Saturday, February 5, 2011

The Dark Days

The photos below show London in the 1880s--a London that no longer exists. They give you a little sense of how much darker and dirtier life was back then. If you look closely, you may spot Jack the Ripper.



14 comments:

Gaiagirl said...

Its strange but I have always pictured London to look like this. Great photos!

Kitty said...

The industrial age was pretty bad though D:

Unknown said...

"Its strange but I have always pictured London to look like this." LOL

Darker and dirtier, yes, but more beautiful as well. Now we'd kill to have cities like these photos!

Pshychidelic Snail said...

Amazing pictures!! They remind me of Oliver Twist. . .

Anonymous said...

coooooooooooooooooooool.

Anonymous said...

I think the story I heard was the "peppered moths" near London who'd evolved from being light-winged to dark, so they could blend in on soot-streaked tree trunks are evolving back to lighter colored wings.

Here's a newspaper story about that.

Robert in San Diego

Anonymous said...

I wish I was living in London in general, but now this just makes me want to live there even more so. I love how dark and dangerous the city looks. I would have liked to live in London in that time period especially.
Beautiful pictures :)

Anonymous said...

Jacob Riis took some famous pictures of dirty, grimy New York neighborhoods back in the 1880s or 1890s. I don't recall the title he might have used, though.

Robert in San Diego via cell phone.

squidling said...

Those pictures are beautiful! Despite the dirty and dark nature of 19th century London, I would die to live then and there.
If only cities looked like that now...

Oh, Hi said...

Those pictures were amazing; thanks for posting them! But there were some really disturbing articles on that website as well...I'll never be the same...

Kirsten Miller said...

Alli: Oh no! You're right. I checked everything out when I posted the link, and there was nothing quite like that! Thanks for letting me know--I removed the link. It's a shame you can't seem to escape that sort of stuff these days.

Anonymous said...

People put so much more thought and detail into buildings back then... sigh
I wish modern-day New York still looked like that...
it still does in some places,though-

* cough cough shadow city cough*

excuse me

Micci said...

OMG, he's everywhere!

Oh, Alli the Wicked Novelist, I have a painting of your icon hanging in my room! Isn't that weird...

Anonymous said...

Dear Everyone who likes photos of the bad old days:

Found a wikipedia article about Jacob Riis (link goes to article). There's a photo he's credited with on that page that looks like the photographer is going to get mugged as soon as the guys with the axe handles are told the photo is taken.

Robert in San Diego, loves me some olde tyme photojournalism.