Thursday 4 April 2013

London in 1904

I saw this on Jenny Woolf's Travel blog and could not resist sharing it with you. Despite the fact we use cars and lorries nowadays the hustle and bustle of a century ago seems quicker rowards the end of the video.

4 comments:

  1. That's great! I wish I could see London one day...

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  2. It's so nice to be able view the daily happenings of long ago....nice little video capsule.
    I especially loved the background music...thanks for posting.

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  3. John,
    The few frames of film here suggest a pace of life we really do not have a very good sense of - the word "teeming" comes to mind, along with my friend's phrase applied to similar madness in the south of France in summer, un ban de fou. Unfortunately the street noise is not available to us in the vintage clip, but we would most likely have found it intolerable. For people forced to live and work there, these places must have been suffocating at the very least. Another clip at the end of this one features Manchester in 1901 - life in the "real" world of the big cities - interesting clips! Thanks.
    Take care,
    McGregor

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    Replies
    1. In addition to the noise the smells must have been awful.
      And the pollution in areas near industry caused smogs on a regular basis. I recall the smogs of the 1950s and one could not see the person whose hand one was holding. A walk back from the cinema (to see a Danny Kaye film - my Mum was a fan of his) involved holding the house walls all the way back to home. Heaven knows how we crossed the roads! Anyone who thinks of times past as romantic just needs to think of toothache, smells and lice....

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