victorian experience,

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religion being one of the cornerstones

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upon which they built their society.

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To illustrate his thesis,

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Smiles wrote inspirational life stories

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of famous industrial figures.

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George Stephenson, I think, would be one of his prime examples of how an

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individual had bettered themselves.

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Stevenson was illiterate until the age of 18 and actually taught

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himself the arithmetic and calculations required to go on to

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become the engineer which made him the father of the railways.

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In helping us to understand the Victorian, how important is Samuel Smiles?

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He's very significant.

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He provides a template from which you can look at how society was

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changing. For him, only by people improving themselves

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would society improve.

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Today's global self-help movement is a multi-million-pound industry,

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which probably doesn't recognise its debt to Samuel Smiles.

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UKULELE MUSIC

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He might be pleased

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that the citizens of Haddington are still striving to improve themselves

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with new skills.

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THEY SING

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In this former railway storehouse, today's class,

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open to anyone, has learned to play the ukulele.

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THEY SING

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THEY WHOOP

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Bravo!

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What a charming class.

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-Hello, everybody.

-Hi.

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How long have you been playing the ukulele?

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Oh, for about three years now.

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-And you?

-About two and a half.

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-What made you take it up?

-Well,

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I've always loved music but I didn't learn to play an instrument when I

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was younger. So when I happened upon Lamp House Music,

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it was just too good an opportunity to miss.

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So it's been great fun.

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That's lovely. What about you?

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I love the idea of being in a group and not just playing, but singing.

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And a lot of the activities I used to do were solitary,

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so this is a complete culture change for me.

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Samuel Smiles was born in Haddington and he believed in self-improvement

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and self-help. Is he an inspiration?

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Do you know? He wasn't until I looked him up online

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and then I found out more about him.

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I can't believe that a man of that time was such a thinker,

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such a deep thinker,

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and he actually altered the course of people's lives.

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When you try different things, it improves your whole self-esteem.

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When you gain mastery over something as simple as the ukulele,

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it's fantastic for you.

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I tell everybody that they should get into music

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and they should come to a place like this, where you are accepted as a

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right duffer, because I'm a right duffer...

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You are allowed to develop.

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As far as I know, I have no musical gift, but I want to improve myself.

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That last chord you played, can you show me how you did that?

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-That's a C.

-That's a C, that's right.

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-Now what do I do?

-Third finger on the third fret.

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-Yeah.

-Press hard.

-Pressing on the fret.

-No, not...

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-No, in-between.

-And then go bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.

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-Here goes, everybody.

-Ready, steady, go.

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THEY WHOOP

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Definitely more self-improvement needed!

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My next stop will be Musselburgh.

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Bradshaw's points me to Fishwives' Causeway.

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They were also known as fish lassies or fish fags

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and were allegedly notorious for foul-mouthed gossip.

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It should be an interesting visit.

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Just six miles east of Edinburgh, Musselburgh,

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named after the extensive mussel beds that lie along its shores,

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enjoys fantastic views across the Firth of Forth.

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In the 19th century, men here relied on fishing for a living.

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But I'm here to learn about the community of women.

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Simon Fairnie is a historian.

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Simon, what part did the fishwives play in the fishing industry here?

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They were the partners, the working partners, for their husbands.

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They would go to the mussel beds and they would gather mussels,

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bring them home, shell the mussels, put the bait onto the hooks.

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A man would have up to 1,000 hooks per line

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and this would be a daily occurrence.

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As well as preparing the lines,

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the fisherwomen were responsible for selling the catch.

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They would travel by train or tram to Edinburgh, and other local towns,

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carrying the fish on their backs in baskets known as creels and skulls.

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They must have been popular getting onto the train, the tram,

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the bus with their fish?

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Well, they were able to put their creels into the front of the trams

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with the driver and also onto the special mixer onto the train.

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But the women were well-known and they were well-liked,

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and therefore they knew that they were industrious women

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carrying out their jobs,

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so they were accepted as part of the scene, in the city particularly.

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Now, this was going on in your family, too, Simon?

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Yes, my two aunts, my grandmother,

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my great-grandmother, were all fishwives.

