5 Albany Street
1883 - 1914 Lodgings
In 1883 Miss Strachan moved from looking after Number 43 to manage those lodgings. By the 1901 census there was just one boarder. In 1903, Miss Somerset took over as lodging keeper and she was followed by Miss Charlotte Tennant in 1910.
1914 – 1951 Mrs J M Thomson, her daughters and son, James C Thomson
Mrs Thomson was widowed in 1893 and moved with her children from Angus to Edinburgh, where she set up a lodging house in Brunswick Street. She later moved the lodging house to Number 5.
Her eldest son, James, was apprenticed as a lawyer’s assistant, but he did not take to the life. He wanted to travel, so joined the Navy when only sixteen. During this time he became interested in alternative approaches to health, and on his home visits would seek out books on such subjects as hydrotherapy and dietetic reform. Although the subjects fascinated him, it is recounted that he read out passages to school friends who were studying to be doctors, ridiculing the quacks who had written them.
After only eighteen months in the Navy he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and discharged; being given only three months to live. However, he refused to accept the diagnosis and discharged himself from hospital, and went to live in Perthshire on a relative’s farm so he would benefit from the fresh air. With him he took the books he had previously ridiculed, and from them devised his own approach to diet and exercise. Over time the bleeding from his lungs ceased. He had cured himself of his ‘terminal’ illness. He then left Scotland for London, where he joined the Metropolitan Police.
However, his interest in alternative medicine had grown and after just a year, aged 22, he left the police force and went to the USA to find out more about the Nature Cure movement that was developing there. He visited various alternative health establishments, eventually settling in Chicago, and training with Henry Lindlahr, founder of the Lindlahr College of Natural Therapeutics.After two years in the USA, he returned to live with his mother in Albany Street. He was introduced to Jessie Hood, a woman suffering from an ‘incurable heart condition’ as a mutual friend thought that perhaps James could help her. He cured her, and, in 1913, they married. They lived at this time in his mother’s house, where in 1914 they had their first child, Charles. James decided to put into practice his alternative naturopath beliefs so took over one of the rooms in his mother’s boarding house as consulting rooms, and in 1916 he published his first book An Introduction to Nature Cure.In 1917, he received his call up papers but sent them back with ‘not known at this address’. Eventually, he was taken to face a tribunal and expected to go to prison, but perhaps due to his previous history of TB was exempted. In 1918, James and Jessie moved to Number 16, where James continued to practice, establishing the Edinburgh School of Natural Therapeutics. Later, they bought a larger house in Drumsheugh Gardens to expand his practice. There, Jessie offered treatment through her Free Clinic to the children of parents who could simply not afford to pay for a doctor’s services and in 1925 she published “Healthy Childhood”. In 1938 James bought Craigend Park, previously used as a school and a nurses’ home, and revamped it as The Kingston Clinic, with space for thirty patients. His Edinburgh School of Natural Therapeutics taught many students who went on to set up their own practices all over the UK. James died in 1960.Mrs Thomson died around 1934 and her daughters, Agnes and Eva, lived on in the house, and took in lodgers..
1952 – 1957 Agnes and Eva Thomson
Agnes and Eva Thomson owned the house and lived here. They had a lodger, Christine Cooper, a teacher.
1957 - 1960? Thomson & Porteus Office
Tobacco, snuff and cigarette manufacturers, based in Leith. The company was established in 1854 and was a major producer of tobacco products. Their factory in Edinburgh employed around 150 workers. In 1952, the company closed the Edinburgh factory, and consolidated production at their Airdrie works. This office was presumably to retain an Edinburgh presence.
Around 1965 - ?1970s - Brightside Heating & Engineering Company Ltd.
This was a UK company. In the 1960s they carried out work for the NHS Lothians so this is perhaps why they had an office here for this time.
1970s Flats
Occupants included Elizabeth Winter, Thomas Haddow, Dr ian Coughley, Davidena Webster, Michael Gee