Scenes of Carlisle (1901)

Carlisle
1901
Silent
2m

A well dressed crowd emerges from an unknown building and engages with the camera.

It's not possible to identify the building from which this crowd emerges but it's unlikely to be a factory, given their standard of dress. A couple of well-dressed women make a point of filing past the camera to give a cheerful wave. The film was probably commissioned by C. Algie, the Carlisle-based proprietor of Algie's Modern Circus, who worked with related Mitchell & Kenyon exhibitors.

Crowds of people leaving work through factory doors in Carlisle

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.