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348 results for “newhinton”
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Delighted to see my chum and former colleague Caden win the Scottish Independent Bookshop of the Year award https://theedinburghreporter.co.uk/2026/03/newington-bookshop-wins-at-british-book-awards/
I know when they worked with us, setting up their own romance-themed bookshop was their dream. In a year and a half they & their team & supporters have really built it into a community space.
#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #books #livres #bookshops #librairies #bookstodon
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Delighted to see my chum and former colleague Caden win the Scottish Independent Bookshop of the Year award https://theedinburghreporter.co.uk/2026/03/newington-bookshop-wins-at-british-book-awards/
I know when they worked with us, setting up their own romance-themed bookshop was their dream. In a year and a half they & their team & supporters have really built it into a community space.
#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #books #livres #bookshops #librairies #bookstodon
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Nintendo Switch 2 is here to redefine gaming! Larger screen, better Joy-Cons, and backwards compatibility. Get ready for 2025!
Here's all we know about it: https://www.theomenmedia.com/post/nintendo-switch-2-unveiled-the-next-evolution-in-gaming-arrives
#NintendoSwitch2 #GamingRevolution #NewNintendo #ConsoleWars #BackwardsCompatibility #MarioKart #Switch2Announcement #NintendoDirect #NintendoFans #GamingNews #NextGenConsole
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My mother-in-law set up the #Nextcloud app to back up photos from her #Android phone. However, no photos were uploaded. I thought she did something wrong, but in fact it was set up correctly, including all permissions. But nothing was even queued for upload. I couldn't make it work either.
I got a recommendation for #FolderSync, but it's freemium and it felt fishy with all the data consent dialogs. Then I went to #FDroid and discovered #RoundSync and wow, it's a great piece of software, clean, lean and does reliably what I want it to do. The sad fact is that @newhinton, app developer, gets 3€/month for it on Liberapay. We really need to get more money into open source apps.
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@Thebratdragon @auguryignored I think Peter F. Hamilton announced a new project that is due this year.
(He also confirmed sequels to the salvation-sequence, im very excited)
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@Thebratdragon @auguryignored I think Peter F. Hamilton announced a new project that is due this year.
(He also confirmed sequels to the salvation-sequence, im very excited)
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@Thebratdragon @auguryignored I think Peter F. Hamilton announced a new project that is due this year.
(He also confirmed sequels to the salvation-sequence, im very excited)
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@Thebratdragon @auguryignored I think Peter F. Hamilton announced a new project that is due this year.
(He also confirmed sequels to the salvation-sequence, im very excited)
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Here is an other post of my series about #^WebDAV & CO .
In the last posts we learn who to mount the Hubzilla/streams cloud by WebDAV to our desktop or phone.
Now if we would have the option to auto-sync folders into or from the Hubzilla/streams cloud this would gives us even more abilities and extended usability.
For auto-sync folders form an android phone you can try RoundSync
#^https://github.com/newhinton/Round-Sync/releases
The project builds on rclone and is fork from RXC
#^https://github.com/x0b/rcx
#^https://f-droid.org/packages/io.github.x0b.rcx/
RXC is also a very useful app but it is lacking the auto-sync function.
After you set up the WebDAV remote connection in RoundSync you can add tasks and timer for triggering the different tasks - i love it.
On your desktop and if you are on Linux you can have a look at Celeste
#^https://github.com/hwittenborn/celeste
#^https://flathub.org/apps/com.hunterwittenborn.Celeste
First set up the WebDAV connection and add to the URL also a folder in your cloud if you like
than set up the local folder like:
Celeste works very well - the downside is that we can´t set a time-period for syncing... when Celeste is running sync will start every 2 second...
Auto-sync folders can be very useful for a lot of things, not just for backups.
You may post and tell us about the use cases you come up with.
I use it to save my photo collection of images i find in the web to a HZ photo album. Also edited notes from Joplin can be shared this way automatically.
In the next post i will show an Android audio player which can play your privat music /audio file collection from your WebDAV streaming cloud.
STAY TUNED and keep following
#WebDAV #DAV #Hubzilla #Streams #Howto #Cloud #Sync #auto-sync -
When faux hand-painted fascia signs make it onto technical drawings attached to planning applications.
In this case, Chris' Auto Repairs by This Is My Costume (TIMC) on Stoke Newington Church Street, Hackney, London.
Here's the full TIMC story:
https://bl.ag/renegade-writing-londons-faux-fascias/#renegade-writing-london%E2%80%99s-faux-fascias
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Welcome followers that I've migrated from my previous Ghostsigns account on mastodon.social. I'm now posting that stuff here, alongside my wider adventures in sign painting with @sam .
I won't be offended if you just want the ghost signs stuff and choose to unfollow me and/or follow the #Ghostsigns tag 😊
Pictured is the sign that started all this in the first place: Waterman's Ideal Fountain Pen / Walker Bros., Stoke Newington Church St., London N16.
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A London Inheritance viaits Stoke Newington, and some of its ghost signs.
https://alondoninheritance.com/london-streets/a-stoke-newington-church-street-ghost-sign/
I've added a comment to give a bit more context to the main sign so scroll to the end to see that.
Thank you @RoyReed for the tip-off.
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@overholt That's brilliant.
Something similar happens to sign painters that don't prepare, eg this one in London where they realised that Stoke Newington wouldn't fit in all uppercase letters and adjusted themselves accordingly.
The sign features in the book by @ghostsigns and @RoyReed, see https://ghostsigns.co.uk/book.
#ghostsigns #London #PostOffice #StokeNewington #N16 #SignPainting
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I'm heading to London tomorrow for a string of #ghostsigns walking tours.
Here are three of the signs that I'll be showing on my Stoke Newington walk.
You can go into the ALT text on these images to learn more about the individual signs, and to see transcriptions of those in #palimpsest with multiple layers of text.
These descriptive texts are taken from my digital walks: https://ghostsigns.co.uk/tours
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The thread about a Christmas-themed A to Z of Edinburgh and Leith place names
For no particular reason other than the time of year, let’s take an A to Z look into some of the street and place names of Edinburgh and Leith and see what festive or seasonal connections we might find.
A Very Merry Xmas, a Christmas card featuring the spire of St. Giles High Kirk and a stylised Old Town roofscape c. 1900 © Edinburgh City LibrariesA is for Albert Street. This street in Leith was named for the Prince Consort, Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, around 1870 to commemorate his death in 1861. Albert is credited with introducing the first Christmas trees to Britain (he didn’t apparently it was Queen Charlotte – of Mecklenburg-Strelitz – in 1800)
Albert Street, off Leith WalkB is for Bethlehem Way. This is a rather insipid development of modern flats in the Lochend area of the city, built on the site of the old Hawkhill Quarry. I’m afraid I cannot offer an explanation as to why this name was picked – this area has no biblical or Middle Eastern connection that I know of.
Bethlehem WayB is for Bell’s. There are a number of Bell place names in the city, but I have picked Bell’s Brae, that charmingly steep street that connects Queensferry Street to the Water of Leith Village (which you might call Dean Village). At one time this was in the parish of the West Kirk so had to be climbed each week to attend church, so this was known as the Kirk Brae. It was named Bell’s after the millers of that name further upstream at Bell’s Mill.
Bell’s BraeC is for Chestnut Street. This is named for a rock just off of Granton’s western breakwater and for a street name is rather odd as it was first named as late as 1985, before disappearing again when the industrial area of Granton docks was cleared. It was then being re-used in a street nearby within the last few years for new build housing. It is named for the rock of that name in the Forth.
Chestnut rock marked on a coastal chart. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandD is for Drum. As any parent knows, the worst gift you can ever receive for your small child is a drum. From the Gaelic Druim meaning literally “back”; it describes a ridge or raised ground. See also The Drum in Gilmerton, Drumbrae in Corstorphine, etc. The Drum in Leith is not that obvious now that it has been built on, but is the higher ground above Lochend Loch and was once a house and market garden of that name here, it was once the district name and is what the Hibernian F.C. ground was called before it was named Easter Road.
