Port (the west end of the Grassmarket) in 1828. From the 1840s conditions were somewhat horrendous, with up to 12 people in what would now be deemed a small double bedroom, and occupants being locked in the room overnight. Police inspections had begun in 1822 but the rules themselves caused many of the problems. A further Act of 1848 combined police surveillance with limits on occupation. In 1888 the City Public Health Department recorded seven lodging houses holding a total of an incredible 414 persons. Crombies Land at the foot of West Port held 70 people in 27 bedrooms, with no toilet provision. As a gathering point for market traders and cattle drovers, the Grassmarket was traditionally a place of taverns, hostelries and temporary lodgings, a fact still reflected in the use of some of the surrounding buildings. In the late 18th century the fly coach to London, via Dumfries and Carlisle, set out from an inn at the Cowgate Head at the eastern end of the market place. In 1803 William and Dorothy Wordsworth took rooms at the White Hart Inn, where the poet Robert Burns had stayed during his last visit to Edinburgh in 1791. In her account of the visit Dorothy described it as "not noisy, and tolerably cheap". In his 1961 film Greyfriars Bobby Walt Disney chose a lodging in the Grassmarket as the place where the Skye terrier's owner dies (depicting him as a shepherd hoping to be hired at the market rather than the real-life dog's owner, police night watchman John Gray). The meat market closed in 1911 when a new municipal slaughter house at Tollcross replaced the old "shambles" in the western half of the Grassmarket (a road beyond the open market place) which joins King's Stables Road. The association of the area with the poor and homeless only began to lessen in the 1980s: with Salvation Army hostels at both ends of the Grassmarket. Closure of the female hostel at the junction of West Port and the Grassmarket around 2000 in combination with an overall gentrification, capitalising on the street's location, began to truly change the atmosphere. Closure of the public toilets at the east end (a focal point for "jakeys" - drunken-down-and-outs) and comprehensive re-landscaping in the beginning of the 21st century has transformed the character of the area. An inscribed flagstone in the central pavement in front of the White