“charlton_hero” — Fediverse search results on home.social

Charlton Hero @charlton_hero · 2023-08-13 · 21:06 UTC

It's no secret that I love #Superman3, and one of the main reasons I do was the Clark and Lana relationship in the film. #ChristopherReeve and #AnnetteOToole had such fun and joyous chemistry that it radiated off the screen. There was such an authentic vibe between the two that it was impossible not to root for Clark to be with #LanaLang @[email protected]

#lanalang #annetteotoole #christopherreeve #superman3

DJI Rumors @[email protected] · 2026-01-15 · 17:33 UTC

Showdown in Torun: World champion Ditaji Kambundji vs world‑record holder Devynne Charlton in the 60m hurdles at the Copernicus Cup on Feb 22 — plus home hero Pia Skrzyszowska and a stacked field. #CopernicusCup #IndoorTrack

https://worldathletics.org/news/news/kambundji-charlton-torun-copernicus-cup

#copernicuscup #indoortrack

DJI Rumors @[email protected] · 2026-01-15 · 17:33 UTC

Showdown in Torun: World champion Ditaji Kambundji vs world‑record holder Devynne Charlton in the 60m hurdles at the Copernicus Cup on Feb 22 — plus home hero Pia Skrzyszowska and a stacked field. #CopernicusCup #IndoorTrack

https://worldathletics.org/news/news/kambundji-charlton-torun-copernicus-cup

#copernicuscup #indoortrack

Henry Winter 🤖 @[email protected] · 2026-07-19 · 11:34 UTC

ENGLISH LESSONS FROM THE 2026 WORLD CUP...

RISK/REWARD. Be bold. England left the tournament with bronze medals and a skipful of regrets. The tournament was ultimately a disappointment. They wanted to reach the final, they have plenty of talent, a front six now traded for more than £600m and heaven knows what Jude Bellingham is now worth? £200m?
Thomas Tuchel’s defensive response against Argentina – no outlet, no pace - cost England the golden shot of the final. Wasted opportunity to end the years of hurt. England’s defence is not strong enough to hold out – especially against elite opponents - so go on the front foot more.
No pressure existed in the bronze match but imagine if Tuchel had been so attacking against Argentina, continually, including with his subs. The frustration of the underused Bukayo Saka was understandable. Boldness includes squad selection. England’s most creative right-back, Trent Alexander-Arnold, and one of their most creative midfielders in Adam Wharton ignored. So wrong by Tuchel, indicative of negativity. Tuchel lamented England’s “passive” mindset – well, he contributed to it.

STARS OF THE SHOW. 1. Jude Bellingham. Wants to be James Bond one day. Scored 007 goals. For now, a real all-action hero for his country. Became the England international to score most at a finals. Constant force for England: goal against Croatia; broke deadlock against Panama; diving header then 1-2 with Kane in the Azteca; led comeback against Norway with equaliser and winner; calmed nerves with brilliant run and finish against France. Leader, creator, goalscorer. England’s next captain. Class act - consoled Mexicans after full-time.

KEEP TUCHEL BUT HOLD THE PRIDE. Players like Thomas Tuchel, whatever the understandable frustrations some feel over his defensive response against Argentina. Expensive for FA to pay off, especially after naïve decision to extend contract. No obvious successor. Dan Ashworth working on trying to find/develop potential home-grown successors.
For now, they have Tuchel. He’s an A-list coach who had a deeply costly aberration against Argentina, the negative subs and the failure to use Saka. He’ll surely learn from that. He’s engaging, open in press conferences, but he really needs to dial down his huge pride and acknowledge shortcomings.

STARS OF THE SHOW. 2. Elliot Anderson. Tireless in midfield. £116m is a huge fee but he’ll continue to mature and add to his game. Manchester City fans will be excited.

ELITE DEBT TO EFL. Look at where the stars were shaped. Morgan Rogers in West Brom’s academy, also on the field at Middlesborough, Lincoln and Blackpool. Anderson at Bristol Rovers. Harry Kane at Orient, Millwall, Norwich and Leicester. On it goes, Bellingham started out at Birmingham City before going abroad. Jordan Pickford learned at Burton, Carlisle, Bradford and Preston. Ezri Konsa started at Charlton. The Premier League (and La Liga and Bundesliga) needs the EFL. Support them.

STARS OF THE SHOW. 3. Djed Spence. The pick of England defenders, just ahead of Marc Guehi and Ezri Konsa. Spence’s selection was criticised (including by me) but the full-back vindicated Tuchel’s faith, playing both left and right, getting forward exuberantly and even winning a penalty against France.

INJURY-PRONE. Don’t take those with suspect injury records. Sadly, nobody was surprised when Reece James’ hamstring went and he missed three games. Ditto Tino Livramento, terrific full-back but needs a clear run of games going into a tournament (he was replaced).

STARS OF THE SHOW. 4. Anthony Gordon. Two assists against DR Congo, won the pen against Mexico, assist against Norway, scored against Argentina. Removing Gordon proved one of Tuchel’s more calamitous decisions in that fateful second half in Atlanta. Performances will have excited Barcelona fans.

