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,
Murders in the Zoo shrieks, and cackling of the wild animals on the screen at the Paramount yesterday were echoed to an amazing degree by the audience, at times driven to a mild state of hysteria by scenes in 'Murders in the Zoo'." However, a "New York Times" movie critic says, "Those who demand their leaven of romance even in horror pictures are likely to find 'Murders in the Zoo' inadequate in this direction." Though he also claims that "it happens that the director has been almost too effective in dramatizing these cheerless events…Lionell Atwill as the insanely jealous husband is almost too convincing