Comments on: Picturing the mid-20th century

Question: Picturing the mid-20th century

zadcat — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 13:31:38 -0800

Helping make a historical documentary, I'm looking for photo archives of various scenes in England in the 20th century.

The story line follows a working class woman from school (1910s-1920s) through working as a clerk in a shoe shop (1930s) and marriage and homemaking mid 1930s through the 1950s.

She lived in the Midlands mostly, not in London.

We need images of interiors of classrooms, shops and houses, and related objects, that we can use freely. 1930s shoe advertising would be good too.

We're not actually in England, so we need online archives because we can't just pop around to addresses in the UK.

By: heh3d

heh3d — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 14:10:47 -0800

I have no idea about copyright etc., but Exploring 20th Century London is an impressive archive of all sorts of random stuff.

By: handee

handee — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 15:25:35 -0800

Leodis is an archive of photos from Leeds - it's north, not midlands, but probably a better fit than London. The advanced search is great - for example, here are all images from 1910 to 1920 with the word "school" in their description as thumbnails

By: adamvasco

adamvasco — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 01:43:39 -0800

Check out Northampton Boot and Shoe Industry

By: medium format

medium format — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 04:45:31 -0800

English Heritage has some pretty good online photo archives. I'm not sure of their usage restrictions however.