Victorian Photo Album: Looking Through Windows - Ornaments & Things Inside (Part Four)

The last Looking Through Windows (here, here & here) posts explored 'Greenery in the "Slums"'; and showed that despite these houses being termed 'slums' by officials, the people living them adorned and beautified their homes in multiple ways. 

With a desire to knock down these houses, the photographers took pictures of buildings with cracks in the walls and broken windows, but didn't always notice the little things, the things which can be found by zooming into the old Victorian photographs. 

The previous posts looked at plants and flowers, this one looks at ornaments on window ledges and outside, and other things which can be peeped at by zooming in.  

This Looking Through Windows explores the things that people owned which can be seen in the shadows inside the homes (some door peeking as well as window peeking was necessary). See the images below.....

Victorian Photo Album: Looking Through Windows - Greenery in the "Slums" (Part Three)

Part three (of three parts) of Looking Through Windows (Greenery). See part one, here and part two, here. Please contact to use these cropped images in this way - mappingbirmingham@gmail.com

During the late Victorian period many of central Birmingham's poorer housing was earmarked for demolition in a drive to revamp the city centre and move those living in these houses out to newer homes in the outer parts of the town. Hundreds of photographs of 'slum housing' (Victorian terminology, not mine) were taken of the many courts of back to back housing in the town. These images were taken was to assert the reasoning for their demolition, that they were run down, so they "frame" the buildings to tell this story. This is only one story, though, as these buildings were filled with families living their lives and beautifying their homes, and if you zoom into the images you can find traces of this. 

Click on the images, below, to view in a lightbox.

Victorian Photo Album: Looking Through Windows - Greenery in the "Slums" (Part Two)

Part two (of three parts) of Looking Through Windows (Greenery). See part one, here. Please contact to use these cropped images in this way - mappingbirmingham@gmail.com

During the late Victorian period many of central Birmingham's poorer housing was earmarked for demolition in a drive to revamp the city centre and move those living in these houses out to newer homes in the outer parts of the town. Hundreds of photographs of 'slum housing' (Victorian terminology, not mine) were taken of the many courts of back to back housing in the town. These images were taken was to assert the reasoning for their demolition, that they were run down, so they "frame" the buildings to tell this story. This is only one story, though, as these buildings were filled with families living their lives and beautifying their homes, and if you zoom into the images you can find traces of this. 

Click on the images, below, to view in a lightbox.

Victorian Photo Album: Looking Through Windows - Greenery in the "Slums" (Part One)

Original full photograph of 'slum housing',
back of 52 & 54 Midland Street, late 1800s.

During the late Victorian period many of central Birmingham's poorer housing was earmarked for demolition in a drive to revamp the city centre and move those living in these houses out to newer homes in the outer parts of the town. Hundreds of photographs of 'slum housing' were taken of the many courts of back to back housing in the town. These images were taken was to assert the reasoning for their demolition, that they were run down, so they "frame" the buildings to tell this story. This is only one story, though, as these buildings were filled with families living their lives and beautifying their homes, and if you zoom into the images you can find traces of this. 

Below is part one (of three parts) of Looking Through Windows (Greenery). Please contact to use these cropped images in this way - mappingbirmingham@gmail.com

Click on the images, below, to view in a lightbox.