Street Scenes in North of England (c.1902)

1902
Silent
2m

A mysterious but vivid snapshot of Edwardian life.

A soggy cobbled street around 1902, probably in Lancashire. We know frustratingly little about this film, but it's stunningly-preserved and crammed with evocative detail. Men, grimy from factory work, share the street with shawled and hatted women millworkers and children in clogs. All endure the drizzle, and the delight and fascination of the children at the presence of the camera shine through.

The camera takes in little by way of distinguishing landmarks, and this street, if it survives at all, may be entirely unrecognisable today. The bearded, bowler-hatted man near the end of the film could be one of Mitchell and Kenyon's showman collaborators, or part of the crew.

Street Life

Pavements thronging, traffic pressed nose to bumper (or tail): these astonishing films show Edwardian streets buzzing with life.

'Street scenes' were a staple of early filmmaking, and Mitchell & Kenyon's are particularly stunning, revealing in sharp detail how our ancestors behaved, dressed and moved in public, as well as how their towns and cities were organised.

These streets throng with human and other traffic. Motor cars were still a rarity, but the tide of vehicles never let up: horse-drawn carts, bicycles, omnibuses and trams (some of them electrified). They may miss the sounds and smells of the city, but these extraordinary images evoke a rapidly changing society: an urbanised, increasingly mobile, consumer Britain not so very different from our own.