More vintage photos: London edition

Street scenes like these fascinate me. They show the wear and tear of daily life--the broken window above the door. (Photo: British Library) — Street scenes like these fascinate me. They show the wear and tear of daily life–the broken window above the door, the placards pasted everywhere around the store, the surliness of the shopkeeper’s boy. (Photo: British Library)

While working on something else entirely (isn’t that how these things always work?), I stumbled across this small collection of vintage photos from 1800s London on the web, courtesy of the Daily Mail. The exhibit the article references is long gone, but thanks to the wonder of the web, the small number of photos the Daily Mail ran with their article are still out there for us to enjoy.

There’s an aerial comparison of Waterloo in 1917 and 2006, a snap of the hippo at Regent’s Park snoozing in 1852, and a group shot of the engineers who built London’s Central Line in 1898. There are also a few images of life in mid-1800s Japan, Italy, Egypt, and America.

Enjoy!

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