DRAFT IN ASHLEY COLE. There is nobody on Tuchel’s staff who truly understands the emotion wrapped up in the Three Lions. Tuchel’s trusted No 2, Anthony Barry, delivered a heartfelt message about the players playing with “broken hearts” against France. Cole, an England centurion, is a highly respected coach who’s worked successfully with Lee Carsley and might bring an important dimension and perspective to England. Tuchel effectively brought Jordan Henderson in in the role. Why not Cole?

STARS OF THE SHOW. 5. Harry Kane. Harry Houdini. Scorer of six goals, setter of standards on and off the field. Dropped too deep against Argentina but was simply trying to help out.

FANFARE. As usual, England fans turned up in their 10s of thousands. Many were locals, ex-pats, but the many of the traditional faithful reported for duty, those who support England in qualifying, home and away, friendlies too, the Top Cappers and Block 109ers. They are there despite the costs, logistical demands, and likelihood of a long time away from home, especially with a week extra because of the warm-up games in Florida.

Behaviour levels deserve relief-filled applause. Gone are the days when a section of England’s support embarrassed themselves, the team and the country. The trip to the baseball in Atlanta and adoption of Braves' Michael Harris II won them even more friends. So did their camaraderie with Mexicans during that epic trip to the Azteca. Now a credit to England.

THE FUTURE. Euros are two years away. Nations League games against Spain are no time for experimentation but the Jordan Pickford succession has to be considered at some point. That means game-time for James Trafford but in a big qualifier? Pickford is 32, had the occasional moment of uncertainty in the tournament, but will still back himself to make Euro 2028 at least.

The Harry Kane succession is less pressing as he will doubtless play the Euros at 34, but more worrying as there simply doesn’t appear any obvious successor. Elsewhere Rio Ngumoah and Max Dowman need more minutes in the age-groups before their inevitable immersion (Ngumoah already has a cap).

England have talent present and future. They have a shot at the Euros on home soil in two years if Tuchel has truly learned from the World Cup. But England players and fans will be watching the final with an element of envy and feeling of "if only". #ENG #FIFAWorldCup

#eng #fifaworldcup

Global Feed @[email protected] · 2026-05-16 · 21:07 UTC

🔥 TRENDING

📢 A new hero emerged, but this win proves how much Carlton still need Patrick Cripps

🔗 https://www.smh.com.au/sport/afl/a-new-hero-emerged-but-this-win-proves-how-much-carlton-still-need-patrick-cripps-20260516-p5zxr2.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed

#Carlton #Patrick #Cripps #GlobalFeed #News #EN

<i>Automatically posted by Global Feed Bot</i>

#carlton #patrick #cripps #globalfeed #news #en

IndieAuthors.Social News @[email protected] · 2026-03-31 · 12:03 UTC

Review: Abbot Lane by Jim Layeux

A slow-burning drama that crackles with contemporary fears and timeless heroics, Abbot Lane by Jim Layeux is a forceful spy-vs-spy thriller. An existential threat to America has been identified, and "a highly placed official within US intelligence is hellbent on destruction." In order to prevent a global holy war, reluctant college student Jesse Carlton is [...]…
https://www.selfpublishingreview.com/2026/03/review-abbot-lane-by-jim-layeux/

#BookReviews #LeadStory #SpyThrillerBookReviews #ThrillerBookReviews

#bookreviews #leadstory #spythrillerbookreviews #thrillerbookreviews

Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math @[email protected] · 2026-03-25 · 13:00 UTC

Playful Math 184: Carnival of Living Math

Welcome to the 184th edition of the Playful Math Education Blog Carnival — a smorgasbord of delectable tidbits of mathy fun. It’s like a free online magazine devoted to learning, teaching, and playing around with math from preschool to high school.

With all the links, a blog carnival can feel overwhelming. Bookmark this article, so you can take your time reading the posts.

“Living math” means bringing our children face-to-face with the big ideas of mathematics to help them develop their reasoning skills. When the ideas of math come to life for our children, their minds delight in seeing how numbers and shapes connect to each other and exploring these relationships.

Scattered between the playful math links below, you’ll find quotations from my new book Charlotte Mason’s Living Math, along with several paintings of children playing and learning which I considered for the book but ran out of room.

“The lesson” by Rafael Frederico, 1895.

By tradition, we start the carnival with a puzzle/activity in honor of our 184th edition. But if you’d rather jump straight to our featured blog posts, click here to see the Table of Contents.

Puzzle: Playing with Primes

Prussian mathematician Christian Goldbach, in correspondence with Swiss polymath Leonhard Euler, posed several ideas about number theory (the study of natural numbers) which he couldn’t prove. The version we know now as Goldbach’s Conjecture is:

Every even natural number greater than 2 is the sum of two prime numbers.

Goldbach’s Conjecture is one of the oldest and best-known unsolved problems in math. It has been shown to hold for numbers less than 4 × 10^18, but remains unsettled for larger numbers.