OS 1893 Town Plan, Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandE is for Elf Loch. One of the sometimes overlooked bodies of water in the city boundary. Also called the Diedman’s Pool, this more festive name is possibly from the Gaelic ailbhinn or British elfin, meaning a rocky precipice, of which there are many nearby . An ancient, natural water feature it’s easily mistaken for a water obstacle on the golf course which surrounds it.
Elf Loch, cc-by-SA Richard WebbF is for Fir Hill. The suburb of Firrhill or Firr Hill is a mid-19th century mapmaker’s corruption of Fir Hill, in reference to the festive trees that grew there once upon a time. The school of this name features a fir tree on its badge and has the Gaelic motto Air Carraig, or “on the rock”.
“Fir Hill”. OS 6 inch survey, 1855. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandG is For Guse Dub. Guse is the old Scots word for a Goose, and the Dub referred to a pond and spring where geese were once raised. This has long been the name of a little corner of Causewayside, where it meets the Crosscauseway.
Guse Dub and Buccleuch Street. CC-by-NC Leo ReynoldsH is for Holly and I is for Ivy, two streets in the Merchiston and Shandon “colonies” houses built by the Edinburgh Co-operative Building Company, who often used the names of trees and flowers for their terraces of high-quality model workers houses.
OS 1893 Town Plan, Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandJ is for St. Joseph’s, the name of a Catholic Church and Primary school in the Broomhouse area of the city. It was one of the last R.C. parishes in Edinburgh to be formed, to serve the expanding post-war population in the council housing estates in the west of the city.
St. Joseph’s RC Church, CC-by-SA 4.0 Walker287K is for the King’s Stables. Now the name of the road which connects Lothian Road to the Grassmarket, it was here in 1335 that Edward III of England’s occupying garrison built a royal stables for the King’s cavalry horses. As the centre of Royal power in the city migrated to Holyrood in the 16th century, the stables fell out of use and were sold in 1527. The name stuck though, and it has been as such ever since.
Castle from the King’s Stables Roads, unknown photographer and date. Cc-by-NC National Galleries ScotlandL is for Lamb’s House. OK, perhaps a bit contrived but I was struggling on this one and I’m pretty sure the shepherds brought at least one lamb with them to the stable in Bethlehem. Lamb’s House, named for the merchant and shipowner Andrew Lamb, is a 17th century house in Leith and one of that Port’s oldest buildings. It was sold by the National Trust for Scotland and restored in 2012.
The restored Lamb’s House, CC-by-SA 2.0 Stephen CravenM is for Mary. There are lots of Mary- place names in Edinburgh and more than a few churches and cathedral’s dedicated to her as a Saint. There are two Maryfields in Edinburgh. One was an old 1840s house at the head of Easter Road, giving its name to the area, and a current street and colony row in Abbeyhill. These fancy -field names after female relatives, were common. e.g. Annfield, Elizafield. Jessfield.
OS 1893 Town Plan, Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandN is for St. Nicholas. If we go back to pre-reformation times, St. Nicholas was the chapel and burial ground of North Leith (although not its parish church). It was occupied by Cromwell’s Protectorate army after the Scottish Covenanters’ defeat at Dunbar in 1650, later being swept away when his Citadel was built in 1655. The only image I know if it is in the corner of the “Petworth House Map” of the Siege of Leith, when it was fortified as a strong point (note the trench around it and the cannons).
St Nicholas’ Chapel, from the 1560 “Petworth House Map” of the Siege of Leith. PHA 4640, Reproduced by the kind permission of Lord Egremont and with acknowledgements to the County Archivist, West Sussex Record OfficeO is for Oxford Street, both London’s centre of festive shopping and a short street in Newington. Named for Oxford Park which was here beforehand, the reason behind that is long lost to memory and time.
Oxford StreetP is for Perdrixknowe. The house of this name was built as Waverley House by the fountain pen magnate Duncan Cameron, but reverted to its old area name of Perdrixknowe (Partridge Hill) when converted into sheltered housing in the 1980s.
Perdrixknowe, once Waverley HouseQ is for Quality Street. Chocolates anyone? There were once two Quality Streets; one in Leith and one in Blackhall. Usually the duplicate streets in Leith and Edinburgh had one renamed to avoid postal confusion, in this case it was Leith that changed, to Maritime Street, which was ironic as the one in Blackhall was most likely named after it about 150 years later! It was possibly named after a fashionable property in London at the time.
OS Town Plan, 1849, Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandR is for Red (as in Rudolph the Reindeer). There’s lots of Edinburgh place names with “Red” in them. Redford, Redbraes, Redheughs, etc. Redhall is one of the longest established, being recorded in the 13th century and referring to a hall house built out of the local reddish sandstone from the Redhall quarry. It was later fortified and eventually referred to as a castle. It was reduced by Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army before the Battle of Dunbar in 1650 and fell into disrepair. George Inglis of Auchendinny later built a mansion house on the estate.
Redhall House. CC-BY-SA Anne BurgessS is for Sleigh Drive, named – along with a number of other streets in the Lochend council housing estate – after Sir William Lowrie Sleigh, DL, LLD, JP, Lord Provost of Edinburgh (1923–1926). The Corporation had a bit of a habit of naming their new housing schemes after recent Lord Provosts at this time (see also Chesser, Hutchison, Stevenson and Whitson). Sleigh made his name and money in the bicycle trade with a partner – Ross – trading under the name Rossleigh. they later moved into the motor and chauffeuring trade and are still going in the latter business.
Sir W. L. Sleigh by Cowan Dobson, © Edinburgh Museums and GalleriesT is for The East Way. How else did the Three Wise Men get where they were going? The East Way is a named footpath in the pioneering 1919 council housing development of Northfield which was laid out on Garden City principles with concentric rings of streets connected by footpaths. The others are named The North Way and The High Way.
The East Way, NorthfieldU is for Upper Bow. Bow (pronounced Bough, traditionally, but Bow these days) was an old Scots term for an arched gateway, and before the construction of the West Port the West Bow was the western entrance into the city. The street was an awkward, steep dog-leg, the upper part of which was the Upper Bow, the top being the Bowhead where in antiquity there was a tron or public weigh house in the centre of the Lawnmarket. When George IV Bridge was built in the 1830s, the West Bow was redirected to connect to it, leaving the Upper Bow as a little stub, connected to it by a public stairway.
V is for Victoria Street. It is the Victorians who are credited with popularising the celebration of Christmas in the UK after all, and instituting many of the British traditions associated with it. Conveniently, this is what the West Bow was renamed to when it was diverted to connect to George IV bridge, to commemorate the recent accession of Queen Victoria. It is one of Edinburgh’s most picture postcard little streets, but is usually covered in cars despite recent attempts to make it pedestrianised.
Victoria Street. CC-by-SA 3.0 Daniel KraftW is for Whisky Row. Now renamed Elbe Street to reflect Leith’s North Sea trade with Hamburg on that river, it was once an address of numerous wine and spirits merchants in the Port. Cheers! Slàinte is Nollaig Cridheil!
Ainslie’s Town Plan of 1804. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandX is for Nothing. What naughty children get in their stockings – but mainly as there are no X- placenames in Edinburgh or Leith.
Y is for Yool. Yool’s place was an old street in Portobello. Thomas Yool or Yoole set up the pottery on the site with his nephew, Thomas Rathbone and a business partner John Thomas, and gave his name to a short street. Pottery was the once prosperous industry of the town, built as it was by claypits to house the workers of the brick and later pottery industries. After Yool’s death the business continued as T. Rathbone & Co., by Rathbone’s son – John – before being bought in 1839 by new owners.
OS 1944 Town Plan. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandZ is for Nothing, there’s only one Z- placename in Edinburgh and that’s named after Zetland, the traditional county name for the Shetland Islands.
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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret -
The Edinburgh Hostels for Women Students: the thread about their wartime role as Internment Camps for “Enemy Aliens”
This thread was originally written and published in January 2023.
