Comic Pictures in High Street, West Bromwich (1902)

West Bromwich
1902
Silent
2m

Boisterous Edwardian lads jostle for a place in front of the camera in the West Midlands town.

The chaos and charm of Edwardian street life is captured to great effect here as young lads throng this West Midlands street. 'The pictures we are taking will be shown Monday Jan 13th', proclaims the showman's advert. The medley of flat caps, bowlers, boaters and top hats offers engaging vivid social insight, showing the classes mingling together yet clearly defined.

Look out for the steam-powered tram with its advert for Nestlé's chocolate. The ornate building passed by the tram was the headquarters of printing company Kenrick and Jefferson Ltd., completed in 1883. Also note the relative absence of young men in the film, made in the closing months of the Boer War; many locals would have signed up to serve in South Africa.

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.