266 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Leith.
It was built accordingly, and is for the reception
and maintenance of men and women in destitute
circumstances, of fifty years of age and upwards, in
the following priority : first, persons of the name
of Watt; second, natives of the parish of South
Leith, of whatever name ; third, persons, of whatever
name, who have constantly resided in that
parish, for at least ten years preceding their admission
; and fourth, natives of or persons who have
constantly resided in the city of Edinburgh or
county of Midlothian, provided such persons are
not pensioners, or in receipt of an allowance from
any charitable institution except the Parochial
Board of South Leith.
The trustees acquired what was formerly a golf
house, with its ground, and there built the hospital,
which was opened for inmates in the spring of
1862. There are eleven trustees and governors,
including, ex o.$icw, the Provost of Leith, the Master
of the Trinity House, and the Master cif the
Merchant Company of Leith, with other officials,
including a surgeon and matron.
South Leith Free Church confronts the west
side of the Links, and has a handsome treble-faced
Saxon fapde.
The year 1880 saw a literal network of new
streets running up from the Links, in the direction
of Hermitage Hill and Park. According to a
statement in the Sotsman, an enterprising firm of
builders, who had obtained, five years previously,
a feu from an industrial society, which had started
building on the ground known as the Hermitage,
during that period had erected buildings which
were roughly estimated at the value of A;35,ooo.
These edifices included villas in East Hermitage
Place, self-contained houses in Noble Place and
Park Vale, while sixty houses had been erected in
Rosevale Place, Fingzie Place, and Elm Place. A
tenement of dwelling-houses, divided into halfflats,
was subsequently constructed at Hermitage
Terrace, and the remaining sites of this area have
also now been occupied.
Eastward from them, the villas of Claremont Park
extend to Pimiefield and Seafield; and hence, the
once lonely Links of Leith, where the plague-stricken
found their graves, where duels might be fought,
and deserters shot, are now enclosed by villas and
houses of various kinds.
At one part of the northern side there are a
bowling-green and the extensive rope walks
which adjoin the ropery and sail-cloth manufactory.
The ?? walks? occupy ground averaging fifteen hundred
feet in length, by five hundred in breadth.
At th.e extreme east end of the Links stand
Seafield Baths, built on the ground once attached
to Seafield House, overlooking one of the finest
parts of a delightful beach, They were built in
1813, at a cost of jt;8,000, in &so shares, each
shareholder, or a member of his family, having a
perpetual right to the use of the baths.
The structure is capacious and neat, and the
hotel, with its suite of baths, is arranged on a plan
which has been thought worthy of imitation in
more recent erections of the same class at other
sea-bathing resorts.
Their erection must have been deemed, though
only in the early years of the present century, a
vast improvement upon the primitive style of
bathing which had been in use and wont during
the early part of the century preceding, and before
that time, if we may judge from the following
suggestive advertisement in the Edinburgh Courant
for 30th May, 1761 :-
?Uth Bathing in Sea Water-This sort of
bathing is much recommended and approved of, but
the want of a machine, or wooden house on wheels,
such as are used at sea-baths in England, to undress
and dress in, and to carry those who intend bathing
to a proper depth of water, hath induced many in
this part of the country to neglect the opportunity of
trying to acquire the benefits to health it commonly
gives. To accommodate those who intend bathing
in the sea, a prpper house on wAeeZs, With horse and
servants, are to be hired on application to James
Morton, at Jarnes Farquharson?s, at the sign of the
?Royal Oak,? near the Glass House, who will
give constant attendance during the remainder of
the season; each person to pay one shilling for
each time they bathe.?
This, then, seems to have been the first bathingmachine
ever seen in Scotland
On the z 2nd December, I 789, the lonely waste
where Seafield Baths stand now was the scene of
a fatal duel, which took place on the forenoon of
that day, between Mr. Francis Foulke, of Dublin,
and an officer in the army, whose name is given
in the Edinburgh Magazine of that year merely as
?Mr. G-.? They had quarrelled, and posted
each other publicly at a coffee-house, in the fashion
then common and for long after. A challenge
ensued, and they met, attended each by a second.
They fired their pistols twice without effect; but
so bitter was their animosity, that they re-loaded,
and fired a third time, when Foulke fell, with a
ball in his heart.
He was a medical student at the university,
where he had exhibited considerable talent, and in
the previous year had been elected President or
the Natural History Society and of the Royal
Medical Society of Edinburgh.