An intriguing image was tweeted today, with the caption “WWII Prisoner of War Camp, Scotland, November 1939“:
Note, this tweet has been re-inserted as an image, as under current ownership, “Twitter” has completely and deliberately broken embedding and cooperation with other social media platforms such as WordPress.Where was this camp? The soldier is very obviously equipped by the British Army, but the building doesn’t look very Scottish, does it? In fact it looks more like a French chateau. Is it a school, a hospital wing or a sanatorium? I didn’t know, so I shared the picture and quickly the answer came back (thanks Sean McPartlin, Graeme Dickson and Ian “Silverback”). It is the Suffolk Road Halls of Residence or to give them their proper name, the Edinburgh Hostels for Women Students. These were used as an internment camp for “enemy aliens” at the start of the war.
Carlyle Hostel in 2001A 20 acre site in Newington, which had formed part of the the Craigmillar Golf Course, was purchased in 1913 for £10,000 by the Edinburgh Association for the Provision of Hostels for Women Students for a purpose-built accommodation hostel – or halls of residence. The Association was a joint venture between the Edinburgh Provincial Committee for the Training of Teachers, Edinburgh University, the Edinburgh College of Art, the Edinburgh Merchant Company and the Edinburgh Episcopal Training College. The hostels were “for the more satisfactory housing of women students” and were intended to eventually have a capacity for 350, with 250 reserved for teaching students at Moray House College. There already existed two small halls of residence for women medical students, converted from houses, on George Square.
Each hostel had a common room, library and dining room and 52 separate study bedrooms. They were grouped around a quadrangle which had a hockey field and tennis courts. The architect was Alan Keith Robinson. This was the first large commission for Robinson and his partner Thomas Aikman Swan, but would be his last. Both volunteered to fight in WW1 and Robinson refused a commission so that he could fight “in the line”. He was severely wounded and was invalided out of the army in 1917. He attempted to restart his practice and partnership but his wounds prevented him properly realising this and he died from them in May 1925.
Carlyle (l) and Darroch (r) HostelsThe first three hostels (Buchanan, Balfour and Playfair) were opened in June 1917 by Sir J. Alfred Ewing, Principal of the University at a cost of with £79,000; £44,000 from the Treasury and the bulk of the remainder from the Carnegie Trust. The running costs were to be met entirely by fees, in 1917 this was an annual £30 (about £2,600 in 2023).
The glory of the Scottish Universities is that they are open not simply to the rich but to those of very moderate means indeed. In Scotland we have always been proud of the fact that we have to cultivate the Muses on a little oatmeal, and even at the present price of oatmeal a Scottish University Education is cheap! There will, I feel sure, be a great satisfaction to all that a comparatively new side in university life will be developed in Scotland, namely the communal life; true education is not simply a matter of listening to lectures and studying books.
Opening speech by Sir Alfred EwingTwo further hostels – Carlyle and Darroch – were added in 1928 to Robinson’s original designs by Frank Wood, at a cost of £60,000, adding 120 additional bedrooms.
So how did the hostels end up in the photo at the top of this page, fenced off behind barbed wire and with armed guards in watch towers? A brief notice in the Edinburgh Evening News of 30th October 1939 states that the hostels had been “taken over for national purposes.” But the “prisoners of war” in the picture are not servicemen, they are interned civilians. Most were sailors who had been caught in – or en route to – British ports, or in service on ships of Allied-aligned nations at the outbreak of war. Others were simply people of German birth who had been resident in Scotland but now found themselves to be undesirables; “enemy aliens“.
One of the latter category was Adolf Theurer, an hotel chef at the North British Hotel in Edinburgh who “hated the war, and hated the Nazis, but was a German.” Theurer, 61, had lived in Scotland for 44 years and had been at the NB for 37, but had never become naturalised – with war approaching he felt his poor health and good record as a citizen would stand in his favour. He had been interned during WW1 for 4 and a half years and had declared to his family that we would “rather be put against a wall and shot than be interned again“.
Adolf Theurer, picture in the Sunday PostHowever, when he appeared at the “Aliens Tribunal” on October 12th 1939 they found against him and interned him at East Suffolk Road. Those subject to appearance at the tribunal were allowed no legal representation, but Theurer’s manager at the hotel had attended and spoke in his favour. He never saw his family again, and died 5 days later, “broken hearted”, from a heart attack. His family, at 16 Claremont Crescent, were only informed after his death and had not been allowed the opportunity to visit him during his final illness.
Theurer’s “Male Enemy Alien” index card, with the word “Dead” coldly printed in block capitals. © Crown Copyright Images reproduced by courtesy of The National ArchivesTheurer had been an active member of the German Congregation of Edinburgh, which had been forced to disband during WW1, and had assisted in the sale of its chapel to the Brethren after the war, an order in which he was also active. His wife – Johanna Becker – was also German (although her mother was Aberdonian and she was born in London) and they had three children in Edinburgh; George Adolf, Christina and William. His family were not allowed to take possession of his body, instead it was kept in the police mortuary. He was tragically unlucky; at this early stage of the war, relatively few Germans had been incarcerated. In May 1940 the Minister of Home Security, Sir John Anderson, informed the House of Commons that of 73,535 “aliens” in the country, only 569 – less than 1% – had been interned. There was an outcry of public sympathy for him and his funeral at Piershill Cemetery was well attended. John Mcgovern, the Independent Labour Party MP for Glasgow Shettleston raised a question in the House of Commons about the circumstances surrounding his death. Anderson replied that a “report would be prepared“.
This was not even the end of the Theurers’ travails however; on Friday 10th May 1940, two detectives knocked on the door of the Theurer house in Edinburgh while the family were eating a meal and requested that Johanna Theurer pack a case and follow them. Despite her protest, she was taken to Saughton Prison and sent into internment too. Her younger son, William, was a promising footballer who played with Blackpool and in Edinburgh, St. Bernards and later Hibs. He was a British citizen and was exempted from war service as a conscientious objector, telling his tribunal “I am not a member of any church, but my father was a member of the Plymouth Brethren. The horrors of war have been brought to my own door by his death“. He accompanied his mother to the prison gates.
William TheurerWilliam’s younger brother, George Adolf, went on to become a successful wigmaker in Edinburgh after the war. He was usually known as Adolf, one wonders if this was a direct tribute to his late father given the connotations such a name would have had at the time. He became a local politician, town councillor for Broughton Ward for the Progressives, 1959-74, senior Baillie and Deputy Lord Provost of the city and, after political reorganisation, Lothian Regional Councillor 1974-82.
An observation about the photo was made (by Adam Brown of the Scottish Military Research Group) that some of the men were dressed rather like sailors; zooming in we can definitely see men dressed in what look like peaked caps, sweaters and trousers tucked into sea boots! Contemporary newspaper reports confirm that all inmates were required to sew a circle of contrasting coloured cloth on to their outer garments and that most of the 100 kept at East Suffolk Road at this point were merchant seamen – unsurprising given the trade between the Port of Leith and the Baltic.
Prisoners at East Suffolk Road, November 1939On November 18th, three men escaped from the camp, described as “a bow-legged boy of 15 and two others aged 17” The 15-year old was Rudi Platta and the other two were Walther Bartels and Gunther Berger. They were merchant seaman and had managed to steal khaki uniforms – including caps and boots – from off-duty guards while they slept, climb through a window, climb the barbed wire fence and a 10 foot high wall to escape under cover of darkness. Without money, with no English spoken amongst the three and with no real idea where they were going, their chances were not high. They were found 10 hours later walking along the road to Peebles some 20 miles away after a motorist who had passed them heard of their escape on returning home.
Further embarrassment was caused to the authorities (and further sensation was reported in the papers) just 3 days later when two men escaped on the night of 21st November. The pair – George Sluzalek (24) and Franz Feltens (22) were in their civilian attire and again had no money or food, little English, and no plan of where they were going. They became lost, thinking they were heading for the sea but actually they were moving inland. They resorted to eating turnips from a field that had been left out for wintering sheep and were later found nearby, cold and wet, hiding in a yew tree near Dalkeith by an alert gamekeeper.
