History of Edinburgh the meantime the Old Town continued to decay into an increasingly dilapidated, overcrowded slum with high mortality rates, and was practically segregated socially from the rest of the city. This was especially true where the sub-division of tenements offered the cheapest lodgings in narrow alleyways that formed the backdrop to the infamous 'West Port Murders' of Burke and Hare. In 1865 Alexander Smith wrote of one of the poorest districts, The Cowgate is the Irish portion of the city. Edinburgh leaps over it with bridges: the inhabitants are morally and geographically the lower orders. They keep to their own quarters,
What the Night Knows John goes to visit Billy; Billy indicates that the reason he killed them was because of “Ruin”. As John is leaving, Billy’s countenance changes and he begins saying “help me”. John begins to investigate the murders, and finds that there are a number of similarities between the murders committed by Billy, and murders committed by Alton Turner Blackwood some 20 years previously. Alton Blackwood killed John’s entire family. The two families were murdered in almost exactly the same way. John’s family (his wife Nicolette, and his children Zach, Naomi, and Minette), begin to be haunted by dreams, sounds in the