Slum Edinburgh

6 Beaumont Place had threatened to fall down for decades. It was situated in St Leonards, a district of the city, which, along with neighbouring Dumbiedykes, had long been regarded as a slum. Even the building’s landlord, D. Rosie, knew it was doomed. He had attempted to sell it to a local MP for one penny after being faced with hefty repair order.

At 5am on the morning of 21 November 1959 the back wall of the Penny Tenement came down with a tremendous crash. Only by fortuitous luck that there was no deaths or serious injuries

One day after the accident, a complaint was sent to the Secretary of State for Scotland by Edinburgh’s Labour representatives. It placed the blame squarely on the city’s Tory majority for “procrastinating” for too long over the question of slum clearance.

Edinburgh’s authorities realised enough was enough, especially when told the Corporation would be liable if there were any deaths from collapsing buildings. Within a matter of months, 6,000 slum properties were cleared. One by one, the slum dwellings of St Leonards and Dumbiedykes would be demolished, with communities dispersed en masse to new peripheral housing estates dotted across the city.
http://www.scotsman.com/heritage/people-places/the-penny-tenement-collapse-that-changed-edinburgh-forever-1-4386368


But this blogger was a newspaper delivery-boy during the 60s in the area and can safely say that many dilapidated tenement room and kitchens with shared stair toilets did remain and lasted well into the 70s.

For more on Edinburgh housing from the period see this 1961 article