When I started this blog, my aim was to illustrate how photography had recorded Liverpool over the past 150 years. Wherever possible, I have been posting previously unseen images that add to the already large number of Liverpool photographs in circulation. My collection is obviously privately owned but I believe there is a responsibility to make it public, rather than hide it away unseen. Our interpretation of history is very much dependent on primary sources of information being made available and photography is an indispensible tool for all local historians.
This is nowhere more evident than in the photographs I have posted today. The desperate poverty shown in the first photograph (taken off Scotland Road by N. Steven in the early 1890s) compares dramatically with the second photograph, taken from one of the Earle family albums, of their relatives, the Swinburnes in about 1870. Admiral Charles Swinburne is photographed with his wife and three daughters, all dressed in their finest outfits – a total contrast to the rags and barefeet of the three girls. As the saying goes … a picture is worth a thousand words.
Hi Colin
Excellent photographs. Is it possible though that the Swinburne photograph features the family in their best new outfits especially for the photograph? Of course that does not nullify the contrast but might accentuate it a bit more.
Keep up the excellent work with this fine blog, Colin.
Chris
Great images, the top one I find particularly powerful.
It’s a pity the lettering on the window on the right isn’t clearer, – I think one of the words is ‘builder’ – it might help to identify the street.
Hi Dave,
The writing is quite a bit clearer on the original – it states J. Patterson – but I have found no builder of that name in Gore’s Directories for 1889/1893 and 1907. I am still trying to pin the street down and will post it when I do.