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,
West Port, Edinburgh West Port, Edinburgh The West Port is a street in Edinburgh's Old Town, Scotland, located just south of Edinburgh Castle. It runs from Main Point (the junction of Bread Street, Lauriston Street, East Fountainbridge and High Riggs) down to the south west corner of the Grassmarket. Its name derives from the fact it sloped up from the town gate named the "West Port," which was the only westwards exit from the city when the city walls stood, allowing passage through the Flodden Wall. The port itself was demolished in 1786. Wester Portsburgh, as the West Port was formerly known, was