Our carnival number can be written as the sum of primes in eight ways:

184 = 181 + 3
= 179 + 5
= 173 + 11
= 167 + 17
= 137 + 47
= 131 + 53
= 113 + 71
= 101 + 83

184 can also be written as the sum of four consecutive prime numbers:

184 = 41 + 43 + 47 + 53

Play around with Goldbach’s Conjecture and prime numbers.

What do you notice about sums of primes?
What do you wonder?
What other questions can you ask?

Did you know the prime numbers come in a pattern? While it can be hard to prove for sure which large numbers are prime, there are infinitely many numbers that we can be confident are not prime.

List some large numbers that you know are not prime. How do you know?
Fill in this worksheet and consider the patterns.
Now can you list more large numbers that are not prime? Can you tell some that might be?

“Woman and Children in Arendal” by Edvard Munch, 1886.

Contents

And now, on to the main attraction: the blog posts. Some articles were submitted by their authors; others were drawn from the immense backlog in my rss reader. If you’d like to skip directly to your area of interest, click one of these links.

Talking Math with Kids
Exploring Elementary Arithmetic
Adventuring into Algebra and Geometry
Scaling the Slopes of High School Math
Enjoying Recreational Puzzles and Math Art
Teaching with Wisdom and Grace
Giving Credit Where It’s Due

“The First Lesson” by Carlton Alfred Smith, 1893.

Talking Math with Kids

“From their birth, children have minds just like ours, hungry for knowledge and able to digest solid mental food. They enter life full of wonder, questioning, investigating the world, reasoning, and drawing conclusions.”
—Denise Gaskins

Dan Finkel invents Trifle — a new, very small game. “I invented a small game off the cuff last night. I needed a super quick game to play with my 6.5-year-old before bedtime.”

Christopher Danielson shares the conversations that launched his yet-unpublished book: On vehicles and the meanings of words. “These questions are simple yet deep. They can inform our current conversations in which we seek to regain our understanding of truth, meaning, and empathy.”

Digging through Christopher Danielson’s delightful archives, I find: A circular conversation, and Doll years, and Does the Earth have an end?. “If you are new to talking math with your kids, don’t worry about getting the timing right. Just start to make a habit of asking those questions. The first few times, you may not get much. That’s OK. It can be like introducing new foods — children need multiple exposures to new things before they accept them.”

Tom Hobson tells how to build A State-of-the-Art Preschool Playground (for under $200) that will prompt all sorts of math (and other) talk. “As educational as these kinds of spaces are for children, these wonderlands of loose parts, dirt, rocks and compost, these bastions of junkyard chic, they are often perceived as eyesores by the uninitiated. Before going too far, you might want to save up to build a fence.”

Writing is talking on paper. Dylan Kane tries Incorporating more writing in 7th grade math. “Slowing down and writing about a topic is a great way to think deeply about it, to make connections, to consider hypotheticals, to reason about cause and effect.”

Jenna Laib gets 4th-graders writing math: How Many Nivelsnorts: Assessing Silly Story Problems. “Perhaps this speaks to who I was as a child, but there is a playfulness and a creativity to getting to write about nivelsnorts and flying tomatoes, and I don’t see a need to deny students that.”

Karrie E. suggests 5 Easy Ways to Add Writing into Your Math Class. “The goal isn’t to create more work for your or your students. It’s to make thinking visible.”

“Writing Lesson” by Renoir, circa 1905.

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Exploring Elementary Arithmetic

“That he should do sums is of comparatively small importance; but the use of those functions which ‘summing’ calls into play is a great part of education.”
—Charlotte Mason

Patrick Vennebush explores the Mathematical Mysteries of 2026. Meanwhile, Iva Sallay collects 2026 Math Facts and Factors, including a “powerful” math joke. You may also enjoy George Sicherman’s Roman New Year puzzle.

Sarah Dees explains one of my favorite math games: How to Play Target Number. “This is a fabulous math game that works for third grade all the way up through 6th. You can choose the complexity of the game by choosing how many dice to use.”

Erick Lee poses A Problem Worth Solving. “I liked this problem because there are so many different ways to approach it and so many interesting patterns to see while solving it.”

Susan Smith and Kim Montague explore Factor Puzzles: Helping Math Make Sense. “That’s the challenge we pose to students: What do you notice about the puzzle you see? What relationships pop out to you?”

Pat Ballew plays around with The 3×3 Magic Square, More Magical than You Thought! And Greg Ross shares a magic Venn diagram: Set Piece.

For my contribution to the carnival, I finish up my series on mental math with Advanced Multiplication, Part 1, followed by Advanced Multiplication, Part 2, and then Advanced Division to wrap things up. “The more time our children spend playing around with numbers and making sense of these relationships, the better they’ll be prepared for algebra and beyond.”

Jenna Laib shares important information: The 8 Fast Food Chains in the US Most Likely to Get Your Drive-Thru Order Right. And some good news: Extreme Poverty Fell Sharply Worldwide – Even Excluding China. Slow Reveal Graphs “invite learners to examine trends, relationships, and possible interpretations.”

