Explore the past and explain the present with Whose Town?

Whose Town? was an award-winning and innovative resource for teaching Social Studies which launched in 2011. The resource is no longer available in its original format but the material has been made accessible to all via online exhibitions on Capital Collections and digital story trails on Our Town Stories.

By exploring the Whose Town? material you can discover the city's past through the lives of the people who lived there. We have used people who lived in Victorian times, at the beginning of the twentieth century, during the Second World War and in the Fifties to bring Edinburgh’s history to life.

Follow the stories of some of the lives on Our Town Stories

• Florence Morham who grew up in a wealthy Victorian household
• Levi Prinski a boy who arrived in 1870s Edinburgh destitute and alone
• Bessie Watson the youngest suffragette.

And explore online exhibitions dedicated to each life and the different eras on Capital Collections.

Victorian Edinburgh and the following lives:

• Levi Prinski a boy who arrived on the streets of Edinburgh destitute and alone
• Florence Morham who grew up in the wealthy Grange area
• Robert Louis Stevenson who spent his childhood and student days in Edinburgh.

Beginning of the 20th century and the following lives:

• Arthur Pordage, Firemaster of Edinburgh Fire Brigade
• Luca Scappaticcio an Italian immigrant who established an ice cream parlour in Musselburgh
• Bessie Watson, the youngest suffragette.

Edinburgh during the Second World War and the following lives

• John Lyle who grew up in Edinburgh during the period
• Nancy Pugh who was evacuated aged nine from Glasgow to Perthshire
• Charles Boog Watson an octogenarian ARP warden.
   

Edinburgh in the 1950s and the following lives

• Selma Ahmad who grew up with in 1950s Edinburgh with a Scottish mother and an Indian father
• Hugh Cairns a tram driver
• Bachan Kharbanda came to Scotland to study in Glasgow and then opened an "Eastern Crafts" shop in Edinburgh
• Iain MacLaren was a trainee surgeon
• Bill McLean a teenager during the Fifties.