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Reposted by Diarmid Mogg

Andy Arthur💃🏰⚓🦌 Threadinburgh 🧵 @threadinburgh.scot · Aug 17

Every so often houses come up in the Edinburgh property listings for a charming-sounding place called "Mount Alvernia". This development was once a monastery, but it had no monks; it was home to nuns. Twice the Catholic Church tried to displace these Sisters by legal means and twice it failed 🧵▶️

Estate agents photo of a nice-looking housing estate, which appears to have been converted from some sort of ecclesiastical building.

Estate agents photo of a living room, whose Gothic style windows suggest it has been converted from some sort of ecclesiastical building.

Estate agents photo of a kitchen, whose Gothic style windows suggest it has been converted from some sort of ecclesiastical building.

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Aug 1

I saw this today—a great bit of theatre. Stories of Edinburgh lives, performed by a great actor. On until the 23rd. If you like my tenement stories, you’ll love this. Recommended!

Mark Hannah @markthannah.bsky.social · Jun 3

EDINBURGH FRINGE 2025

My critically acclaimed, Bright Spark Award nominated, 2024 sell out, debut play Athens of The North will return in 2025 for a full run @scotstorycentre.bsky.social on the High Street
#EdFringe

scottishstorytellingcentre.online.red61.co.uk/event/913:61...

1st -23rd August

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Jul 15

For more stories of domestic misery and forgotten heroes, go to tenementtown.com.

Tenement Town

Uncovering Edinburgh’s forgotten lives, one stair at a time.

tenementtown.com

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Jul 15

Her best seller was a line of plastic pipers inside miniature bottles bearing the slogan “Frae Scotland”, which can still be found from time to time in auctions of whisky ephemera, where they fetch around £8.

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Jul 15

She said, “If you are in the souvenir business and consider yourself above using tartan, you may as well forget it. You can’t please yourself. The things you like don’t necessarily sell.”

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Jul 15

The tenement’s corner flat was once a shop where, throughout the 1970s, Bobbette Fairlie, “a clever young designer”, sold Scottish novelties such as a “Rabbie Burns Beastie”, “Hamish the Haggis” and white heather encased in plastic, suspended on a tartan ribbon.

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Jul 15

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Jul 15

The discovery of penicillin led to the virtual eradication of paralytic dementia but came three decades too late for Margaret.

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Jul 15

1897—Margaret Fairfoul, whose untreated syphilis resulted in a brain disease that caused bizarre behaviour, grandiose delusions (of immortality, possession of immense wealth, incredible power and so on), seizures, muscular deterioration—and, at the age of 56, her death.

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Jul 15

He died in 1989, aged 96. From his obituary: “He was an internationally respected figure in the field of independent working-class education. It is claimed that two-thirds of the Labour MPs elected in 1945 were former NCLC students.”

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Jul 15

Latterly, due in part to his vehement opposition to Communism, he moved the NCLC away from classes based on explicitly Marxist theories and—in the face of great opposition from former comrades—transformed it into a more conventional workers education service.

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Jul 15

In one of his many pamphlets, he wrote: “There are thousands of workers who, given a little encouragement, will transfer their interest from horse racing to the class struggle. But a working class that will not educate itself can never achieve its emancipation.”

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Jul 15

In the 1920s, he became general secretary of the National Council of Labour Colleges, then an avowedly revolutionary organisation dedicated to the complete reorganisation of society against capitalist interests, known as “the educational arm of the TUC”.

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Jul 15

1914—JPM Millar, a socialist activist who founded the Edinburgh branch of the No-Conscription Fellowship and was jailed in 1916, at the age of 23, for refusing to serve in the army. Traumatised by solitary confinement, he suffered “prison nightmares” for years after.

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Jul 15

Jessie moved away from Edinburgh, and died in Clydebank in 1957, of a heart attack, aged 84. A few years later, her son, who had moved west with her, died of lung cancer. He was 51.

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Jul 15

The judge granted custody of their 11-year-old daughter to William. Hearing the news, the girl burst into tears and said she didn’t want to go with her father, whom she barely knew. She had no choice, of course.

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Jul 15

William obtained a birth certificate that proved the story, and confronted Jessie and Thomas—“You’re a fine pair, deceiving me all this time!” Jessie tried to slash her own throat with a razor but William managed to take it from her. He left the house and sued for divorce.

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Jul 15

Before long, a neighbour told William that the boy was nearly five years old, and had been born in 1909, four years after William had left for South Africa, and three years before he had next seen his wife.

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Jul 15

William may have thought it unusual that his new son, Thomas Paterson Geddes, seemed to be partially named after the lodger, but he doesn’t appear to have said so. Perhaps he had come across similarly unlikely coincidences in his time.

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Jul 15

When William saw his new son sitting at the fire in baby clothes and nappy, he remarked that he was big for 20 months. “Yes,” said Jessie. “He was an enormous baby.”

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Jul 15

When war broke out in 1914, William had to return to Edinburgh. Jessie met him at the station and told him that she had taken a lodger—Thomas Paterson—who was recovering from an accident and would be married soon.

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Jul 15

A few months after his return to South Africa, he received a letter from Jessie informing him that she had given birth to “a giant baby”.

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Jul 15

Jessie had refused to accompany William to South Africa in 1905, shortly after she had given birth to their first child, a daughter. William sent home 30s a week, and paid the rent on the flat. In 1912, he came home on holiday for six months, and resumed relations with his wife.

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Jul 15

1916—Thomas Paterson, a North British Railway foreman, who had an affair with a woman named Jessie Geddes while her husband, William, a stonemason, was working in South Africa.

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Diarmid Mogg @diarmidmogg.bsky.social · Jul 15

He was the cousin of JPM Millar (below), who shared the flat with Thomas and his wife for many years. Thomas lived in the tenement until the 1970s, when, aged 72, he died from sepsis caused by an infection in his bowels.

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