John Golden teaches Statistics and Probability for K-8 Teachers with some fun resources: Who Wins? “Lots of great discussion about variation, mean, median and their limitations.”

“Music Lesson” by Shirataki Ikunosuke, 1897.

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Adventuring into Algebra and Geometry

“If students find our lessons boring, that is because we are not engaging their minds. Children learn by thinking, imagining, reflecting, reasoning, arguing, justifying, and communicating, putting their thoughts into words. Learning, like digestion, is active.”
—Denise Gaskins

Iva Sallay graphs a Cat Rotating Around a Bouncing Ball. “This year, the 9th-graders I work with at school need to know how to rotate a shape around a point that is NOT the origin. This is a topic I had never thought about before. To patch up this hole in my math knowledge, I decided to play with rotations in Desmos.”

Ramsha Waseem reports on 14-year-old Miles Wu’s origami invention. “I was really shocked by how much [weight] these simple pieces of paper could hold,” says Wu.

Karen Latham offers suggestions for Making the Most of Probability. “I like to have students work several counting problems by hand, so they have experience simplifying expressions with factorials. Then they can move on and let the calculator do the work.”

David Butler plays with a geometric puzzle: When perimeter is equal to area. “One answer I discovered to this question is completely surprising and delightful to me. You may want to attempt to prove it yourself before I show you my proof…”

Andrew Staccy categorizes Catriona Agg’s Puzzles by Topic. “The various techniques are grouped into categories and ordered roughly by complexity. Puzzles may appear more than once as they can have multiple ways of being solved.”

Pat Ballew takes a look at Heron and his Formula(s). “Heron is also remembered for his invention of a primitive steam engine and many early automatons, and a coin operated vending machine, and one of the earliest forerunners of the thermometer.”

“Children and chicken” by Gaetano Chierici, circa 1900.

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Scaling the Slopes of High School Math

“Never are the operations of Reason more delightful and more perfect than in mathematics. There is great joy in standing by, as it were, and watching our own thought work out an intricate problem.”
—Charlotte Mason

Christopher Burke posts a series of Geometry Problems of the Day from the Regents Exam, with solutions. “This is a silly question because it’s obvious that both Choices (1) and (2) cannot both be true, so one of them must be the answer.”

Oliver Johnson explores the probability that your shopping receipt ends in .00: Time’s Arrow. “This ‘everything has the same chance’ collection of probabilities is called the uniform distribution, and it’s really important. But what might be surprising is how easily we reach it, and how few items we need to pick up in a supermarket to make it appear.”

Nicola Rennie discusses How to create a more accessible line chart. “It’s a myth that accessibility means compromising on aesthetics. Instead, accessibility means prioritising communication.”

Sue VanHattum needs beta-readers for Althea and the Mysteries of Calculus, version 8.2. “I’m still finding places where I need to add a bit to make the math clearer. Adding a touch of color here, removing something out of place there. I feel like a sculptor or painter.”

Erick Lee shares A Calculus Esti-Mystery. “Instead of using basic number properties for the clues, I leveled it up. To unlock the clues, my students had to evaluate derivatives.”

And don’t miss the 249th Carnival of Mathematics.

“Fisherman’s Children, Capri” by Sophie Anderson, circa 1870.

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Enjoying Recreational Puzzles and Math Art

“We take strong ground when we appeal to the beauty and truth of Mathematics. Mathematics are to be studied for their own sake and not as they make for general intelligence and grasp of mind. But then how profoundly worthy are these subjects of study for their own sake!”
—Charlotte Mason

David Butler (and daughter) explore a math/art puzzle: Jenga Views. “One thing I particularly like about them is that you don’t need an answer key, because you can just look at your construction and tell if it looks right or not. There’s something empowering about being able to check it yourself.”

John Golden shares a couple of shape puzzles: Five by Five, and his variation on the theme: Seven by Seven. “Easier to solve, but more solutions. Better for free play. If you made something cool, tangram style, I would love to see it!”

Rick Mohr welcomes us to a world of Tiled Art. “enjoy a gallery of artworks as each emerges from an underlying grid. And try creating your own tessellation, with the tiles staying interlocked automatically.”

I post two excerpts from my new book, Charlotte Mason’s Living Math: Discover Math in Art, and the math equation journaling prompt True-False-True. “This puzzle pushes students to consider the structure of mathematical expressions. Make it a game by letting your children challenge you, too.”

Andrew Taylor creates things with math. I’ve been enjoying his puzzle game Celtix. “Celtic knots are a rich tradition, but for the sake of reducing them to a game mechanic you can think of them as ribbons which ‘bounce’ off ‘walls’ which you can add by clicking anywhere that the ribbons cross each other.”

Paula Beardell Krieg demonstrates how to make a Cube with an Open Pocket. You may also enjoy her Snow Day Octahedrons. “I’ve been at my desk, working on geometric solids, doing art and math together. I find focus and comfort here.”

Jonathan Halabi plays with a couple of Birthday Puzzles. Greg Ross finds some harder Words and Numbers. And Pat Ballew digs deeper into Some History Notes about Alphametic Puzzles (and some early versions of a Topology Gem).

