"The past is a foreign country".
Do they do day trips? There's some lottery numbers I'd like to use.
John
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Although we clearly live far more comfortably than these people ever dreamed of, are we any happier as a result of it?
My kids don't enjoy anything like the level of freedom and adventure that comes across in these pictures, and there's certainly nothing like this sense of community any more.
Still, at least we have things like carpets, LCD TVs, and dishwashers now....
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...and two dongles for a tenner !
Evidence of real poverty in some of the shots.
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Terrific photos. Very interesting given the recent thread on relative/absolute poverty.
Modern Liverpool is a world apart - a recent European City of Culture, and all that.
"Uncle Mort" hated Liverpool - he called it an "affront to the North", because of "...all that cheerfulness in the face of adversity". :-)
Triumph of the human spirit, more like.
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I expect that if you were to try to photographs of children in the street today you would soon have a visit from the police.
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1975 - that's only a short while ago to see such sights!
In the 1960s I lived in a Midlands city and never saw such a depressing picture, even in the "poor" areas.
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I can remember going to Liverpool in the late 70s and early 80s to watch Spurs receive our then routine beating.
Some of the area around the football ground looked just like the photos.
Despite living in London, I had never seen such urban decay.
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Its noticable that there's virtually a complete lack of cars in the street scenes...
BTW it says '75, but from the cars I saw in the ones I watched (Corsair/1100) and from what I remember of Liverpool in the 60s and 70s I'd have said many of the photos were 60s rather than 70s?
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And the street party scene strikes me as most likely from 1977.
Great photos, though. Even though I lived in a relatively wealthier area as a child in the 70s, I grew up in similar terraced streets and some of the photos are quite evocative of my childhood. I remember elderly neighbours in houses which had not been "modernised" as they said then, big Victorian ranges in very dark sculleries, no heating etc. And there is only a slightly bigger scattering of cars in our street when I look at my family's photo album.
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I think the 70s date is right. Plenty of early-mid 70s fashions in the shots... also in the 70s folks just didn't have new cars like we do today. Many folks were driving 60s cars.
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There's a 71/H reg Commer van in one of the shots. If that was 1975, that makes it equivalent to seeing an 07 plate Transit in an area of N or P reg Astras and Fiestas today.
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Puts all the whining about the "poverty" people have to endure during the recession into perspective. Even those on sink estates today live like kings compared to the lot of the common man forty or fifty years ago.
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" Even those on sink estates today live like kings compared to the lot of
>> the common man forty or fifty years ago."
really?
My father was a carpenter by trade. In the sixties we live in a nice semi-detached house in a pleasant suburb of East London which he bought on a mortgage My mother did not need to go out to work although she had a part-time job. Jobs were easy to come by: was virtually no unemployment. In 1960 my father was able to buy a small car,an Austin A35. We always had an annual holiday.
Would an employed carpenter in East London have such a lifestyle today? I think not. He would be lucky to get a job and he certainly could not afford a mortgage on the house we used to live in. I very much doubt that most people nowadays could bring up a family of three children without both parents working.
If you measure wealth in gadgets and cars owned I suppose we are wealthier. If you measure it in housing costs, availability of work, ability to live on a single income we are all a lot poorer.
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>> If you measure wealth in gadgets and cars owned I suppose we are wealthier. If
>> you measure it in housing costs, availability of work, ability to live on a single
>> income we are all a lot poorer.
>>
Yes, but if today's carpenter didn't spend his money on wide-screen LCD Sky TV, iPhones, iPods, iPads, etc. then he might be able to afford to live on a single wage?
Housing costs have escalated due to the lack of house-building -v- increased population - simple supply and demand economics.
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>
>> Would an employed carpenter in East London have such a lifestyle today?
Yes. Every chippy I know makes a decent living and owns (mortgaged) his own house.
Wouldn't be in East London tho, he would be further out in Essex and travel to work in his car, which he also owns. Of course thats when he is not taking his kids to Disneyland in Florida.
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"Every chippy I know makes a decent living"
I don't know any chippies but I know plasterers in Manchester who make more than a grand a week bish bash boshing.
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>> There's a 71/H reg Commer van in one of the shots.
A thing of beauty even then in those surroundings :-)
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Lets not get all "aww this is real poverty - poor people" over this.
That could have been any east London scene from the 1960s. Indeed any large city had similar scenes if you bothered to look. It wasn't poverty, there was plenty to spend down the pub, the kids do not have their knees out nor do they appear to have rickets.
London regeneration was a bit in front of Liverpool, by about 20 years. Its history sure, but I was born and grew up in similar scenes. I think a whole generation grew up with some mechanical knowledge about cars by playing in the ones that were dumped in the street. And there were plenty.
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"A montage of 1975 photos of Liverpool."
I'm sure there were some 1977 shots in there too, Jubilee street parties.
Many of those pics mirror my own, same hairstyles, clothes and flares on the kids, same cars, same street shots as where I grew up in Manchester. Even down to the kids jumping all over the red Maxi, that was my next door neighbour.
Mine aren't quite so grim as some of the worst images though.
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I wonder what became of all those (generally) happy looking kids ?
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They grew up to be us.
Turned grumpy mind somewhere along the way!
John
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Its the people on here. - or maybe will be in 15 years time...
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The past is a foreign country. - Tooslow
