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,
Trams in Edinburgh 1956. At Pilrig, the cable trams running along the busy Leith Walk route crossed the city boundary between Edinburgh and Leith. When the Leith system was electrified in 1905, passengers had to transfer between the two modes, in what became known as the 'Pilrig muddle'. This lasted until electrification of the Edinburgh system, with the first through tram running on 20 June 1922. The Edinburgh Street Tramways Company was originally authorised by an 1871 Act of Parliament to construct tramways in Edinburgh, Leith and Portobello. Their first horse tram service began on 6 November 1871. It ran from Haymarket, via