A detective returns Sluzalek and Feltens (one in his sailor’s pea coat) to Police Headquarters in Edinburgh. Photograph from the Courier and Advertiser, November 22nd 1939A second pair of men – Eber Hord Rolf Fischer, aged 23, and Max Waderphul, aged 38 – also escaped that night, parting company with Sluzalek and Feltens after their breakout. Again they had little idea where they were and had no resources with them, but managed to make an impressive distance on foot. Around 430PM the following day they knocked on a cottage door to the south of Edinburgh to beg for tea in broken English. Although they aroused the suspicion of the householder, she showed them kindness and welcomed them in to her house and made them a small meal of bread and butter, cheese and cold mutton, telling reporters “I never saw anyone so grateful in my life“. They left after 15 minutes and she phoned the police; the men had disappeared by the time they arrived. They were on the run for 36 hours and a man hunt of hundreds of police and soldiers combed the Lothians looking for them. They were recaptured cold, wet, hungry and exhausted by the search parties near Heriot, some 22 miles south of Edinburgh and seemed glad to have been found.
Remarkably, a further three men almost escaped on the 21st but were spotted by a sentry who fired his rifle in their direction, raising the alarm. They were quickly captured by the camp defence unit. Some of the escapees were allowed to answer questions by press. when asked if they “had anything to complain about of the treatment they were receiving at the camp, one of them said emphatically, ‘No‘”. All of the men were reluctant to be drawn into answering questions about the quality and availability of food in Germany vs. Britain.
The Corporation of Edinburgh was deeply unhappy about the location and security of the camp, and at a meeting on the 23rd November it was resolved to make a formal request to relocate it out of the city boundary; Lord Provost Steele was able to tell the assembled councillors that he had already been given notification of the intention to move it. On Monday 4th November, the Aberdeen Evening Express announced that a “motley company” of almost 200 German men had left Edinburgh at Waverley station from “an internment camp on the south of the city – the camp which has been so much in the news recently because of escape bids.” The prisoners were reported to be in good spirits and waved and smiled to morning commuters. Some conversation was made between men who could speak English and railway employees, and cigarettes were shared with the captives.On Tuesday 5th, the Daily Record reported that in total 300 German internment prisoners had left Scotland for England “for the duration of the war”.
On 28th December, the Edinburgh Evening News reported that the camp would now be formally closed, with transit accommodation for processing prisoners “for no more than 48 hours” having been arranged at an unspecified hospital. The East Suffolk Road Hostels were turned over to the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) officer cadets; the women’s branch of the British Army.
ATS Officer Cadets at East Suffolk Road Hostels, 1941. © IWM H 11075The requisition had caused something of a crisis for University Accommodation, which also saw 200 cadets billeted in its other accommodation. As a result most students who kept up their studies in wartime had to stay “in digs”, with the Scotsman reporting they were now sharing 3 and 4 to a single bedroom. The hostels were quickly returned to civilian use post-war, with adverts being taken out in the local newspapers for new wardens in August 1945. Later, they became the Newington Campus of Moray House Teacher Training College, closing in 1997 when this institution merged with the University of Edinburgh. They have since been converted into private housing.
Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret -
4 Days until we learn.... HWAT is up with Hoods Pocket?!?!?!
Season 2 of Welcome to the Horizon coming to the public feed October 28
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Episode art by Existentially Exhausted Bean
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#newintown #WTTH #midnightburgerpodcast #WelcometotheHorizon #audiodrama #SciFiPodcast -
4 Days until we learn.... HWAT is up with Hoods Pocket?!?!?!
Season 2 of Welcome to the Horizon coming to the public feed October 28
.
Episode art by Existentially Exhausted Bean
.
#newintown #WTTH #midnightburgerpodcast #WelcometotheHorizon #audiodrama #SciFiPodcast -
4 Days until we learn.... HWAT is up with Hoods Pocket?!?!?!
Season 2 of Welcome to the Horizon coming to the public feed October 28
.
Episode art by Existentially Exhausted Bean
.
#newintown #WTTH #midnightburgerpodcast #WelcometotheHorizon #audiodrama #SciFiPodcast -
4 Days until we learn.... HWAT is up with Hoods Pocket?!?!?!
Season 2 of Welcome to the Horizon coming to the public feed October 28
.
Episode art by Existentially Exhausted Bean
.
#newintown #WTTH #midnightburgerpodcast #WelcometotheHorizon #audiodrama #SciFiPodcast -
4 Days until we learn.... HWAT is up with Hoods Pocket?!?!?!
Season 2 of Welcome to the Horizon coming to the public feed October 28
.
Episode art by Existentially Exhausted Bean
.
#newintown #WTTH #midnightburgerpodcast #WelcometotheHorizon #audiodrama #SciFiPodcast -
If you're in #london on the 15th this month we will be baking some #empanadas and DJing Latin American music at Stoke Newington.
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"We kindle this chalice flame because there is darkness
In our world, the shadows of injustice, oppression, hunger, and pain fill too many lives with gloom
We light this small flame
Not because it will vanquish all darkness
But because it is a start
Because rather than condemn the dark
We have chosen to bring light"Courtesy of Newington Green & Islington Unitarians, on behalf of we Unitarian Universalists everywhere.
#Unitarian
#universalis
#faith
#hope
#darkness
#light
#religion -
NONE OF Y'ALL LOVE ME! I HAD TO FIND SOMETHING ALL BY MYSELF! 😔 *pouts*
ok, it looks like RoundSync may be the app am looking for. am testing it right now.
https://f-droid.org/packages/de.felixnuesse.extract/
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Nintendo Switch 2 is here to redefine gaming! Larger screen, better Joy-Cons, and backwards compatibility. Get ready for 2025!
Here's all we know about it: https://www.theomenmedia.com/post/nintendo-switch-2-unveiled-the-next-evolution-in-gaming-arrives
#NintendoSwitch2 #GamingRevolution #NewNintendo #ConsoleWars #BackwardsCompatibility #MarioKart #Switch2Announcement #NintendoDirect #NintendoFans #GamingNews #NextGenConsole
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Nintendo Switch 2 is here to redefine gaming! Larger screen, better Joy-Cons, and backwards compatibility. Get ready for 2025!
Here's all we know about it: https://www.theomenmedia.com/post/nintendo-switch-2-unveiled-the-next-evolution-in-gaming-arrives
#NintendoSwitch2 #GamingRevolution #NewNintendo #ConsoleWars #BackwardsCompatibility #MarioKart #Switch2Announcement #NintendoDirect #NintendoFans #GamingNews #NextGenConsole
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Nintendo Switch 2 is here to redefine gaming! Larger screen, better Joy-Cons, and backwards compatibility. Get ready for 2025!
Here's all we know about it: https://www.theomenmedia.com/post/nintendo-switch-2-unveiled-the-next-evolution-in-gaming-arrives
#NintendoSwitch2 #GamingRevolution #NewNintendo #ConsoleWars #BackwardsCompatibility #MarioKart #Switch2Announcement #NintendoDirect #NintendoFans #GamingNews #NextGenConsole
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@sesivany @newhinton I am pretty happy with #PhotoSync. Give it a try. So far I have tried #photoprism and #Immich as targets.
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Lupa review: Theo James restaurant
Yes, opening another Italian restaurant in that sweet spot between Stoke Newington and Clerkenwell might sound bold – especially given the likes of Trullo nearby – but bold they most certainly have gone. It’s a menu that doesn’t whisper: think fiori di zucca stu…
#dining #cooking #diet #food #Italiancafefood #cafefood #Features #Italia #Italian #italiano #italy #textaboveleftsmall #web
https://www.diningandcooking.com/2193344/lupa-review-theo-james-restaurant/ -
Queen of the High Street: the thread about the life and times of Esta Henry
On this day (January 15th) in 1963, a small silver airliner with 45 people on board took off from Sao Paulo in Brazil en route for Rio de Janeiro. Moments later it plunged into the ground in the city’s suburbs, taking with it 13 lives. The last victim to be identified was that of Esta Henry, a renowned and somewhat eccentric Edinburgh antiques dealer; her husband Paul was at her side and perished too. Thus ended the final chapter in the colourful life of the lady the papers called the Queen of the High Street. Her surprising story now follows.