Ben Orlin seeks play-testers: Puzzle Planet. “Your collective generosity and wisdom help me to clarify confusing bits, fine-tune difficulty levels, cull inferior puzzles, spotlight superior ones, and sprinkle play-testers’ insight and wit throughout the text.”

Laura looks at the math of bell ringing: I can hear the bells. “Each bell ringer controls a huge bell, often on the order of a tonne in weight. One by one they ring their bells, then switch to a new permutation (a change) and repeat.”

James Propp plays around with probability: In Praise of Stupid Questions. “The way to find things out is to ask a lot of questions. Ask enough questions, and you’re likely to find a new answer: new to you, and once in a while, new to others.”

“Interior with children playing cards” by Hugo Salmson, circa 1900.

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Teaching with Wisdom and Grace

“It can be exhausting to shovel information into our child’s head. We put out a lot of effort without much return, and daily lessons become a struggle of wills. But when we treat a child as a person capable of learning for himself and meet him mind-to-mind, with a focus on understanding big ideas, lessons become a delight.”
—Denise Gaskins

Dan Finkel concludes that Manipulatives in Math Class Are So Worth It. “When it came to mathematizing — linking equations and the rods — the kids who had previous experience building and free playing with the rods made the connections far more readily. Playing with the rods seems to prime the mind to make connections.”

JoAnne Growney wonders, Can Poems Affect Students’ Math-Attitudes? “One useful viewpoint is that math need not be treated as an isolated subject . . . it is connected to our lives in VERY MANY ways.”

Growney also links to two contests your students still have time to enter: Creative Writing — Including Mathematics. For inspiration, consider her poem Like Poetry, Mathematics is Beautiful.

Cathy Yenca details how to prepare The April Fool’s Day Math Activity Students Never Forget. “I decided I wanted to prank my students, but not the kind of prank that derails a lesson. I wanted something that would make students lean into the math instead of checking out.“

Jenna Laib discusses Measuring Growth in Mathematical Reasoning: What Mia’s Thinking Reveals. “I confess: sometimes I find wrong answers more interesting than right ones. There can be so many ways to get something wrong!”

Craig Barton creates interactive tools and games for teachers. “End of lesson treat or whiteboard activity for the whole class. Project a game and play together!”

The Math is FigureOutAble team highlights Leonhard Euler: The Blind Mathematician Who Saw Everything. “Every student can learn to think like a mathematician. They can persist through challenges, adjust their thinking, and experience the satisfaction of figuring something out. They do not need perfect conditions or special talent. They need instruction that invites sense making and builds confidence over time.”

David Butler shares More wisdom from the Dodecahedron about the humanity of doing math. “I find that maths is full of emotion. Frustration, curiosity, surprise, satisfaction, pride, sadness, companionship, wonder, silliness, joy — they’re all there, sometimes in quick succession.”

“The Knitting Lesson” by Jean-François Millet, circa 1860.

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Giving Credit Where It’s Due

Quotations are from my new book Charlotte Mason’s Living Math. Public domain art is primarily from Wikimedia Commons.

And that rounds up this edition of the Playful Math Education Blog Carnival. I hope you enjoyed the ride.

The next installment of our carnival will open sometime during the 2nd quarter of 2026 at Nature Study Australia. Visit our blog carnival information page for more details.

“The Lesson” by Charles Chaplin, circa 1880. #Activities #AllAges #Games #MTaPPlayfulMathCarnival #Puzzles #Quotations

#activities #allages #games #mtapplayfulmathcarnival #puzzles #quotations

Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2023-11-29 · 23:31 UTC

Illicit goings-on beneath the New Town setts: the thread about the life and crimes of the Scotland Street Tunnel

Scotland Street, on the northern firnge of Edinburgh’s Second or Northern New Town; not the grandest or longest such street, but certainly one of the more interesting. But what draws me to it is what you cannot see – the 1,052 yard long tunnel running a few tens of feet beneath its granite setts. Previous threads have looked in detail at the construction, engineering and operation of the tunnel, its terminus at Canal Street Station or tragic accidents during its service life. No, as the title suggests this story is about the various criminal goings-on that it attracted in its short service life from 1847-1868.

Looking south up Scotland Street. CC-by-SA 2.0 Jim Barton via Geograph

Things start getting going in our story in February 1858 when an urgent telegram arrived at the Leith Police station with a description of a man wanted in Aberdeen for thefts and who had fled that city on the steamer Sovereign, bound for Granton.

Advert for the Aberdeen, Leith & Clyde Shipping Co. steamer “Sovereign” in the Edinburgh Evening Courant, 26th June 1858

Two detectives were despatched from Leith to Granton station which was adjacent to the steamer quay. Here they managed to identify their mark but instead of clapping him in irons then and there, they boarded the same compartment on the Edinburgh train as him, and only announced themselves to him once they started heading south towards Scotland Street.

