March 29, 2015: Britain 1928 in color

[Undertoad]

Today Mashable features a set of colour photographs of Britain 1928.

Back in the day, IotD was one of the first places to highlight the Prokudin-Gorskii color photographs that appeared, of Russia from 1907-1915. So these shots are not as historically striking, appearing in color... but still interesting.

They used the Autochrome process here; we are not used to seeing much in color until after Kodachrome came about in 1935.





And the most British of the shots, pageantry of Britannia and her four knights. There are still four today.



Many more at Mashable

[Gravdigr]

I like.

[fargon]

^WHS^

[Carruthers]

Just looking at the bus driver and his conductor set me thinking about what those two lived through and what was to come.

The older man might well have served in WW1 and his colleague would certainly have lived through it.

The Wall Street Crash and Great Depression were only a year away and the world would be embroiled in another war in little more than a decade.

I don't know if people were stronger in the first half of the 20th Century than now, but I'm thankful that I wasn't born in it.

[sexobon]

Second knight in on the left looks antsy.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Carruthers

I don't know if people were stronger in the first half of the 20th Century than now, but I'm thankful that I wasn't born in it.

Life was more rigorous in some ways, but less stressful in others. There was limited media reporting some what happened, rather than speculating on what might happen somewhere, sometime, someway. People could devote their time to solvable problems like beer, sex and bicycle tires.
Wars, good times, bad times, all came and went, but it's only half as bad if you don't spend half your life speculating about what's coming.

[Carruthers]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Life was more rigorous in some ways, but less stressful in others. There was limited media reporting some what happened, rather than speculating on what might happen somewhere, sometime, someway. People could devote their time to solvable problems like beer, sex and bicycle tires.
Wars, good times, bad times, all came and went, but it's only half as bad if you don't spend half your life speculating about what's coming.

My father was three years old in 1928, and his father would have been about the same age as the older man in the photo.
I always regret not talking to my grandparents more about their lives through two World Wars and the Great Depression.
Unfortunately, at the age of fifteen or so, you tend not to have any grasp of anything that went before your arrival on this Earth.
It's easier now to put these things in context of course, but somewhat late.

[ogwen69]

The image of the boy a the postbox with the signs for Udimore/Rye/Hastings interested me. The postbox is still there, and the sign is kind of still there, but now across the street. It's in Icklesham at the junction of Main Road and Broad Street.

Links below....

Image


Looking out of Broad Street towards the sign

https://goo.gl/maps/JXJpK

Looking in to Broad Street towards the post box (now green it appears)

https://goo.gl/maps/Noi2C

[glatt]

I love the British post boxes. Usually stamped with the monarch of the time.

[Carruthers]

Originally Posted by glatt

I love the British post boxes. Usually stamped with the monarch of the time.

The box above dates from Queen Victoria's reign, and she died in 1901 although it might well have been replaced by now.
I know of one local box from those days which was in service when I was a kid so it would have been seventy years old at the very least then.

[Sundae]

Originally Posted by Carruthers

My father was three years old in 1928...

I always regret not talking to my grandparents more about their lives through two World Wars and the Great Depression.

I was lucky in that. Grandad was born in 1923 and I talked to him, Nanny and Auntie Alice (Grandad's sister) about their lives quite frequently.

It started as a school project when I was 10 or 11, but I found out they liked talking, and I liked listening. When I moved back to Aylesbury and became a part-time carer for Grandad I'd often prompt him into stories I remembered.

Nanny was the best at them, even though she liked me the least. But she made it all seem real; the street sellers, the precarious way of getting by while pretending to be respectable, the dancing, getting on trams in curlers and getting off glamorous in full make-up.

Alice told funny, stoic stories about the Blitz and bomb-blasted London.

Grandad told me about the East End when he was a boy, the conditions they lived in, the animals they kept and ate, working for the Jews on shabbat. He was always ashamed that he couldn't fight in WWII (I've said here before, he tried to enlist twice, once under his brother's name but was turned down) but he told stories about the family in wartime.

And I'm so glad I listened to Dads when he talked about his childhood. Mum knows it all of course. But it's never enough.