Day 1

5th November 1920

Photo Credit: City of Edinburgh Council - Edinburgh Libraries www.capitalcollections.org.uk

On This Day:

5 November 1920 Edinburgh merged with Cramond, Corstorphine, Colinton, Liberton, and the Burgh of Leith.

For Day 1 of 100 Days of Leith local author Alistair Rutherford has written a small piece about these events titled This Island Leith.

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This Island Leith

By: Alistair Rutherford

On Friday the 5th of November 1920, in a crowded ballroom in Claridge’s Hotel in New York, two world champion boxers, Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier, met to sign a million dollar contract to battle it out in the “Fight of the Century”.

On that very same day another contest, much closer to home, was nearing its conclusion.

Because it was on the 5th November 1920 that the city of Edinburgh merged with five previously independent areas: Cramond, Corstorphine, Colinton and Liberton to the south and west, and the Burgh of Leith to the north. At the stroke of a pen Edinburgh trebled in size and its population increased by a third.

No doubt the 4,340 Leithers who voted in a plebiscite for the amalgamation would raise a glass to celebrate on that day but it’s unlikely the 26,810 who voted against would join them.

For months previously the argument, the economic case, the benefits of operating a shared municipal administration and all the politics that went with that, the very real distinctiveness of each side, all had been hotly debated not just across the Burgh (see image) but also on the floor of the House of Commons. But, when it finally came down to it, on Friday 5th of November, the 1920 Edinburgh Boundaries Extension and Tramways Act passed into law and end all opposition.

What did it mean to be a Leither then, and what does it mean to be one now? Did the merger with Edinburgh signal the end of this ‘island’ Leith?

100 Days of Leith will help us find out.