Scenes at Monument Bridge in Hull (1900)

Kingston upon Hull
1900
Silent
1m

A melee of traffic, carts, trams, bicycles and people of all ages squeeze past the camera in Victorian Hull.

This busy scene was taken on the end of Hull's Monument Bridge, a moveable 'bascule' bridge that connected the Queen's and Prince's docks. The Hull Daily Mail, applauding a screening of several Hull films, noted that "although they pass rapidly before the vision, it is an easy matter to distinguish acquaintances... it is amusing to hear the comments of those who know several of the 'pictures'."

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.