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Now, fishwives have this reputation for being foul-mouthed and gossips,

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is that fair?

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I don't think that's fair.

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They were shrewd women who may well have spoken their mind.

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Remember, Michael, they used to sell the fish in big houses to many of

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the gentry of the town and they were well-known, well-respected.

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What role did these women play in their society?

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An extremely important role -

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simply because they were the breadwinners of the family.

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The husbands would go away,

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sometimes come back with no earnings at all after some long time,

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so it would be them who would have to make the money for the family.

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They were, I would say, emancipated before emancipation.

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Sadly, there are no surviving Musselburgh fishwives or fish lassies today,

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but their descendants ensure that their story lives on.

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-Hello, ladies.

-Hello.

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-I'm Michael.

-I'm Christine.

-Christine.

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-Margaret.

-Margaret. You are beautifully attired.

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What are you wearing?

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These are our gala costumes.

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We had a Fisherman's Walk on the first Friday of September every year,

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that was the end of the fishermen's summer fishing,

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and we had just a gala.

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Pipe bands and dancing.

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You are wearing your costumes slightly differently, why is that?

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-This is a kilted coat.

-This is a kilted coat.

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There is one underneath and one that's kilted up,

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and that makes it fancy, just a wee bit different.

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Mine is plainer and I've got what we call a pooch underneath.

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-What are you showing me now?

-My pooch.

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-Your pooch?

-Where we kept our money and, in later days...

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our lipsticks.

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I've worn my grandmother's working pooch.

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When she died, we found it under the mattress.

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Obviously where she kept her money because they didn't use bags.

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Generations of women in Christine's and Margaret's families were fishwives.

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That's my grandmother selling her fish,

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and this is her creel and skull and the fish is all inside the skull.

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Very, very good.

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This is my mother here.

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She left school at 13 and became a fishwife.

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She just loved the job, loved it.

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She went to Fife with her fish, across the Forth Bridge in the train.

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And this is my great-grandmother.

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She looks weighed under, doesn't she?

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It was a huge weight they carried on their head and the band went right

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-across their brow.

-And this one is interesting to me

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because here we see the ladies, I think, getting off the tram.

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-Yes.

-The conductor helping her on with her creel and skull.

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Yes, tram drivers were wonderful.

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Of course, they'd always get maybe a pair of kippers or a piece of fish

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-at the end of the day.

-I see that you have a creel and skull here.

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-Yes.

-Do you want to try it on?

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Well, OK. Are you going to help me, then?

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Yes, we'll help you.

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'Whilst it's not full of fish,

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'Christine and Margaret have helpfully added some weight to it,

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'to give me some idea of what it would have been like.'

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-Oh!

-There you go.

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Oh. I've got it.

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-Yes.

-Now.

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HE GROANS

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It's quite heavy, isn't it?

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-It's very heavy.

-Let's have a little go with this, then.

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HE GRUNTS

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Oh! I'm carrying probably a fraction of the weight that a fishwife would

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have carried and I am bent double,

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and it seems incredibly heavy.

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One career I'm not going to take up is being a fishwife.

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It's a diabolical contraption, this thing.

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-Isn't it awful?

-What kind of weight did they carry?

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About 112lb.

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And the women often had a bald patch on their head...with the band.

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-A bald patch?!

-Yes.

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I must get it off at once!

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There we are.

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Those fishwives were clearly made of far tougher stuff than I am.

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This train will take me to my final destination on this

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East Coast Main Line - made famous by the Flying Scotsman.

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I'll soon be arriving in Edinburgh,

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mentioned in Bradshaw's as the "Modern Athens".

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"Its schools for the acquirements of useful knowledge have long held a

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"high rank amongst the universities of Europe

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"and have supplied some of the most distinguished statesman, warriors,

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"poets and divines who have graced our annals."

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With some Scottish blood coursing through my veins,

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I'll certainly second that.

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Edinburgh Waverley.

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I used to arrive here as a child with my family,

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headed for my grandparents' in Kirkcaldy.

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We were not on the Flying Scotsman, we came on the night train,

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but still this station evokes for me the smell of locomotive,

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smoke and steam and smuts.

