Life in Wexford (1902)

1902
Silent
1m

Street life in a busy shopping area in Wexford.

These short scenes were filmed in January 1902 in and around Wexford's Bull Ring market, capturing an array of local characters, including a cheery fishwife. Children and members of the Royal Irish Constabulary mingle with the traders and customers. The Mayor of Wexford, in his official regalia, appears with his daughters. The films were later shown at the Theatre Royal, Wexford.

This film was shot during a two-day visit to the South East Ireland town by Mitchell and Kenyon cameraman Louis De Clercq. The man in the pale hat seen walking arm-in-arm with another man towards the camera may be Hugh McCarthy, manager of Wexford's White Hotel. The same man reappears later, alongside the mayor and his daughters.

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.