Solar Eclipse
- 1900
Marching bands and local volunteers fill the streets of the Lancashire town.
Military parades were frequent and well-attended events in the Edwardian era, particularly around the time of the Anglo-Boer War, when public fascination with the daring exploits of its national heroes was at its height. War in South Africa was still raging when this Accrington parade took place. Young women shake collecting boxes as cadets, the Mayor's carriage and regimental bands pass by.
A street procession through Accrington.
It was a lucky filmmaker who managed to be on hand to capture real 'hard news', as in the disastrous launch of HMS Albion. The second Boer War, the biggest international story of the late-Victorian era, lured several cameramen to South Africa. Others responded to audience demand for moving pictures of such events by dramatising them for the camera.