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I always enjoy exploring this elegant capital,

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with its impressive architecture, on foot.

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But as the day's almost over,

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my Bradshaw's recommends a visit to the oldest pub on the city's

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Royal Mile.

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In 1773, that great English intellectual Samuel Johnson

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stopped here at The White Horse in Edinburgh.

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Now, he once wrote that, "Scotland is a vile country, though God made it,

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"but God also made hell."

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It's a wonder that he made it out of the Royal Mile alive.

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And in his famous dictionary he wrote, "Oats,

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"the grain which in England is given to a horse but in Scotland

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"it supports the people."

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Now, that I think is particularly unfair.

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I believe that porridge is one of Scotland's great gifts to the world,

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along with whisky, of course.

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Cheers.

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Edinburgh is waking up.

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The population of half a million people has more than doubled since

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the time of my Bradshaw's.

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And, as in most cities, rush-hour traffic is a problem.

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To ease the congestion,

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the council turned to a popular Victorian mode of transport.

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Having arrived here in the 1870s and disappeared by the mid-1950s,

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now the tram is back.

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-Excuse me a moment.

-Yes.

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Are you regulars on the tram?

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-Very much so, yes.

-What do you use it for?

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Just going to work and back.

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And do some shopping. It's very clean and smooth and...very warm.

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Very warm, that's important in Edinburgh, isn't it?

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Once, Britain's major cities had trams,

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but only one of the original systems still survives - in Blackpool.

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Edinburgh's service is one of just a handful that's running today.

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Do you find it odd that in British cities for many years

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we didn't have trams and now we seem to have them again?

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Yeah, but I think it's good to bring that back

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and a lot of people do use it.

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During rush-hour, it's a lot faster because obviously the traffic...

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The creation of this new tram service has been anything but smooth,

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with huge delays and budget overshoots,

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but Edinburgh's commuters seem to be on board with the idea.

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I've come out to the services depot, where manager Dean Anderson

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will allow me to take one of these vehicles for a drive.

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MICHAEL LAUGHS

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Suits you.

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Oh, Dean, thank you very much.

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This feels wonderful.

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Although pretty much a novice, I've had a quick lesson.

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Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

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Welcome to this special Bradshaw's nostalgia tram ride around the

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stabling yard of Edinburgh.

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Stand clear of the doors, please.

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So, let's select slow speed.

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And...let's give it a go.

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BELL RINGS

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BELL RINGS

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Horses hauled the city's earliest trams along the tracks,

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until cable-hauled carriages replaced them.

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In 1905, electric trams appeared in the busy city centre streets,

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including striking double-deckers.

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Today's sleek models are 140-foot long.

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They're made up of seven articulated sections with room for 250 passengers.

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So, the trams are now here in Edinburgh,

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do you think people are enjoying them?

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Absolutely. We've been in service for over two years now

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and last year we recorded almost 5.4 million journeys.

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Are there plans to extend it at all?

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Next year, there is a proposal to extend the tram line down to Leith

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and across to the waterfront...

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so we're very much hoping that that will be approved.

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With 27 trams,

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they run a service along a nine-mile route from the airport

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into the city centre.

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-And a smooth stop.

-Well done.

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Smooth-ish.

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Edinburgh is famous for its 12th-century castle

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and for its festivals.

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And it's also distinguished by its academic tradition.

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"The University of Edinburgh," says Bradshaw's,

0:20:470:20:49

"was founded in 1582 by a charter from King James VI.

0:20:490:20:54

"It's divided into four faculties - law, theology, arts and medicine."

0:20:540:21:00

And the guidebook recommends the Royal College of Surgeons Museum -

0:21:000:21:03

admittance by member's order.

0:21:030:21:06

I'd like to understand how the medical faculty developed an

0:21:060:21:10

important body of work by working on bodies.

0:21:100:21:14

The Royal College of Surgeons,

0:21:160:21:18

established at the start of the 16th century,

0:21:180:21:21

now boasts 20,000 members from across the world.

0:21:210:21:25

Its museum, opened to the public in 1832, houses one of the oldest and

0:21:250:21:30

largest collections of medical specimens.