Granton Harbour and Pier, c. 1880, from Grant’s Old & New Edinburgh. The trains in the foreground are running on the railway embankment, Granton Middle Pier, where the station buildings are, lies beyond, with the steamers tied up alongside

They made the suspect “aware of his predicament” but did not handcuff him. At Scotland Street Station their train was detached from the locomotive and attached to the haulage rope which would pull it up the tunnel incline to its destination at Canal Street. With a jerk, the train moved off into the darkness – there was no carriage lighting.

So you can imagine the look of surprise on the detectives’ faces when they emerged into the light at Canal Street Station only to find they were now alone in the compartment! Their man had somehow managed to slip silently out of the carriage in the pitch darkness of the tunnel! After alerting the railway authorities, the detectives trudged off back down the tunnel to search Scotland Street Station. On arriving there and interrogating the staff, it was found that a porter had seen a man emerging from the tunnel who had climbed over a fence, never to be seen again. The police had to be consoled in retrieving their suspect’s luggage, in which the items he had been accused of stealing in Aberdeen were found.

You would think that police accompanying prisoners through the tunnel would have been more careful in future. You’d think, but they weren’t, and in January 1864 a prisoner by the name of Peter Brown managed to pull off the same trick. Brown, (aka John Graham, aka John Farrel, aka Robert Young) had been detained in Larbert a few days previously by Superintendent Gray for the crime of stealing a silver watch, a pair of trousers, a vest and a shirt from the house of Widow McKay in the High Street of Falkirk. He had been cooling his heels in Perth Prison ever since, but was now to be brought to Edinburgh for the purposes of identifying him for other offences. A single officer was to accompany him, who at least took the precaution of handcuffing him. They took the 145PM from Perth, which had to cross the Forth by steamer from Burntisland to Granton, before picking up the train again for the short ride into the city centre via the tunnel. Once again, an unlucky officer emerged at the Canal Street terminus without his charge.

“A watercolour showing an east view of Edinburgh taken from the Scott Monument”, with a train emerging from the Scotland Street Tunnel to the terminus of the railway at Canal Street Station. Beyond lies the station that would grow into Waverley. Princes Street is on the left, Waverley Bridge in the foreground. Joseph Ebsworth, 1847, © Edinburgh Museums & Galleries

He had actually noticed his prisoner missing while in the tunnel but groping around in the dark for him, all he had managed to do was to upset his understandably surprised fellow passengers. Telegraphs were sent off and the policeman ran off down the tunnel in pursuit. Half way back down, the prisoner’s cap was retrieved. Back at Scotland Street Station, a porter once again described seeing a man emerge from the tunnel before existing the station, never to never be seen again. Once again, the Police were left empty handed and with egg on their faces. The Stirling Observer expressed surprise that a felon who was so “peculiarly dull-looking” could have managed to outwit the authorities with such “a daring piece of cleverness.”

Looking up to Scotland Street – marked by the street lamp – from the tunnel portal. A staircase was once fixed to the iron supports on the right. Photo © Self

Thefts were common on the railway. That very same day that the fugitive from Aberdeen had given the Leith Police the slip in the tunnel – Friday 12th February 1858 – James Ross, “a perfect adept in the light-fingered art” plead guilty at the Edinburgh Police Court to pickpocketing eight half-crowns from a lady at the station the previous day; for his efforts he received 60 days hard labour. In July 1859, a woman travelling from Leith to Edinburgh was relieved of £6, 17s 3d from her purse by three “Cockney gentlemen” who joined her in a first class compartment at Bonnington Station and left again in peculiar circumstances at Scotland Street, loudly claiming to all in the carriage that they had bought the wrong tickets and wanted instead to go to Granton. The victim arrived at Canal Street to find her purse empty, and immediately gave a description to the Police. There was a problem with a “Swell Mob” of Cockney pickpockets in Edinburgh that summer and the Police knew where they liked to hang out in the howffs of the West Port. Detectives Youdall and Leadbetter were efficient in their duties, picking up Richard Myars in a “thieves den” before finding John Tonner and James Clark hiding under a bed in their lodging house in the nearby Grassmarket. They had £7 between them, despite previously pleading to the Police that they had insufficient funds to leave the city. For their troubles their £7 was given to the victim in compensation and each got 60 days in the Calton Gaol, before being run out of town.

“The Thieves Den”, an engraving of an 18th century William Hogarth illustration.

In October of that year, a most unusual “crime” took place in the tunnel – the transport of illicit cookies! A Mr Nottman had bought six cookies from Mr Robert Young, the licensee of the refreshment rooms at Canal Street Station and was observed to do this by PC Donald Bain. Nottman and his cookies boarded the train for Scotland Street Station and was followed by PC Bain, followed in fact all the way to his house in Bonnington where he intended to eat said cookies. The consumption of the cookies “off premises” was a clear violation of the Forbes Mackenzie Act under which premises were licensed.

