The milk in the Dean Village was delivered by the Coop, otherwise known to the gentry as the Leith Provident Society. The milk man was a sprightly young tough who was fond of the horses, not only the ones who pulled his cart up the cruel hills of the village. He also made frequent bets through the back room of the licensed grocer. In those days it was commonplace for industrial work people to lay daily bets and the police were careful not to bother these small time recreational punters. Bookies’ runners by contrast who infested the back streets, were kept on the move: they were professionals.
The street lamps in the Dean Village of 1960 were still gas lamps, lit each evening by a lean man of indeterminate age, perhaps in his fifties. He carried a long pole with which to turn the gas on and off. He knew that the day of gas street lights were coming to an end and seemed to have been alerted to joining the city cleansing department, because he tended to speak with envy of the sort of money made by the “scaffies”- dustmen. Perhaps R L Stevenson would have turned him into someone more extraordinary and bizarre but in 1960, the lamplighter was taken as part of everyday life.