0:21:300:21:33

The college's director of heritage, Chris Henry,

0:21:330:21:36

has agreed to give me a tour.

0:21:360:21:38

Why do you think people in the 19th century were coming to the museum?

0:21:380:21:42

What you have to remember is that Edinburgh was really the

0:21:420:21:45

pre-eminent centre of medical teaching in the world

0:21:450:21:49

and, in order to teach,

0:21:490:21:50

you had to have a collection to show the conditions that were prevalent

0:21:500:21:55

at the time. You can only really do that by preserving them in a jar.

0:21:550:21:59

Who were some of the great figures

0:21:590:22:01

who helped to establish Edinburgh's reputation?

0:22:010:22:03

The first person that springs to mind is James Syme,

0:22:030:22:06

who was a towering surgeon.

0:22:060:22:09

He did most of his work before the introduction of anaesthetics.

0:22:090:22:12

And then we have James Young Simpson,

0:22:120:22:14

who was the person that really discovered the anaesthetic

0:22:140:22:18

properties of chloroform. And then, finally,

0:22:180:22:21

Joseph Lister, who discovered the antiseptic properties of various

0:22:210:22:26

chemicals that could reduce infection post-surgery,

0:22:260:22:30

so he managed to effectively reduce the percentage of deaths

0:22:300:22:34

after surgery from 50% to 15%.

0:22:340:22:37

So, from all this amazing array,

0:22:370:22:39

give me an example of the sort of thing that was used to teach.

0:22:390:22:42

Well, we've got a perfect example here of a gangrenous foot from the

0:22:420:22:47

19th century. What's happened is

0:22:470:22:49

the whole of the foot's been amputated in order to preserve the

0:22:490:22:53

rest of the limb and what you can see is these blackened areas of

0:22:530:22:57

tissue that have died off.

0:22:570:22:59

And this would have been used as a teaching aid for people to come in

0:22:590:23:03

to lectures and understand what the physical effects were.

0:23:030:23:05

Didn't the flesh give off the most appalling stink?

0:23:050:23:08

Yeah, it did, and a lot of doctors and surgeons really wore that,

0:23:080:23:12

and the mess and the smell, as a badge of honour,

0:23:120:23:14

certainly in the pre-antiseptic era.

0:23:140:23:17

And the collection includes even more shocking exhibits.

0:23:170:23:21

Here we have a book made from the skin of a murderer.

0:23:210:23:25

My goodness! Human skin?

0:23:250:23:27

-Yes.

-Who is it?

0:23:270:23:29

That's the skin of William Burke, one of a pair of murderers.

0:23:290:23:33

William Burke and William Hare, who carried out 16 murders

0:23:330:23:38

to supply bodies to the anatomy trade, as it were,

0:23:380:23:41

in the 19th century.

0:23:410:23:44

With tight legal restrictions on the supply of bodies for dissection,

0:23:440:23:48

grave-robbers, known as body snatchers,

0:23:480:23:51

dug up paupers' corpses for sale.

0:23:510:23:53

Now Burke and Hare began to kill to satisfy demand.

0:23:530:23:58

To go around snatching bodies out of graves is one thing,

0:23:580:24:00

but to kill them in the first place is really going that extra mile,

0:24:000:24:03

isn't it? And, from the label, I take it this is Burke?

0:24:030:24:06

That is Burke. Hare turned king's evidence against Burke and he was

0:24:060:24:10

executed in 1829.

0:24:100:24:13

And, as you can see from this,

0:24:130:24:15

there is a mark around his neck where the hangman's noose

0:24:150:24:17

finished him off.

0:24:170:24:19

The Anatomy Act of 1832 put an end to this darkest of black markets by

0:24:200:24:25

regulating but increasing the supply of bodies for teaching.

0:24:250:24:29

Edinburgh University's Medical School, founded in 1726,

0:24:300:24:34

was one of the most prestigious in the world.

0:24:340:24:37

I'm meeting James Garden,

0:24:370:24:39

professor of clinical surgery and surgeon to the Queen in Scotland,

0:24:390:24:43

at the spot where dissections once took place.

