Bolton Museum

This day 75 years ago…

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This day 75 years ago…

Apprentices joined a national strike to demand fair wages, better working conditions and union representation. Bolton’s apprentices gathered in Queen’s Park. The strike was successful.

John Shaw of Davenport Street was carried from his home to his final resting place in Heaton Cemetery. It was a secular funeral.

Some children played on a bit of wasteland.

Labour councillor Ellis Clarke shot part of his short film “Our Bolton” at the bus station.

And a woman bought some stamps from the machine outside the Post Office on Deansgate.

All photographs were taken by Humphrey Spender (Copyright Bolton MBC)

Humphrey Spender’s Camera

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The Worktown 75th Birthday exhibition opens on Saturday 22 September at Bolton Museum, and is on until the start of December. We are particularly pleased to have the opportunity to show Humphrey Spender’s camera, which he used in Bolton. It has been kindly loaned by his widow Rachel Spender for the exhibition.

The story goes that Spender used a Leica which was then stolen, and replaced it with this camera, a Contax II. I thought that we would be able to see if this was true by date ordering the films that Spender took in Bolton. Film cameras often have quirks in terms of where the film starts, or how many shots you can get. My amateur detective skills have proved insufficient to discover anything though- or perhaps he only used this camera.

I’m not that personally enthusiastic about fetishising objects, but this camera does symbolise a turning point in photography. 35 mm cameras were a new invention which replaced the popular use of large format cameras. They enabled photographers to capture unposed images and so their invention led to a new style of photography, exemplified by Henri Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moments.

Spender’s photographs of Bolton were one of the first  documentary photography projects to harness the possibilities of this new technology. Spender described how his camera seemed “almost a sci-fi contraption” to the people of Bolton. He was one of few people who could afford and use this type of camera in the 1930s. He showed remarkable skill in using the camera, particularly as it did not have a light meter. Out of the 850ish photos he took in Bolton, there are only about three dropped frames.

Although Leica is still a photographic holy grail, the Contax II was actually a superior camera in 1937. It had a fast shutter speed of 1/1250 second and superb quality Zeiss lenses. We have also borrowed Spender Biogon wide angle lens which enabled him to be an unobserved observer in Bolton. Because the lens had such a wide angle of view he could position it on a pub table and then photograph people without them realising

Hindoo Man

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Tom Harrisson, leader of the Worktown study was an early advocate of the Jack Kerouac school of writing. Other Mass Observers describe his manic, mammoth writing bouts,  from which he would emerge dazed, and sometimes quite smelly. Observer Walter Hood describes him typing away with a George Formby 78 playing over and over again on his gramophone.

So you can picture the scene here’s Lancashire legend, George Formby’s “Hindoo Man” which sort expresses the 1930s cultural attitudes which led to Mass Observation. I think you could call it confused colonialism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXQtc107f74&noredirect=1

The photograph of Tom Harrisson is from Bolton Museum’s Worktown Archive. The Museum only hold the print, which is clearly Harrisson on a Bolton rooftop, but it is not obvious which film it belongs to

Interwar aerial photos of Bolton available on new English Heritage web site

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Today (25th June 2012) English Heritage launched Britain From Above.

This new site publishes over 16,000 aerial photographs taken over the UK in the interwar years.

This is a fascinating project and includes a member log in so anyone can add extra information to the site.

There is a great selection of aerial shots of Bolton including many long demolished factories.

The Illuminations

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Bolton’s Mass-Observers made a mass trip to Blackpool to observe during the September 1937 holiday week. The mills of Bolton would close for a week at a time so workers came to the town alongside their workmates to enjoy the ‘Paris of the North’. The Northern mill towns staggered their holidays so that the cotton industry did not grind to a halt, and Blackpool had enough beds to cope with demand. Increases in leisure time allowed the working classes to enjoy holidays for the first time, although for many the enforced mill closure weeks meant simply a depressing struggle to make one week’s wage feed a family for two weeks.

Humphrey Spender photographed the Blackpool illuminations during the trip. His images of these glowing fairytale figures contrast starkly with his photographs of day to day life in Bolton. They show how Blackpool constructed itself as a dream destination, removed from everyday reality.

British Pathé have a great archive clip on their website which brings the illuminations Spender photographed to life. Mass-Observation, like their reporter, was also concerned with what was going on in the beachside shadows. After an extensive two week observation M-O concluded that sexual activity in public areas in Blackpool went no further than kissing, and copping a bit of a feel. The idea of Blackpool as a Sodom or Gommorah of sordid northern morality was a media construct, and as much of a fairytale as the illuminations.

A Cannibal comes to Bolton. Part 2.

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Continuing on from here… where our friendly Cannibal is finding it strangely difficult to get anything to eat in Bolton. 