Serviços Aéreos Cruzeiro do Sul Convair 340 aircraft, registration PP-CDW, the plane that crashed in January 1963. CC-by Smithsonian InstitutionShe was born Esther Louis on July 3rd 1882 in Sunderland, County Durham, to Louie Louis and his wife Eveline (née Jackson). Her parents were Jewish, her father a 1st generation Prussian immigrant and her mother 2nd generation to Dutch and German parents. Like many Jews in Britain at this time, to integrate and protect themselves somewhat from anti-Semitism, they altered their names; Louie and Evelina were thus better known as John and Eva. He worked variously as a cobbler, a clothier and an auctioneer and the family moved frequently with his work between Sunderland and Scotland. The family moved to 2 Jane Street in Leith in 1884 where Louie opened an auction room in the Kirkgate. Alas tragedy was to strike the following year. When Esta was just 2 her father died from fever and pneumonia leaving his wife with 7 hungry mouths to feed and another on the way.
Esta’s immediate family tree.Evelina and her entourage of children gravitated back to Wearside where she remarried in 1889 to Charles Goldman, a pawnbroker. Four half-siblings to Esta would follow and at the time of the 1891 census the enlarged family stayed in a small but prim end-terraced house at 4 Sorley Street in Sunderland. In her own telling of her story at this age the 9 year old Esta ran off to variously Edinburgh or Leith and sold door-to-door by barrow or bicycle to eke out a living, but we should take this with a very large pinch of salt as the records contradict the story and she made a habit of tweaking and embellishing tales of her life to suit circumstances. In 1901 they were at 12 Rutland Street in Sunderland, living above the family pawnbrokers. The 18 year old Esta was described as a General Dealer in the census; she was running a corner shop.
Rutland Street, Sunderland, 1929. Number 12, the Goldman shop and house is at the end of the row with the canopy, if you look very closely the pawnbroker’s sign is in the Goldman name. via Sunderland Antiquarian SocietyBut Esta did not stay put for much longer, by the next year we find her living at 156 Canongate in Edinburgh. Shortly thereafter she married a 25 year old jeweller, Jack H. Henry of 30 Milton Street. But like her Father, Esta’s new husband was using an alias; he was actually born Joseph Henry Abrovich in Łódź, Poland. It suited him to keep details of his past deliberately obscure; he spent his life giving different dates (between 1869-79) and places of birth in official documents and was most frequently recorded as John but sometimes also Jacob. But he married Esta as Jack. His mysteriousness was necessary as he was leading a double life; he was actually a talented concert violinist, a member of the touring orchestra of Polish piano impresario Ignacy Paderewski (who would rise to become Prime Minister of his country). Jack had skipped town in Dublin when on tour in the 1890s in order to avoid returning home to compulsory military service for the Russian Empire. It was also a difficult time for the Polish Jews in general as they faced the Russian Pogroms and waves were emigrating west. Thus he ended up in Scotland; possibly via Glasgow where there were already Abrovichs resident.
“Jack H. Henry.” picture shared by his grandson, used with permissionEsta and Jack settled at the tenement at 170 Canongate and soon opened a jewellery shop at number 168. They moved into the back of the shop and began to raise a family together. Louis (Lou) was born in 1903, Philip (Philly) in 1904, Herbert (Bertie) in 1906 and Rosa (Rose) in 1908. While the Canongate was a down at heel neighbourhood at the time, one with much slum housing and a largely itinerant population that included many of the city’s poor and immigrants, they were doing well for themselves and advertised for a servant – “apply Mrs Henry” – in the newspapers.
Canongate in the late 19th century. On the left is the tower and clock of the Tolbooth, on the right the distinctive obelisk-topped gate piers of Moray House. The Henry shop and home is the lighter coloured tenement on the right hand side of the street. Beyond is the projecting gable of Huntly House; it is a neighbourhood steeped in Scottish history. Postcard, unknown artist. CC-by-NC National Galleries ScotlandAfter 1910, the shop moved over the road to 183 Canongate, where a photo shows Jack standing proudly in the doorway amongst his door.
Jack Henry at 183 Canongate, photo from “Edinburgh Shops: Past and Present”, by Malcolm Cant, 2005As they prospered, raising 3 children in the back of a shop ceased to be a necessity and they moved to a smart new, end-of-terrace, middle class villa at 1 Lismore Avenue in Willowbrae. It was here in 1918 that their ranks were joined by the birth of Henrietta (Bunty). By 1915 the shop had relocated up the Royal Mile to number 51 High Street, next to the well know building known as John Knox’s House. This was the ground floor of Moubray House, one of the oldest surviving residential buildings in the city, where Daniel Defoe had once lodged. It had recently been restored by the Cockburn Association and placed in the hands of a trust. Despite raising 4 children, Esta was clearly becoming more involved in the affairs of business as classified adverts are in the name of both her and Jack. By 1920 she is styling herself “Mrs Henry, Antique Dealer” in these.
“Unidentified Man and Children”, Alexander Wilson Hill, c. 1933. This the shop at 51 High Street and it is Jack Henry standing outside. CC-by-NC National Galleries ScotlandThe Henrys began to put money into property as shown in the 1915 and 1920 valuation rolls; a shop at 54 Hanover Street that would later be run by their son Louis, and the entire frontage of the High Street from 83 to 95. Two of these shop units they would use for themselves to hold more stock and others were let out. The 1921 census finds the family have moved on and up in the housing world again, now at a very large villa at 15 Mayfield Terrace in Newington. Louis Henry was following his father into the jewellery trade and Philip was training to become a dentist. Life was good but it was about to get better. In 1923 the Scottish newspapers reported the surprise visit of Queen Mary to the Henrys’ shop, where she spent an hour and bought many items, particularly Chinese curios. She was “greatly interested with both the collection and the premises” and shook hands with Esta and Jack as she left, promising to return. Her Majesty was true to her word and returned exactly one year later, buying “a score of articles” including a Louis XIV fan that had once belonged to Queen Victoria. She signed the visitors’ book and said that her purchases the previous year had been gifted to the West Kensington Museum.
Queen Mary leaving Henry’s on one of her many visits. Postcard, unknown artist. Via Canmore, SC 2649474 © Courtesy HESThe Queen was back again a year later, with over a dozen items bought, including a portrait believed to have been the property of Napoleon. The Henrys were invited to deliver the items in person to Holyroodhouse that afternoon and join the Queen for tea. They learned that some of the purchases were to stay there at the palace as part of its collection. The Queen thereafter returned almost every year on her visits to Holyrood, the newspapers reporting the purchase of items in 1927 and 1930 for Buckingham Palace and her personal collection. Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, Princes Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II) and her sister Queen Margaret would carry on this royal tradition in later years and a whole section of wall in the shop was reserved for the display of their proudly framed cheques.
As the Roaring Twenties came to a close, Esta’s public profile was ascendant but Jack seems to have begun to step back somewhat from the limelight and into the shadows of the shop. In 1928 she stood for election to the Parish Council in the Canongate ward. Although she came second, there were two seats up for grabs and she was duly returned. Her election notices are the first time in print I could find where she is referring to herself as Esta, rather than just Mrs Henry. Her election was notable as she was the first Jewish woman to be elected to a public office in Scotland and also the press referred to her as Councillor Mrs Esta Henry, other married female councillors were referred to by their husband’s name, e.g Councillor Mrs Adam Millar. This is a public demonstration that she was very much her own woman.
