160 ‘ TRANSACTIONS. 
years ago spent on the poor £5 per hundred of the population, or 
£4 per £100 of the rental. We spend at least £25 per hundred of 
the population. The proportion as regards the rental is about £4 
9s per £100. 
It thus appears that a hundred years have brought great 
changes to the Queen of the South. The population has been con- 
siderably more than doubled, the yearly rental has been quadrupled, 
wages have increased about three-fold, and the price of most 
articles of food is more than doubled. 
In Dr Burnside’s time the town consisted, he informs us, of 
eight or nine streets and six or eight lanes. The streets would be 
the High Street, Fiiars’ Vennel, the East Barnraw (now Loreburn 
Street), the West Barnraw (now Irish Street), the Kirkgate (now 
St. Michael Street), Townhead Street (now Academy Street), Loch- 
maben Gate (now English Street), and probably Queensberry Street 
and King Street. The new bridge was then unbuilt, and all Castle 
Street, George Street, and Buccleuch Street were fields or gardens. 
The Town Hall and Court-House were in the Midsteeple, and 
underneath that were the Weigh-House and the Town Guard House. 
In the block of buildings where Mr Adams has his bookbinding 
shop were the Council Chambers and adjoining that was the Prison. 
On the site of the Militia Barracks was a House of Correction. 
Moorheads’ Hospital was scarcely fifty years old, the old Infirmary 
was recently erected, and the Theatre was just opened. The 
churches were St. Michael’s—the only one which remains in 
external appearance as it was—the old New Church, the Episcopal 
Meeting-House in English Street, the Anti-Burgher Church on the 
site of Loreburn Street U.P. Church, and the Relief Church in 
what is now the wool store in Queensberry Street. 
Dr Burnside, in various parts of his MSS., speaks with satis- 
faction on the improved condition of the people. He had met men 
who remembered when there were only four carts in Dumfries— 
two for hire and two the property of gentlemen who had purchased 
wood, and when all the ordinary transport was done by creels and 
sledges. He was proud of there being a stage coach daily to 
Edinburgh and an English and an Irish mail coach daily, and 
looked forward to there being before long a Glasgow coach. He 
mentions with satisfaction that a waggon from Carlisle, with six 
horses, comes to town and goes out again weekly, that there are 
eight or ten post chaises kept at the inns, that six families in the 
parish each keep a four-wheeled chaise, and that four have whiskeys. 