He looked thoughtfully at the eels and lobsters in the window and then, feeling in his pockets to make sure that small change was handy, pressed down the latch of the door. To his surprise it would not open. For all his need and effort, and for all the sight of food through the glass pane who could not get in.

He tried another, marked Café, with dishes of biscuits and fruit temptingly visible. That too was locked. He called “Open! Hello!” thinking it possible that all the shops were kept closed for fear of theft. He was answered by a head from the second storey, which after hearing his request, exclaimed: “Has’t come from a foreign land? Thee cannot get food in Worktown today. Shops be shoot now.”

He tried another.
Wherever he tried there was the same discouraging response. “I was not so much annoyed as amazed,” says Cannibal in his book, “but I wished as far as possible to make my own discoveries, not accepting knowledge at second-hand, and so I did not at the time pursue the subject with questions. Nor did I care to be so quizzed at and stared over. Evidently most of the population was at work. This was indeed Worktown. It was work with a vengeance where none was free to entertain a stranger.

“However. I was patient, and resolved to amuse myself by counting the passers-by, an easy enough task. I was encouraged in my industry by a notice in large black letters on one of the buildings: Man shall not live by bread alone- Matt [numbers]. This I took to be an order from one of the town’s rulers, a Mr. Matt. The numbers I could not fathom, but noted them faithfully while the opportunity occurred.

I counted during a quarter of an hour 43 passers. All but four of these were going in the direction of the Chief’s house. There were as many solitary walkers as walkers in company, and although altogether there were 23 men to 19 women, yet women alone outnumbered men by 9-4. There was no group of more than five people, and only one child, led by her mother. Nor were there any old people, the average age of all of the men I saw being 35, and the women 30. They nearly all went at a brisk pace, and 25 were carrying small black or red books, mostly with a gold cross on the covers. Their tribal sign, I assumed- I had noticed it on the large stones in the gardens of the tall spiked buildings.

 

Most generally striking were the round black objects many men wore on their heads. From time to time they seized them in their right hands and took them off, only to replace them immediately. It was not a warm day and I could not believe that such frequent ventilation was necessary. The women’s hands were covered, and like the men they were dressed mainly in dark material, greens and blues. Common sense colours, I argued, in a working world.

“Neck clothing I would like to have studied. Men’s was particularly interesting. A few only wore bright coloured rags like the clothes of my own island,and many had stiff white circles with two tabs or rings in front. A few again, who wore black garments, had circles or bands, but x without wings. The dress of some women, if indeed women they were, defies description. One was loaded from head to foot with billowy black shapeless material which concealed the whole of her body leaving only a gap through which her face could peer.”

 

Fascinated but not puzzled too long by the traffic lights, Cannibal had now discovered hard polished grooves running along the centre of the road, and intelligently deduced that they were connected in some way with communication or transport. But no means of getting from one place to another except by walking presented itself. A tour of the city might be pleasant on such a quiet day: he was beginning to feel hungry again and needed a fresh surprise to forget nature. Perhaps he could mount a car at the crossroads. But they started up as he was thinking and from behind their music came the sharp sound of distant music.

“There was something in its regular rhythm like jungle music, but that was almost all the resemblance that now passed to regular feature of normal savage life. About thirty people, mostly men, were following the band, which marched on the left-hand side of the road, the ordinary walkers making way for it. In front strode an elderly man in a long dark blue coat and a special sort of hat which was unlike those of the bystanders. I concluded him a man of some importance in the town. Next were three women and a man, slightly younger but dressed in a similar way. They carried long poles from which fluttered dark blue material bearing the words: ‘Blood and Fire’. Their faces were unconcerned and a few who watched were even smiling. For myself I was a little afraid at this announcement, but took heart when I saw no panic had been caused. Wherever the fire was the people did not believe themselves in danger. Nor could I smell blood.

To be continued…albeit probably at some point in the far distant future as a bit of variety is the spice of life. 

All photographs used in this post are by Humphrey Spender and are copyrighted to Bolton MBC. The text is reproduced from the Mass-Observation Archive, available digitally through Adam Matthew Digital.

A Cannibal comes to Bolton. Part 1.

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The leader of Mass-Observation’s Worktown study of Bolton was the remarkable Tom Harrisson. His previous anthropological study of tribes in the New Hebrides led him to take a particular interest in the religious life of Bolton. He saw parallels between church and tribal rituals. A book examining religion in Bolton was planned after John Sommerfield’s ‘The Pub and the People’, to be published by Victor Gollancz of the Left Book Club who had help to fund the Worktown survey. The start of the Second World War and Harrisson’s decision to put Mass Observation at the service of the Ministry of Information meant the book was never completed. However there are a couple of early drafts of the book in the M-O Archive. Harrisson’s first attempt was the highly amusing “A Cannibal comes to Bolton”, in which he writes from the viewpoint of……….. yes, a Cannibal who has come to study this town built for work, in the dark industrial North. I will post some excerpts from the draft starting below, with accompanying illustrations. I have transcribed directly and it is a draft so obviously a bit rough in places.