Canal Street Station, with the refreshment rooms on the left and the ticket office on the right. In the background is the North Bridge and in the foreground is the Waverley Bridge. CC-by-NC National Galleries Scotland

The Procurator Fiscal (in Scottish law, the Public Prosecutor), Mr Linton, was keen to enforce this particular act to the full extent of his powers and had Robert Young and Nottman sent before Sheriff Hallard to explain themselves. Despite a good defence by the solicitor Mr Rollo, WS, and good character references, the Sheriff said he had no alternative but to fine Young £1 5s for his crime of selling off-sales cookies (the alternative was 10 days imprisonment!); Nottman escaped with a ticking off. This was the third such conviction within a week in Edinburgh, on Friday October 7th, Bailie Cassels at the Police Court applied the same fine to David Doull of Princes Street for selling “a few penny tarts” and Mr Ridpath of the North British Railway refreshment room for selling “a number of muffins” for consumption off premises.

The northern portal of the tunnel at Scotland Street Station, with a recently-affixed plaque by the National Transport Trust. Photo © Self

This was not the only time the railway found themselves on the receiving end of the Edinburgh Sheriff Court. On this day, November 29th, in 1861 the Edinburgh Evening Courant reported that Sheriff Jameson awarded 5 guineas damages to Mr Robert Riddel, a merchant of Blairpark, Ferry Road. The defendant in the case was the Edinburgh, Perth & Dundee Railway company which ran the Scotland Street tunnel. Riddel sued the Railway for their treatment of him on the 6th November when, after buying a 1st Class ticket from Bonnington to Edinburgh with friends, they found the carriages full so they sat instead in 2nd class. Riddel was annoyed that this sort of thing happened too often, and so at Scotland Street station he asked the ticket collector to refund him the difference. When the collector declined, Riddel kept hold of his ticket (he was meant to hand it in) and said he’d take the matter up instead at the Canal Street terminus with a higher authority. The ticket collector was having none of it, fetched the station master and the pair physically ejected Riddel from the train. He was “severely sprained in one of his hands” and detained against his will at Scotland Street before being refused a refund or onward transport. In finding for Riddel, the Sheriff set a precedent that passengers were entitled to a refund if they could not travel in the means which they had paid a ticket for due to a fault of the railway. Riddel let it be known that he was contributing his damages to the relief fund for the victims of the recent “Heave Awa Land” disaster.

Our last “crime” goes back to the previous year, a “laughable incident” that was widely reported in July 1858 under the tongue in cheek heading of “A Merchant’s Last ‘Stroke of Business’“. It involved an unfortunate but persistent woman of “prepossessing appearance“, one who ultimately had the last laugh. Our heroine arrived in Edinburgh from London in early July by steamer. Her purpose was marriage to “a commercial gentlemen belonging to this city“, their courtship having taken place by correspondence. She had with her all her possessions and with these boarded the train for Scotland Street where she was met by her lover.

Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard have a Brief Encounter out of a railway carriage window. Still from the 1945 film. Carlton-ITC/LFI CFD0079-Brief-S001

“After many tender words were said” her fiancée went to retrieve her luggage from the van only to find it was empty. Both were astonished and after an hour of enquiries the man began to start having doubts about his bride and came to believe she was not whom she claimed to be. He imagined he was to marry a comfortably off woman, but now feared she had nothing to her name besides the clothes she stood up in. They had planned to be married then and there but he managed to put her off and “excuse himself” on account of his business arrangements. His jilted bride-to-be retreated back up the tunnel to the City to make more enquiries at Canal Street and find herself a hotel. From here, she sent word to her lover to please come and join her when he was done with work. But he never did. Distressed by her lack of spouse and lack of luggage, she returned to the station and was advised to take the train back down the tunnel to the steamer quay at Granton in case it was there. Imagine her surprise when at Scotland Street she saw all her belongings on the platform!

Disembarking from the carriage, she hurried up the stairs and down again to the other platform. To her horror she found not only her luggage but also her late fiancée, “waiting evidently to proceed on a long journey” and directing a porter to load her things onto a train for Leith! “He could make no answer when interrogated by the lady“, being “completely dumbfounded” at seeing her. In the most persuasive terms, she made him agree to “put off his journey” and marched him and her luggage back up the hill to Edinburgh and married him on the spot! His “business speculation over”, he instead was obliged to “retire to spend the honeymoon in the quiet seclusion of the country“.

A Victorian Couple on the Street, Girl’s Own Paper, 1883.

The Scotland Street Tunnel soldiered on for a few years more but its new owners, the North British Railway, couldn’t wait to get rid of it when the acquired the Edinburgh, Perth & Dundee Railway. They built and opened a diversionary line and closed the tunnel on May 22nd 1868 with all traffic through it ceasing immediately. The tunnel spent the next 20 years doing nothing and was largely forgotten about, but popped up in the newspapers every now and again. Commander J. C. R. Johnston wrote to the Scotsman in April 1870 suggesting that it be used for horse carriages and carts, to bypass the gradients of the New Town, an idea still suggested for cycling and walking.

Letter to the Scotsman, 20th April 1870

Ten years after closure Robert Kerr & Co., a whisky broker and blender in Leith, announced in the Scotsman that they intended to use the tunnel as a bonded warehouse for Wine and Spirits. Nothing came of this idea either. It would be almost another decade before a permanent use was found for the tunnel – from 1887 to 1902 the Scottish Mushroom Co. used it as an industrial-scale mushroom farm! Two tons of mushrooms a week could be harvested (when mould wasn’t killing them off).

