England, 1937-1942 - Photos from LIFE Magazine

[Corbs]

The ever-so-good facebook page WW2 Radio has access to lots of old photos taken for LIFE Magazine and regularly uploads albums, mainly WW2-themed but also of what life was like in that era.

This one is from 1937 in England and I thought it warranted reposting despite not showing railways, as lots of us model that era and it may be good for reference. Particularly the buildings, the way the fields are laid out, street business. There is a lot of turf-cutting going on.

 

Don't think you need a FB account to view it, here's the link:

 

https://www.facebook.com/pg/Radio.WW2/photos/?tab=album&album_id=2325367947709188&__tn__=-UCH-R

 

Samples:

Edited April 12, 2019 by Corbs

[The Johnster]

What I find very noticeable is the dirtiness and run down feel of everything, especially the buildings, none of which are painted as they would be in later years.  I associate this general drabness with wartime and post war austerity, but the pernicious effect of nearly a decade of depression is being manifested here as well I think.

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

Isn't the third picture the new Pendon extension?

 

Mike.

[petethemole]

An excellent resource, thanks. Looking at some of the other albums I will be spending some time on these.

[brianusa]

As one of this era, it wasn't as bad as it looks.  Certainly there were areas that the writer comments on but like today, it depends where you are.  While it wasn't as fancy as it is today, life was comfortable for some while disgraceful for others just as it is these days.  We lived comfortably in a little bungalow in Plymouth with all mod cons and I was able to have both a Hornby O set as well as a Dublo later but before the war, on the wages my father earned as a policeman.  We even had a car, Ford Eight.

 

Brian.

[Nimbus]

Where is that village? To my eyes it's Cotswolds/Oxfordshire stone.

 

The Nim.

[Kingzance]

2 hours ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

Isn't the third picture the new Pendon extension?

 

Mike.

Yes, possibly but the first one shows Trig’s brush as later popped up in “Only fools and horses”.

[Fat Controller]

13 hours ago, The Johnster said:

What I find very noticeable is the dirtiness and run down feel of everything, especially the buildings, none of which are painted as they would be in later years.  I associate this general drabness with wartime and post war austerity, but the pernicious effect of nearly a decade of depression is being manifested here as well I think.

There was also an element of not making the outside of the place look too smart to avoid others thinking you had money. You still see this in rural France and Italy; a scruffy exterior often hiding an almost palatial interior.

I still remember an uncle of mine, who always gave the impression of not having two pennies to rub together. When he died, his wife found several hundred pounds in large notes in the pocket of one of his jackets.

[APOLLO]

It was grim in Widnes !!

 

 

And not much better in parts of Wigan, though we had trams back then. photo from 1930's.

 

 

Brit15

[Reorte]

Even with the last picture I'd take that if it wasn't for all the smoke (and of course that's a very, very massive "if it wasn't for").

 

I've often noticed on old photos how the streets look a lot tidier. Some of that might be the film of the time not picking up the details but the lack of litter is still noticeable.

[Fat Controller]

39 minutes ago, Reorte said:

Even with the last picture I'd take that if it wasn't for all the smoke (and of course that's a very, very massive "if it wasn't for").

 

I've often noticed on old photos how the streets look a lot tidier. Some of that might be the film of the time not picking up the details but the lack of litter is still noticeable.

The lack of litter would be because there was little to litter with.. Soft drinks, when available, had a deposit on the bottle; crisps and bars of chocolate were treats; cigarettes were smoked down almost to your lips, and the butts recycled (by boiling in water) to produce a very potent insecticide.

[kevinlms]

14 hours ago, The Johnster said:

What I find very noticeable is the dirtiness and run down feel of everything, especially the buildings, none of which are painted as they would be in later years.  I associate this general drabness with wartime and post war austerity, but the pernicious effect of nearly a decade of depression is being manifested here as well I think.

It is clear that white was not a dominant colour for say door and window trim, that it is post WW2. Presumably the main colours for such things were browns & cream, thus looking 'dirty' in black & white photos.

[TheQ]

11 minutes ago, Fat Controller said:

The lack of litter would be because there was little to litter with.. Soft drinks, when available, had a deposit on the bottle; crisps and bars of chocolate were treats; cigarettes were smoked down almost to your lips, and the butts recycled (by boiling in water) to produce a very potent insecticide.

funnily enough by producing an inscticide with Nicotine in it, like the modern banned nicotinoids, but with out the health and safety..

