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,
Transport in Edinburgh in Edinburgh in recent years; in September 2004, a 28-year-old man was killed at the junction of Marchmont Road and Melville Drive. In April 2008, an award winning neuroscientist who worked at the University of Edinburgh, Dr Iain Wilson, was killed in a collision with a truck on the junction between West Richmond Street and Nicolson Street. Pedicabs are a common form of transport for weekend revellers, with the number operating in Edinburgh growing from only 2 in 2000 to 60 by 2008. This has led to a growing number of complaints from taxi cab drivers, who resent the competition.