The Real Elephants In The Room

There's bad neighbours and

Hells Angels As Neighbours Might Not Be Your First Choice

..... then there's BAD NEIGHBOURS

In 1705, Mr Adam Kerr of Edinburgh decided that his upstairs neighbour to his shop near Fishmarket Close (Now Old Fishmarket Close) was one of the 'BAD NEIGHBOUR' we really hate. Therefore he petitioned the Edinburgh Dean of Guild Court on the 23rd of November 1705.

Now considering that Fishmarket Close in those days was not exactly a haven of gentile life, nor of nice smells - It was described as 'a steep, narrow stinking ravine' at its commercial heyday as a poultry and fish market ... and that it led directly on to the Cow Market, any complaints he had about the neighbours must have been strong.

View Up Fishmarket Close

The subject of the petition was that the bakers business was being ruined by the dung and water coming from the property above. If you have been to old Edinburgh, this area is built on steep sided hills, with your next door neighbour often partly your upstairs neighbour as well.

Abraham Sever And His Elephant In Edinburgh 1705 ....

He pointed the finger of blame at Dutchman Abraham Sever, who was keeping a female Indian elephant in his room. He had moved in the month before, and was exhibiting and/ touring Edinburgh with it. He had petitioned on 31 October 1705, to be granted licence to show off his elephant to the people of Edinburgh. He was renting the animal which stood just over 8 feet high and 10 feet from nose to tail (from the new owner of the beast Jan Janszoon), which had previously been touring Europe with its then owner Bartel Verhagen since the 1680's (she was about 10 years old then), until he died.

The council had granted his request:

“The Council upon ane petitione given by Abraham Sever Dutchman grants liberty to the petitioner to expose his elephant to all persones within the toun and suburbs upon his payment of ane gratification to the kirk treasurer for the use of the poor”

In his petition, Mr Kerr insisted that the Guild Court officials made a visit to the premises to see for themselves and ultimately stop the damage to his business by ensuring the elephant was removed.

"Adam Kerr baxter [baker], burgess of Edinburgh humbly complaine upon Abraham Seybour (Sever) a Dutchman owner of the eliphant that where I having ane shop and oven at the head of the fishmercat close with a back vault to the south thereof…who keeps his eliphant therin and exposes the same his Dung and water thereof comes so doun upon my said vault that it has spoylt the same… and comes doun in great quantities upon the vault and spoyle and abuses the concerned goods’.”

One assumes that the elephant and its keeper were ejected from the room, because sadly the pachyderm met a sad end of starvation and cold in Dundee, in the city suburb of Broughty Ferry, the next year in 1706. Me Server had no experience in Elephant handling and didn't look after her properly, including marching her north in Scotland in the winter. She then became the first elephant dissected in Britain by by surgeon, botanist and anatomist, Dr Patrick Blair. 

Oddly it wasn't the only odd neighbour in that neighbourhood as writer Daniel Defoe is also rumoured to have worked there around 1706, as a secret agent to the English Government at the Treaty of Union in 1707.