Heywood Street in the early 20th century.

  Kingston Streets around 1890:

  The Kingston Streets had not been reconstructed nor

  furnished with water tables and many were

  picturesquely adorned on either   side with banks of

  buttercups. A stream of water, (being the waste water

  from the residences in the Street) sluggishly meandered

  down a rough guttering of cobblestones. North Street

  (West of East Street) particularly stands out in one's memory.

In the centre, some two feet or more below the real level of the road, was a river of "mucky" water, running westward; on either side was a paving of large and small cobble stones gradually widening and rising to the Street proper, and then a level stretch of road way about seven feet wide on either side gave access to the houses opening on the street. Nearly every corner had its old cannon as sentinel - till they were  purchased and removed in the middle nineties by the late Mr. Lazarus.

 

Noel B Livingston, 'Kingston a Generation Ago', The Jamaica Review, February 1926