Candidate picture of Esta Henry, Evening News, 7th November 1928The following year civic Parish Councils in Scotland – which existed largely for the purposes of poor relief – were abolished and merged into the Town Councils. Esta stood as an independent for this latter body in 1929 but came 4th behind two Socialists and a Moderate candidate. She would stand again for the Town Council in 1931, 1933 and 1935. She made very clear in her election speeches, which were reported in the press, that her priorities were housing, housewives, child welfare and the treatment of the sick and poor. Women and children were always central to her campaigns and she was known to mobilise squads of them in the Canongate to carry her election materials and to parade around the polling stations. But despite her strenuous campaign efforts on a sensible platform, her public profile and her local popularity, as an independent female candidate she stood little realistic chance of election. Edinburgh was run by the very pale, male and stale Moderates who largely owned the Council’s seats – many of which they didn’t even need to contest – and it was only in a handful of wards where the Socialists could challenge them (to find out more about the political groupings of 20th century Edinburgh and how the election system worked, you can bookmark this thread to read later).
In between election campaigns and royal visits, in 1933 the Henrys commissioned a magnificent L-plan house in a Dutch Cape Colonial style that also incorporated the latest in Moderne tastes. This was Marchdyke at 50 Pentland Terrace on the outskirts of the city’s growing suburbs and it totally eclipsed the monotonous rows of middle class bungalows that were much in favour all around it. Completed in 1935 this 4,000 square foot, 5 bedroom residence featured a Tudorbethan dining room, copious lounge and parlour, a terrazzo bathroom in a Roman style and in the basement a large garage for Jack’s cars, a wine cellar and antiques store. While many of the windows were in an ultra-fashionable fish scale style, the stained glass of the master staircase incorporated original 16th century Swiss and German panes from their collection.
Marchdyke, now known as Huntersmoon. Wilson Property Group, 2022 Property Listing – click here to see an archived copy with the full album of photos.In the 1935 Town Council election, Esta had come third behind the Socialist Party candidate and another from the Protestant Action Society (PA). This party were extreme anti-Catholics who stood on a platform of “No Popery”. Their leader was the rabble-rouser John Cormack and his political stock was rising at the time. In 1934 his party got just 6% of the popular vote in the Edinburgh municipal elections and 1 seat; in 1935 they got 21% and 3 seats. The exact order of following events are not clear but at the 1936 election Esta was already intending to stand once again on her usual independent platform. John Cormack made it be known in the press that he was inclined to lend his support to her in the Canongate (where many Catholic Irish and Italians lived). Perhaps it was a case of “if you can’t beat them, join them“, but with just a week to go before polling, Esta Henry made the shock announcement that she was now standing as a Protestant Action candidate – “the Only Party who do Not Want R. C. Votes“. So late was this change that even on the eve of election some of the papers still reported her as an independent. She topped the ballot, beating PA’s primary candidate, and was duly elected as a Town Councillor at the 5th attempt. It was a good year for PA, they got 31% of the popular vote and won 6 seats. Indeed it was their apogee and they soon slumped into bitter infighting and electoral obscurity, leaving just John Cormack to solider on for decades as their only councillor.
Election adverts, Evening News, 31st October 1936It’s never been clear just how committed Esta was to her new found political home – she certainly threw herself into public meetings on its behalf for a while, it being reported that she would stroll up and down the aisle, brandishing her umbrella at the audience. Realistically she may just have been desperate to get elected and chose the only other party than the Progressives (as the Moderates had re-branded) or Socialists with any chance of winning a seat. John Cormack was strongly criticised from within his own ranks for allowing a Jewish woman to stand on his platform – indeed much later in 1952 he organised pickets against her for suggesting public entertainments on Sundays at public meetings. She did not linger too long under his party whip and had resigned before the 1938 elections. She may have been made very uneasy with the association after a tumultuous public meeting in October 1937 in the Canongate Tolbooth. At this, her male PA colleague refused to answer questions directly and instead railed against Catholics to the boos and heckles of the crowd. Esta tried to make clear that she was there to fight the Socialists in politics but the audience deemed her guilty by association and turned on her too. Thereafter, she dedicated herself thereafter to public service for the Canongate in her own name. She would rise to become Convenor of the Baths and Washhouses Committee, a member of the Cleansing and Lighting Committee, the Streets and Buildings Committee and in 1941 was made JP (a Justice of the Peace, a lay magistrate in the lowest level of municipal courts).
Esta Henry commands the floor at a political meeting. Evening News, 8th February 1940Esta found that her official role as a councillor fitted well alongside her personal philanthropic activities and she long described herself publicly as a Social Worker in the Canongate (although she frequently embellished the timescales somewhat). In 1931 she had formed the Edinburgh United Independent Association in the Canongate to run youth projects and raise money for the city’s Royal Infirmary hospital. Her attitudes were quite progressive and she recognised the need and value for activities and exercise for her district’s youth to keep them from being led astray and getting into trouble and for their general health. She was heavily involved in the Canon Club for Boys and Girls and formed an amateur dramatic society there.
The youth of the Canongate ward is my special care… I want to mother the young people – I have done it all my days – and to impress them with the same spirit that I have myself… Never to let go, to hold on to the good things of life, because they will be rewarded in the end, the same as I have been.
Esta Henry, 1936She also put her money where her mouth was and provided trophies for local clubs. In 1936 she presented the first of many Esta Henry Cups to the men of the Trinity College and Moray Knox Club on Cranston Street, an organisation formed for unemployed men. It was for the man who scored highest in their games league of dominoes, billiards, draughts and other pastimes with which they occupied their enforced idleness. Another such cup was presented to the local Caledonian Football Club. In November 1937, the Lord Provost gave her a leave of absence from her duties to travel officially to South Africa, where she was to spend two and a half months investigating working class housing and town planning on behalf of the city. He provided her with letters of introduction but they probably weren’t necessary, she apparently owned a fruit farm in the country and her son Phillie had settled there as a dentist! On her return she reported back that she had “travelled many hundreds of miles by air” but that it turned out things in Scotland were far more advanced and better organised for the poor than they were in South Africa! At this time she was also becoming increasingly involved with the Scottish Old Age Pensioners Association, becoming a local committee member, and in 1939 she and the Lady Provost threw a Christmas dinner for its members in the Canongate Tolbooth.
Esta Henry (2nd left, in the beret) and the Lady Provost give a Christmas Dinner to the elderly of the Canongate in the Tolbooth. Evening News, December 22nd 1939The year 1939 also brought the clouds of war to the High Street and municipal elections were suspended for the duration. As an incumbent councillor at the end of her 3 year term, Esta would have faced re-election in November that year. She now found herself with an extra six uncontested years added to her term of office and intended to make the most of this chance. She applied her single-minded determination, boundless energy and never-ending appetite for meetings and committees to the task at hand. And so it was that Councillor Esta Henry went to war. Interviewed shortly after the outbreak, she told the People’s Journal that there was no need to conscript women to the war effort as she had not met a woman in Edinburgh “who is not prepared to do whatsoever she is called upon to do“.
People’s Journal, 16th September 1939One of her first acts, on behalf of the Scottish Old Age Pensioners Association, was to campaign for government allowances for women dependent on the wages of their sons where these men had now been called up. In the Canongate she joined the local ARP (Air Raid Precautions civil defence force), turned her shop basement into an air raid shelter (her name is against it in the Valuation Rolls) and established a corps of 40 local women to act as fire pickets. Later, the Esta Henry Ambulance Section first aiders were also formed. She was soon putting on social events to help finance these activities and found herself placed in charge of the Entertainments Committee of the Lady Provost’s Comforts Fund. This latter organisation started out with the simple of aim of knitting kilt socks for soldiers of the Highland Regiments, as had been done in the 1914-18 conflict. Esta organised bridge parties to raise funds for buying the wool and offered up her house of Marchdyke as a suitable venue. In the Canongate she formed the local women in to work parties in the Tolbooth meeting hall, and arranged free entertainments to keep them amused as they knitted the socks. Soon she was organising mass balls; in February 1940 some 600 dancers packed out the Plaza dancehall in Morningside in a charity gala. At the Eldorado dancehall in Leith though it wasn’t dancing that she put on but boxing, a sport new to her but one that she had fallen in love with. There was nothing that she would not turn her attention to in the name of raising funds; charity auctions, raising pigs and Warship Week where she matched every £1 bond bought at a public rally with £1 of her own.