Our story begins as a baffled Cannibal arrives on a Sunday to a strangely empty town:

Porters stood ready as the express swung into view. Plunging into the smoke and shadow of the terminus it curled about the platform now loud with ringing cries, and finally came to rest. “But at once,” Mr. Cannibal declares in his posthumous Savage Testimony, at once it became clear that the spirit in my train had fled into the bodies of its passengers. Amid clouds of steam and wild calls they extricated themselves from the narrow coffin-like compartments, and either carrying their own goods or hiring another to do so, scuttled off, seeming both glad and scared.

 


“My own belongings were few, and I preferred not to surrender them, and with them my freedom to go when and how I pleased. So this is Worktown at last, I said.

Now Cannibal had spent some hours earlier in the day about the central station of a much larger northern city [Manchester], and, not withstanding the fatigue of a night journey from the south, would greatly have enjoyed wandering about its deserted squares and streets
much longer. But for two reasons he resolved to stick to his original plan. He wanted to see the Englishman’s work before attempting to enjoy his leisure. And there were no trains to Worktown for three hours after ten o’ clock.

Sure that the journey must be long from this abode of the sleeping Cannibal had got on the train once more about half an hour ago. He had the feeling therefore not so much of arriving in Worktown as of being precipitated there. He sat down in the station to collect his thoughts, which were many. Dressed in European fashion, but with little knowledge of European ways, his first holiday in the white world was at the invitation of the League of Visitors. He wore the L.V. badge, with its motto Ab extra, and his surname was not Cannibal but something else which bothered the English tongue. Cannibal aroused no comment.

“After I had sat in this strange colourless place for some minutes,” he writes, “I began to realise that I was hungry. I went into the streets to find a food-place, but on reaching the open air (if the air of this town can be ever called open) I was so taken with what I saw in front of me that I quite forgot my pangs. For tall black and brown buildings such as I had never dreamed of reared themselves into the sunless sky. What were these gigantic pillars? What strange people lived here and what work did they do?

As far as I could see these enormous poles pointed upwards, while in between was the uneven landscape of houses, from the tops of which wavered thin streams of smoke through hat-like holes. What struck me most after the first shock of the tall finger-like buildings were others, not so tall and coming to a sharp point. I sketched some of these at the time.

In the middle of the town was a very large white building with a clock. This was evidently the Chief’s house.

If this was Worktown, Cannnibal reflected, then these tall and spiky buildings must be places of work. There were few people to be seen, but perhaps they were busy indoors. Probably it was for that reason that the other city had seemed deserted earlier in the day. Noticing Crompton’s Fried Fish across the road he made up his mind to postpone investigation.

TO BE CONTINUED…

The top two photographs are by Humphrey Spender, the town hall postcard from Bolton’s Local History Archive, all are ©Bolton MBC.

The text can be read in the original at the M-O Archive and a digitised archive is available through Adam Matthew Digital.

Mass-Observation Theatre Jukebox

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Stand and Stare’s Mass-Observation Theatre Jukebox is currently on display at FutureEverything’s exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. The jukebox uses photographs from the Worktown Archive and text from the M-O Archive to play stories. Placing images on the jukebox desk activates a projection and audio through radio-frequency transmitter tags implanted in the pictures. Knowing the method doesn’t take away the magic; when I was there people were getting really wrapped up in the experience. These tags are used for identification and tracking and can even be implanted in humans, a dark development of M-O’s surveillance methods.

 

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There is more information about how the Jukebox was developed here.

Spender and the Conservative ladies

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A small number of Humphrey Spender’s written observations have survived in the Mass-Observation Archive. These texts really bring the photographs to life giving both factual information and an insight into Spender’s experiences photographing in Bolton. The observation below was made at the Conservative Club Rooms, in Farnworth on January 24th 1938 where volunteers were helping with canvassing for the Farnworth by-election . Can you guess which women he is describing in the accompanying photographs?

“One of the women asks another where she comes from. Replies Lowestoft. Ah then you know all about the fish (there has been reference to the fishing industry before) that night.
The woman from Lowestoft is definitely ‘refined’ to the point of being of being almost arty. Long yellow hair, to an unbecoming length, neat dress, patronising air: slightly embarrassed by my presence.
Eventually a Miss Johnson, over-bearing, efficient, and baggy-faced, for whose permission I have been waiting, comes in and after fixing up the elderly canvasser turns her attention on me. She is worried at the idea that the photos are being taken while there are no Farnworth people actually in the room. (all the workers seem to be outsiders) and wants me to wait but is satisfied when I tell her that the photographs are not likely to be seen by anyone in Bolton and are only for pictorial reportage of electioneering irrespective of any specific election.”