[Reorte]

On the dirt front anywhere big, particularly industrial, it would be hard to keep the buildings clean regardless. Soot must've got everywhere. Many rural areas I doubt they could afford much in the way of paint. Even some of those would've had local dirt sources (there were a lot of lime kilns near where I live, but I suppose a stinging white dust everywhere looks slightly less dirty).

[Corbs]

That's true. Our Victorian house in Halifax still has that 'caked in grime' look, especially noticeable with the 1980s built house next door as the local stone is such a light colour.

[Fat Controller]

31 minutes ago, TheQ said:

funnily enough by producing an inscticide with Nicotine in it, like the modern banned nicotinoids, but with out the health and safety..

Grandad used to wait until Nan had disappeared over the horizon to go shopping, then boil up all the butts he'd collected in her best saucepan, strain the liquid off, and rinse the pan before she got back; if he was unlucky, she'd bump into a neighbour in town, and get a lift back...

He also used to make his own flux for soldering, by putting a bit of zinc into a bottle containing hydrochloric acid...

[Corbs]

Some more from the same source, England in 1942. More urban shots and a nice mechanical mule.

[Blackthorn]

Many thanks for that link and the photo's.  I too am intrigued as to the location in the third photo in your first post. 

 

I'll have to spend some time looking at that website when I get home from work, no doubt a good source of information about the 1930's - 40's atmosphere for those of us far too you to have experienced it.

 

Mark.

[The Stationmaster]

5 hours ago, Fat Controller said:

There was also an element of not making the outside of the place look too smart to avoid others thinking you had money. You still see this in rural France and Italy; a scruffy exterior often hiding an almost palatial interior.

I still remember an uncle of mine, who always gave the impression of not having two pennies to rub together. When he died, his wife found several hundred pounds in large notes in the pocket of one of his jackets.

It wasn't just that - a lot of it was down to the paint that was available and the cost of regular repainting to maintain a top notch appearance plus the white paint which became so fashionable on window frames etc in the 1960s simply wasn't available to the same quality as was achieved post-war.  Duradio '5 year enamel'  became available in the 1930s and thus a reasonable paint finish could be obtained by anybody with a modicum of skill but the range f colours was very limited so I understood from my father )who had used on the outside woodwork of his father's house in 1936.

 

PS As far as dirt is concerned don't forget that most people had coal fires or used coal to heat water etc so the entire atmosphere was much 'muckier' than it is today.

Edited April 12, 2019 by The Stationmaster

[rovex]

I remember seeing photos of York after the war, and it looked so run down you can understand why people wanted a fresh start and why so much that we would treasure today was demolished, war damaged or not.

 

and heres a really good one, loving those struts

Edited April 12, 2019 by rovex

[The Johnster]

industrial pollution made it next to impossible to keep anything clean in the big industrial towns.  In Cardiff, GKN's East Moors steelworks was on the downwind side of most of town on most days, but the lower Splott area around Portmanmoor Road (where Shirley Bassey actually hails from, not Tiger Bay) was constantly coated in iron ore dust, and the rest of us got our share when the wind shifted, even the nice people in Cyncoed and Rhiwbina.  My mother would watch the weather forecast like a sailor for wind directions, and her language was a bit sailor-like when they got it wrong and washing on the line copped it; this went on until the 70s.  Places like Sheffield, in a bowl of hills, must have been much worse.

 

Carbon monoxide added to the mix increasingly during the post war decades, and things were arguably at their least healthy in the mid to late 60s, even if they were a little physically cleaner by then.  

 

In mining villages everything was covered in coal dust, and the big cities away from the coalfields were caked in soot from domestic fires.  Rural communities had less of this to deal with, but were blighted by extreme poverty so fresh paint was rare.  Councils swept streets in the big towns, but farming or fishing villages had no such service, the dust and much piled up until it was washed away by heavy rain.  Streets everywhere were full of horse s**t, which got picked up to use as fertiliser by anyone who was lucky enough to have a patch to grow veg on; flowers in gardens were a 1960s innovation for many people!