Esta Henry feeding pigs she was raising for charity sale. Evening News, 26th April 1940Increasingly in the city centre on her ceaseless war work, getting to and from Marchdyke must have been proving an inconvenience as in 1941 she took possession of the flat in Moubray House above the shop and fitted it out as her own residence. She was also keen to demonstrate that old houses in the High Street could be rehabilitated for use without demolishing them. At the end of that year she paid for 800 local children to go to the cinema as a Hogmanay treat, a special programme being put on for them at the New Palace on the High Street. At the end of this screening she had new years resolutions projected onto the screen and had her audience promise en masse to be good children while their fathers were away and to help contribute to the war effort. 1942 saw the institution of the city Corporation’s Holidays at Home programme; municipal entertainments to keep people and children occupied over the summer holidays and try and reduce the temptation to travel. Esta organised outdoor public dances at the Ross Bandstand in Princes Street Gardens which were put on for 2 hours every Monday to Friday afternoon, admission 6d on the gate. She herself led off the first dance with the Lord Provost and was a regular attendee, encouraging and cajoling shy young men to get themselves a partner and join in.
Wartime dancing at the Ross Bandstand in 1945. Evening News photo, from “Living Memories” by Jennifer VeitchThere was more dancing organised by Esta Henry in 1943, as well as cycle racing at Meadowbank, mass picnics for mothers and children and – as Baths & Washhouses Committee Convenor – she arranged for Portobello outdoor swimming pool to be re-opened (some of its machinery had been removed for war use and the rest had fallen into disrepair) so that charity swimming and water polo galas could be held (the awards being more Esta Henry Cups). This also meant children and youths could go swimming in the holidays again – she was well aware that with many fathers away on service and mothers occupied with war work at home, juvenile delinquency as a result of bored children being left to their own devices was a real problem. At the end of that year she spoke at a meeting to form the East Edinburgh Anti-Fascist Committe when it was announced that British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Moseley had been released from jail.
In 1944 she instituted a scheme whereby service personnel in the city and groups of school children were invited to the City Chambers to attend meetings of the Town Councils as her guest. They watched the proceedings and afterwards could question her and other members about the mechanics of local government; she wanted to show how the Home Front was functioning, to connect people with the municipal authorities and to raise awareness of the acute difficulties faced by it at this time. That summer she pressed the Corporation to make the city’s now unnecessary civil defence resources available to house evacuee children from London in the face of the new V1 and later V2 terror bombing. Although the idea garnered wide support it ultimately came to nothing and she would latter press the city to instead give away its accumulated surplus of bunk beds, mattresses and blankets for free to those in need.
With the end of the war finally coming into sight she now turned her attention to the post war prospects. With the Rev. Selby Weight of Canongate Kirk she held public meetings for the Canongate Welcome Home Service Fund to plan for the reintegration of demobbed service personnel and provide comforts and necessities for them and their families. She joined the local Women for Westminster branch to try and get a woman MP elected for the city and repeatedly went on the record that providing for youths and children had to be central to the city’s postwar planning and foresaw the coming housing crisis in the Old Town (it had of course always been there to an extent, but it was about to get very acute). “My slogan is houses and more houses – housing priority!” she said, but she was also clear that it had to be done by reconstruction of existing communities, not by swinging the wrecking ball and scattering them to all the corners of the city. She also took a great interest in Portobello and joined a local campaign to improve the district after the war. Always one to put her money where her mouth was, at her own expense she commissioned plans and artists’ impressions for a scheme to turn “Edinburgh’s ugly sister” into a fashionable new sea-side resort and Garden City. This wasn’t just pie-in-the-sky thinking, she successfully proposed it to the city authorities who had it approved by the Lord Provost’s Committee and included in Sir Patrick Abercrombie’s 1949 “Plan for the City and Royal Burgh of Edinburgh” (you will find it on page 69 in glorious technicolour but with little additional detail). The realities of postwar economics and political priorities meant however that it would never get beyond the pages of that work.
Artist’s impression of Esta Henry’s scheme for post-war Portobello. Evening News, September 18th 1945As the war drew to its close Esta found time to join yet one more committee, that of the League of Angry Wives. These were Scottish women who had married American servicemen and as “G.I. brides” wanted the right to join their husbands in that country. A resolution was passed and representations were sent directly to President Truman – by letter – and the First Lady – by telegram. A week later, Esta henry defended her seat, which she had now held for 9 years, at the ballot box but the winds of political change blew hard and she was comprehensively defeated by Labour candidates. This was despite her being presented with a pair of boxing gloves by her supporters and urged to “go on fighting“. After further defeats at the 1946 and 1947 elections she stepped back finally from politics, but not from life!
Esta Henry addresses the League of Angry Wives, Daily Record, October 29th 1945In 1946 and 1947 she was a key organiser with the Scottish Housewives Association in an Edinburgh and Fife-based campaign against bread rationing. This culminated in her and Janet Neish of Kirkcaldy chasing the Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of Trade out of the North British Hotel and across the street to his car as he sought to avoid the combined fury of their sharp tongues! Never one to turn down a committee, she was also elected as the President of the Edinburgh branch of that organisation. 1947 had however started on a sad note for her as Jack Henry finally succumbed to long-term heart disease, leaving her a widow. It was around this time that the house at Marchdyke was sold. But Esta showed no signs of retiring from life to mourn and threw herself instead to yet another new activity; women’s football. She became the director of the Edinburgh Lady Dynamos, a team formed from core members of successful pre-war teams when the women’s game had enjoyed a brief spell of public popularity. Donating another Esta Henry Trophy to the cause it was likely that she paid for their kits too and she could be relied upon to turn her formidable oratory power at the authorities when they refused to allow the women to play in public grounds.
Edinburgh Lady Dynamos football team, late 1940s. CC-by-SA-NC 0084-003, via Edinburgh Collected.
Back row L-R is Esta Henry, Kitty Russell, Betty Rae, Agnes Whitelaw, Theresa Mulvie, goalkeeper Jessie Baillie, Nan Laurie, Babs McWhinney and Walter Caesar. Front row L-R is Eleanor Wilson, Betty Davidson (?), Linda Clements, Mary Leslie, Bet Adamson.She had long been a local celebrity but in the year 1953, Esta Henry’s reputation went national on two accounts. Around the 27th of December 1952, a well dressed man entered her shop on the High Street and introduced himself as a Belgian art dealer, Paul Eugene Dillin. The pair quickly struck up a rapport and he soon confided in her that his identity was a front; he was actually a stateless Romanian Jew by the name of Pinchas Haimovici and had spent two and a half years in hiding in the Netherlands during the war. As he refused to sign a national oath pledging himself to Communism he was exiled from his country of birth and had no papers. It was at the recommendation of the renowned sculptor Benno Schotz, a prominent member of the Scottish Jewish community and whose wife came from the same village as him, that he had come to Edinburgh seeking art. Esta fell in love with the man then and there, despite an age gap of 21 years between them, and proposed to him on the condition that he took the name Henry. When he accepted she threw his fake passport on the fire and urged him to turn himself in and seek asylum so that they could be legally wed.
Pinchas and Esta, Associated Press, 27th April 1953Pinchas and Esta, Associated Press, 27th April 1953Esta perhaps imagined naïvely that her reputation and connections would make it a mere formality and booked the couple a honeymoon trip to Madeira. However when the police were invited to the shop they instead charged Pinchas with offences for landing illegally in the country on false papers under the Aliens Act 1920 and he was sent to Saughton Prison. On December 31st he pled guilty at the Sheriff Court in Edinburgh and was remanded for sentencing, which was deferred to give his solicitor a chance to arrange an application for Israeli papers and asylum so that he could travel there instead of being deported. After the hearing, Esta told the waiting reporters that she still intended to marry her “Prince Paul” (Paul Haemovitz was another alias he had used) but that she was going to go on the Honeymoon trip to Maderia anyway by herself as the stress of events would otherwise give her a stroke; the reporter noted that she was smoking at the time and confided she had smoked 100 already that day. The case rumbled on and on, the Israelis were being slow with the papers as apparently there was another Pinchas Haimovici on an Interpol watch-list, despite this being a common name in Romania, and he had to prove it was not him. The Sheriff in Edinburgh grew tired of the repeated delays and on March 13th 1953 he ordered Pinchas’ release. But no sooner had he left the courtroom than he found himself re-arrested; the Home Secretary Sir David Maxwell Fyfe had finally signed a deportation order for him and he was sent straight back to Saughton. Esta told a waiting reporter from the Daily Mirror that if he was to be deported to Romania then she would join him there; “I’m only seventy, and fit enough to crash any of Stalin’s curtains”.