0:24:430:24:47

So here we are, the anatomy lecture theatre.

0:24:480:24:50

It is magnificent and huge.

0:24:500:24:53

The design of this lecture theatre was so that the teacher or the

0:24:530:24:57

professor could perform to the students,

0:24:570:24:59

looking directly to the centre stage

0:24:590:25:02

as the body lay there to be dissected.

0:25:020:25:04

Who was the audience, who were the theatregoers?

0:25:040:25:08

We would have had 250 or so medical students, all paying customers.

0:25:080:25:12

They wanted to see the body,

0:25:120:25:15

they wanted to see the detail, so there may have been a scramble to

0:25:150:25:20

sit here in the front rows so that

0:25:200:25:22

they could appreciate what was being taught to them.

0:25:220:25:26

But, of course, in those days,

0:25:260:25:28

the bodies were never quite preserved as well as they are

0:25:280:25:32

nowadays and so you were also, I think,

0:25:320:25:34

at risk, sitting in these front rows, from the smell and perhaps the

0:25:340:25:40

occasional bit of tissue flying into the air.

0:25:400:25:44

I hate to say it, but it looks as though someone's left a body here today.

0:25:440:25:48

Yes, we have prepared something for you.

0:25:480:25:50

SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC

0:25:500:25:52

MICHAEL LAUGHS

0:25:520:25:54

Hello, old chap.

0:25:560:25:58

So I think we've got something a bit more exciting underneath.

0:25:580:26:01

Whoa!

0:26:010:26:02

Huh! So what on earth is this?

0:26:040:26:07

So, this is modern anatomy teaching.

0:26:070:26:09

So here we have the body for dissection.

0:26:090:26:11

Well, I'll be darned.

0:26:140:26:16

What sort of things can you do with that?

0:26:160:26:18

We can explore the inside of the body,

0:26:180:26:20

so we can then cut.

0:26:200:26:22

-Oh, my goodness.

-And then I can take you here, into my area of interest,

0:26:220:26:28

into the abdomen.

0:26:280:26:30

Here we can see the liver on the right-hand side

0:26:300:26:33

and this allows us to explore

0:26:330:26:35

the anatomical relationships of the organ.

0:26:350:26:38

We can get a better understanding of the inside of the liver and the

0:26:380:26:42

anatomy of the blood vessels and bile ducts.

0:26:420:26:45

So this tool is fundamentally useful?

0:26:450:26:47

It is. It's at the heart of the modern teaching of anatomy.

0:26:470:26:52

Besides its huge contribution to medicine,

0:26:550:26:58

this historic city has a proud literary tradition.

0:26:580:27:02

It was the birthplace of Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,

0:27:020:27:07

and another of its great authors is remembered here.

0:27:070:27:10

This is the world's largest monument to a writer.

0:27:110:27:16

It celebrates Sir Walter Scott

0:27:160:27:19

and the railway station here is named after

0:27:190:27:22

his historical novel, Waverley.

0:27:220:27:25

For decades, beneath its glass roof,

0:27:250:27:27

clouds of smoke celebrated the arrival of the Flying Scotsman from

0:27:270:27:32

the British capital.

0:27:320:27:34

Bradshaw's compared the might of London to classical Rome

0:27:340:27:38

and the finesse of Edinburgh's architecture to ancient Athens.

0:27:380:27:43

The Victorians could be arrogant, but as they spread literature,

0:27:430:27:47

technology, science and ideas across a vast empire,

0:27:470:27:52

they could perhaps be forgiven.

0:27:520:27:55

Next time...

0:27:580:28:00

HE SHRIEKS

0:28:000:28:01

..there's terror on the tracks.

0:28:010:28:03

Only a skeleton staff today.

0:28:030:28:05

I play a small part in a monumental engineering project.

0:28:050:28:09

Looks like you're a natural at this, Michael.

0:28:090:28:11

Do you think it's weld-done?

0:28:110:28:14

And pay tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

0:28:140:28:18

It is perhaps understandable, when the call came in 1914,

0:28:180:28:23

that railwaymen were so prominent and so numerous in stepping forward.

0:28:230:28:27

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