 

Even in my lifetime (born 1952) public baths were places where the public went to wash themselves, not swimming pools, a 'public health' not a leisure facility.  You got a towel and a tiny hotel sized bar of coal tar soap for your tuppence or whatever it was, or saved money by taking your own.  Very few people, even those earning relatively good wages, owned their own homes and renting was the norm, with most urban houses in multiple occupation and nowhere offering any privacy; whole families lived, and somehow increased, in single rooms.

 

Malnourished barefooted kids died of TB, your clothes had to last for years because there'd be no new ones, so were mostly faded and scruffy hand-me-downs, lousy because you couldn't afford to heat the water to wash them, in a tub by hand.  I am washing clothes as I type; washing machines are brilliant!  People left their front doors open not because of the wonderful community spirit they talked about decades later in pubs to bore the likes of me with,  but because nobody had anything to steal, and neither did their neighbours.  No running water, often no sewer connected to your facility at the end of the garden, tin baths once a weeks, daddy first then mummy and kids in age order; the little ones probably came out dirtier than they went in!  There was no public health service, and GPs had to be paid if anyone was ill, so by and large they were never treated and got worse until they got better.  Or didn't.  

 

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be, and that's probably just as well...

 

How one models this is down to personal choice.  Not many will want to show urban or rural poverty and deprivation in all it's anti-glory, but it can be suggested and hinted at.  The hardest thing to recreate is probably the filthy fug that enveloped the big towns and cities and mostly reduced visibility to about half a mile on good days; this haziness and glare on sunny days is very apparent in old photos.  Vibrant colours and clear blue skies are very much a modern image thing.  Clothes, except for the managerial classes on the commuter platform, should be tatty, and people stooped and bent from labour and malnutrition.  H0 figures might represent stunted growth.  Everybody wore hats, all the time or 'you'll catch your death of cold', a serious consideration.  Period modelling may be to some extent about social history as much as trains.

[APOLLO]

I love (and miss) our "grotty" industrial townscape, hence I model it in generically OO - My O layout is based in the American Rockies - what a contrast !

 

Having started work at Wigan Gas Works back in 1969 I had to have a model of a gas works. Not technically correct (was ever a gas works so ?) One problem I need to solve - it's not grotty enough YET !!

 

Here is an interesting 1938 view of one of Wigan's grotty parts. Up top is Wigan North Western with the gas works centre right. The L&Y line is far right, alongside the LNWR by the gas works. The electric works is bottom centre.  The junction of the Leeds Liverpool canal and the branch to Leigh & manchester is Bottom right.

 

Nearly all buildings  in this photo have long gone, the cull starting in the mid 60's. Wigan NW is still there, as is the L&Y to Wallgate, but the goods yards went years ago. The gasholders went quite recently. All the terraced houses in the Chapel Lane & Wallgate area is now light industry / commercial units.

 

I was born just off picture to the left. just a tad less industrial back then.

 

I've never heard of Eclipse Jam till today - no doubt many years ago us Wiganers had Eclipse Jam butties for breakfast and a pie for tea !!

 

 

I've posted the photo below before, but it's such a good photo again from the 30's - perhaps the same day as above.  Again the L&Y runs diagonal across, with the LNWR top left and the Great Central on the right. Darlington St Goods is seen, as is the GC loco shed at Lower Ince, along with some of it's J10 locos. Running left to right mid photo is the Leeds & Liverpool canal, here is the start of the many locks up to Top Lock, alongside Wigan Coal & Iron's "Top Place" ironworks at Kirkless.  At the bottom of the triangle of terraced houses top centre is where George Orwell lodged, and wrote his god awful book "The road to Wigan Pier" (Yes I'm no Orwell fan !!!!).

 

 

Brit15

[eastglosmog]

Coalfield areas wern't always black and grey - parts of Consett in Co Durham used to be coated in brick red dust from the steel works (or so I was told, it was a good deal cleaner when I lived up there in the 1970s).

[LMS2968]

1 hour ago, APOLLO said:

I've never heard of Eclipse Jam till today - no doubt many years ago us Wiganers had Eclipse Jam butties for breakfast and a pie for tea !!

 

I dare say  they still have the pie for tea, though!

[APOLLO]

Friday night tonight - Chippy tea  !!!!

 

 

Brit 15