Pinchas petitioned the High Court in Edinburgh to avoid deportation and his case was heard on April 10th. As a declared anti-communist he told the court that he faced “torture and death” if returned to Romania. He also asked leave from court to marry Esta (who waved the papers she had ready to the court), but this request and his protests over his captivity fell on deaf ears and the case was adjourned. Back to Saughton Prison he went were Esta, with her lawyer Lionel Daiches, continued to visit him and made a habit of finding her way uninvited into the Governor’s office to protest more directly. The case was now being reported across the national and regional British newspapers and had become quite embarrassing for the Government. And so it was that the Home Secretary cancelled his previous order and on Friday 24th April 1953 Pinchas Haimovici was released and met by Esta with a pony and trap to drive him home and a brass band she had hired to serenade his freedom. The couple announced that they were to be married on the Monday morning and after a brief registry office ceremony, so they were. Esta insisted that they returned immediately to the shop to re-open for business but outside they were met by an immense crowd of well-wishers who lifted her into the air as they cheered for her and her husband. She lost her shoes in the process and the police had to attend to find the couple a path through the throng.
Esta and Pinchas are met by jubilant crowds of well-wishers in Hunter Square after their marriage. Daily Mirror, April 28th 1953The crowd followed them all the way back to the shop where they posed for the press and thanked their well-wishers while Esta fumbled through the 20 different keys she kept for the various locks on the premises. They were back behind the counter and at work within an hour of their ceremony starting. The next day they took a taxi out to Saughton Prison and thanked the warders with wedding cake and champagne, Pinchas let the press know that they had treated him very kindly. A few days later he formally changed his name to Paul Henry in line with Esta’s prenuptial wishes.
Pinchas and Esta re-open the shop after wedding, Associated Press, 27th April 1953To celebrate their union and to thank Benno Schotz for helping bring them together they commissioned him to produce a brass bust of them. Schotz insisted that Pinchas should be holding something in his hand and, knowing that Esta was immensely fond of rings, designed an Adam & Eve ring for the purpose. The finished work was unveiled to mark their first wedding anniversary as the centrepiece of an exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy on Princes Street.
Unveiling the bust with Benno Schotz, 23rd April 1954. Paul is holding the ring in his hand.Returning to the events of 1953, it was while her Prince Paul was still incarcerated that the other event took place that garnered national reporting for Esta; she was robbed! Perhaps she had been distracted by the events surrounding Paul’s case, but she allowed herself to be taken in by a group of well-organised confidence tricksters posing as American buyers. Having taken the time and effort to establish her routines and build up a rapport with her, they arranged a distraction and took their chance to steal jewellery that she valued at £20,000 from a lock box, £320 and $600 in cash and the pass books for her life savings. Esta told the press that amongst the items stolen was an amethyst fob which had once been part of the Hungarian crown jewels. Bits and pieces of the loot turned up in sale rooms afterwards and she was forced to buy them back at half of what the other dealer had paid for them; she was not impressed. The police eventually caught up with her trio of robbers due to their amateurish attempts to pass her stolen valuables off to on an antique dealer for far less than their actual worth. Roy Fontaine got 4 years for theft, Arthur Wooton 3 years for reset and George Ross-Wham had already been jailed on a separate offence by the time his sentencing came up. Fontaine was a career jewel thief, confidence trickster and blackmailer but Esta had found him charming and visited him in jail. She left money for him to try and start up a better life after he was released. This he tried, but it was not to be. It turned out that she may have gotten off lightly from Fontaine’s gang; he was actually the Glaswegian Archibald Hall who gained notoriety some 20 years later as a serial killer who the press dubbed the Monster Butler. His modus operandi was robbing and killing wealthy elderly and high-profile clients that he had worked his charm on to gain work as a butler. He was sentenced to life without parole in 1978.
Archibald Hall being taken to Jail, Daily Record, May 1978Esta Henry would have one last high-profile adventure before settling down to a quieter married life keeping shop with Paul. In 1954 the Egyptian Junta let it be known that they were auctioning off part of the personal collection of art and objets accumulated by the now deposed King Farouk at the state’s expense. She told the press she was determined to bag herself a bargain and flew to Cairo to the auction at the Koubbeh Palace; they were there at Turnhouse Airport to wave her off. In Egypt, when the Sotheby’s auctioneer initially announced the lots only in French and Arabic she interrupted to protest – “English was good enough for Shakespeare, it should be good enough for these people”. He yielded to her request and began to also announce the lots in English. She next stopped proceedings to ask an Egyptian army major to bring her some tea; tea was brought. When asked not to smoke she refused and instead asked for one of King Farouk’s diamond-studded, gold ashtrays – an auction lot – be brought to her.
Esta Henry, glasses in hand, berates the auctioneer yet again. The other bidders seem much amused. Sphere, 20th March 1954She eventually brought the proceedings into complete farce by repeatedly protesting when, at the behest of the Egyptian organisers, multiple auction lots were withdrawn, joint lots were split up and opening bids were significantly above the catalogue reserve price. The other bidders, and indeed the Sotheby’s auctioneers, were actually on her side – they too were less than impressed with how the sale was being conducted. When she eventually walked out, labelling the Egyptians “a bunch of twisters”, a number of fellow dealers followed her out. She was chased into the car park by the auctioneer and a senior Egyptian officer who begged her to return. Realising she had made her point, she acquiesced, and went back into the sale room where she publicly hugged and kissed the astonished auctioneer. She now stopped making a nuisance of herself and got down to the business of buying, eventually spending some £15,000 (c. £360,000 in 2025). She allowed herself one last moment of pantomime when, outbid on a 16th century Scottish clock, did jump up, grab the item from the auctioneer’s desk and announce to all that it was Scottish, she was Scottish and “I am going to have it!”. Her delighted fellow buyers let her have it. When she returned home, the gossip columnists and society magazines were waiting and she told them she was left with only the 2/6d in her pocket having spent the rest in Egypt. Her treasures arrived at the end of the following month, and she was met by both the press and by Customs to assess the haul.
Esta and Paul Henry demonstrate one of the Egyptian auction items to a customs officer and the press. Sunday Post, 2nd May 1954Esta and Paul Henry spent a happy decade together behind the counter at 51 High Street surrounded by the antiques and art that had brought them together. Esta through numerous exhibitions at Moubray House and contributed rare pieces to others. She began to form plans to perhaps leave the house and the best parts of her collection to the nation. In 1960 a fellow Edinburgh antique dealer told the press that they probably had the best collection in the country inside their shop. For their 10th wedding anniversary the couple decided to take a long overdue honeymoon and booked a round the world trip, perhaps to acquire yet more pieces or perhaps with a view to scouting out somewhere warm to retire to.
Copy of Esta Henry’s entry card into Brazil, issued by the Consul General in London on 10th December 1962It was for this reason that they were in Sao Paulo, en route to Rio de Janiero on January 15th when Serviços Aéreos Cruzeiro do Sul Flight 144 came down shortly after takeoff, killing them both. The long reign of the Queen of the High Street was over and the Brazilian authorities had her buried together with her Prince in Sao Paulo. Back home her vast collection of treasure that formed the bulk of her estate was split up and sold off. Her shop became home to a succession of trinket and tourist businesses but her flat above fared better, remaining in the care of the Cockburn association before being restored by a wealthy American benefactor and in 2012 gifted to the nation under the care of Historic Environment Scotland.
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