“A Tunnel of Mushroom”, the only photo I have seen showing the old platform buildings at Scotland Street Station or an engine entering it. Photo courtesy Old Weird Scotland.

The mushrooms grew on immense quantities of manure which was hauled straight into the tunnel by a steam engine on the old rails. Workers deep inside and working in the darkness with only the flicker of candles banked it up in huge piles as mushroom beds. The railway yard at Scotland Street was used as a manure transfer, storage and mixing depot. Horse manure was the main source – it came straight from Piershill Cavalry Barracks and also from the council’s manure depots where the “scaffies” deposited their collections.

“Removing Street Refuse”, London street sweepers at work in c. 1900 cleaning up horse manure. From Living London, vol. 2, 1902

The manure was mixed when it was at the peak of fermentation, resulting in “a strong effluvia aris[ing]“. As you can imagine this did not go down too well with the residents of Scotland Street and their neighbours. The city’s energetic Public Health officer, Dr Henry Littlejohn, was also alert to the danger it posed and had the midden relocated to Warriston, 500 yards from human habitation. After these initial teething troubles, the Scottish Mushroom Co settled down to business and once again the tunnel faded from popular consciousness. And that might have been that for our story had it not been for a rather amusing and farcical occurrence in 1889.

In November of that year it was announced that Arthur James Balfour, the Irish Secretary, was due to attend a banquet dinner of Unionists and Tories in the Waverley Market on December 5th.

Arthur Balfour in 1890. Glasgow University collection, PD.

Balfour was from the Maitland Balfour family of Whittingehame, East Lothian, and a distant relation of the Balfours of Pilrig and enjoyed significant local interest and popularity. The organisers could not find an establishment large enough to host the event and so had turned to the city’s covered fruit and vegetable market, with fully three quarters taken over for the banquet. The same could not be said of Balfour’s popularity back in Ireland where his ruthless actions against Irish Nationalists earned him the moniker “Bloody Balfour“. The authorities therefore feared the dinner at Waverley would be targeted by Nationalist reprisals and become “a modern Guy Fawkes“. They feared a bomb would be smuggled into the undercroft of the Waverley Market, or even worse, into the Scotland Street Tunnel itself. Such a device it was said “would extinguish Unionism and Toryism in Scotland perpetually” given “every member of any note” was to be present.

Waverley Market, 1885, by George Morham. The man in white trousers is a “scaffie” or street sweeper, the word comes from “scavenger”, which is the caption written above the title of the photo. © Edinburgh City Libraries

A significant police detail was therefore imported to provide protection for Balfour and the dinner, and set about combing the venue for signs of anything untoward. It is important to note that these were not local officers and so were naive about local matters. The police were able to obtain duplicate keys to the gates of the tunnel at its southern end, and entered to search. They neglected to tell the North British Railway what they were up to and set off down the dark tunnel with only a few lamps to guide them. The police didn’t understand what the funky piles along the tunnel were. They boldly pressed on down but their courage failed them when some of the men working the mushroom beds suddenly popped their heads up from behind the manure banks and enquired “Wha’s there?” The officers fled back up the tunnel and could not be convinced to return until it was explained to them what went on down there those days. A thorough search was made of the operation, but all that could be found was manure, mushrooms and the “spawn” used to sew the beds

The only illustration I know of that shows the Scotland Street Tunnel “in operation” dates from about 20 years after its closure, when it was being used as a mushroom farm. The proprietors laid a track some way into the tunnel to bring in the manure on which the mushrooms were grown. The scale is definitely subject to artistic licence. From “Mushrooms for the Million, 1884

The Evening News reported that “the mushroom men were left laughing both at the timidity of their visitors and the fruitlessness of their visit”. Balfour’s dinner passed off uneventful with a banquet for 3,000, “1,000 ladies in the galleries” and seats for 8-10,000 public spectators.

“Graphic” newspaper, December 14th 1889

You may wonder why I’m writing about the Scotland Street Tunnel yet again. Well I do have an ulterior motive, as my learned friend Leslie Hills just so happens to have a new book out now about two centuries of life above ground in Scotland Street. Most conveniently, it’s out in all good bookshops and is launched on Friday 1st December! “10 Scotland Street – the story of an Edinburgh home and its cast of booksellers, silk merchants, sailors, preachers, politicians, cholera and coincidence“. If you are reading this and you like my threads about Edinburgh and Leith history, then you probably like going down the sort of historical rabbit holes and off on tangents, so you’re sure to like Leslie’s book too as it will take you from a door on Scotland Street and around the world! I find a pleasing symmetry that Leslie’s book details what was going on just a few tens of feet above the tunnel at the same time as the shennanigans I have just been relating to you were going on tens of feet below the people in her book. Be there! I was very honoured to be able to contribute in a small way to this book and am only too pleased to commend it to you too.

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