This is a photographic journey back to British India.
India in 1912 was still a colonial possession of the British Empire, the jewel in its crown. Its vast population, strategic position and resources made the subcontinent one of the Empire’s greatest possessions. But compared to other up and coming British colonies such as Canada and Australia, India was economically backwards and undeveloped. There were few industries, and most people lived an agrarian lifestyle, their traditions largely undisturbed by the British or other Europeans.
Not that the British and North Americans did not try to remake India in their own image. The late 1800s and early 1900s saw a wave of Christian missionaries from America and Great Britain go to India.
The pictures below were published in a book entitled India and Daily Life in Bengal by Reverend Z.F. Griffin, a Baptist missionary in India for 15 years. The pictures record the way life was in India in 1912. Some things have not changed that much in some of the more rural areas, while in many other ways the India of today would be hardly recognizable to Reverend Griffin.
An Indian Boy Herding Cattle
Bringing Pottery to Market
Hand Powered Saw Mill
A Sweeper
Day Labourers in Calcutta
The Bank of the Ganges, the Holiest River in India
Temple on Bank of the River at Benares
The Faithful by the Ganges
Boat used by the Christian missionaries
Cremation on the banks of the Ganges
Hindu Devotee With Arms Rigid
Hindu Pilgrim Preparing Cakes by the Way Side
This devout man is traveling a great distance to a holy shrine by prostrating himself, rising, and then prostrating himself again.
A person of means being transported in a litter on the backs of two men.
These men are returning from the river where they have washed the clothes.
A wandering holy man: note the leopard skin.
We’ve all seen the ads encouraging us to send our old, unwanted gold and get cash back. With the price of gold at an all time high, we are promised oodles of money if we just turn in our old wedding rings from our first, second or third marriages, and perhaps even our unwanted jewelry or grandpa’s fillings.
You might think that this annoying phenomenon was the product of the Age of infomercials, but you would be wrong.
Perhaps as further proof that there is really nothing new under the sun, I recently came across an example of the cash for gold business model in an ad published in the 1916 edition of the World Almanac.
Here it is:
Send unwanted gold, jewelry, false teeth, wedding gifts and get money!
The text reads: TURN INTO CASH. Your old gold, silver, platinum, duplicate wedding gifts, diamonds, etc which you don’t use; also discarded false teeth, broken or otherwise, with or without gold; will send you cash same day that goods are received and hold your shipment for 15 days. If the amount sent is not satisfactory will return your goods at my expense. ALEX LOEB. Jeweler and Smelter.
Note the striking similarities to today’s version of the same business model. As with the modern TV ads, this ad 1) asks you send gold by mail 2) pays you immediately 3) will return the items if you are not satisfied. Note also that the advertiser claims to be a smelter of gold. This is similar to certain ads now on tv where the advertiser says they operate their own refinery.
The only difference, in 1916 if you did not like the price they offered you for the gold, they would ship it back at their cost. Today, if you don’t like what they offer you you have to pay for the shipping, and because most people don’t want to be bothered with the extra shipping cost they usually agree to the price offered to them.
There is not much new in the world of advertising or money for gold.
Even before the industrial revolution, London was plagued by poor air quality. The smoke and fumes from hundreds of tanneries and forges, together with the aroma of human waste dumped on the streets mingled in an unwholesome air.
With the advent of the industrial revolution, smoke stacks began to dot the sky line, spewing thick unfiltered smoke and chemicals throughout the city. The smog was so severe that when the atmospheric conditions concentrated the thick soup rather than dispersing it, visibility was reduced to zero and people were known to have died in accidents or from actually suffocating from the smoke.
This unhealthy situation continued well into the 1950s. Below are two pictures taken during the 1920s that illustrate just how bad the smog and pollution problem was in London.
This picture of London taken from an airplane shows the smog covering the city.
London Chimneys Spewing Pollution
The United States was built on immigration. The period of from 1850 to the early 1900s saw a dramatic increase in immigration. In 1820 a total of 8,385 immigrants were admitted into the country. By 1865 over 100,000 immigrants were entering the country each year. And by 1906 over 1.1 million people were coming to America, most passing through Ellis Island, the immigration nexus.
Immigrants on the Deck of Ship
These immigrants were mainly European, but not from Britain. The majority were Italians or East Europeans from Poland, Ukraine and Russia. Among the East Europeans were many Jews and Roman Catholics, whose faiths were often the targets of discrimination and contempt from the established Protestant majority.
Ellis Island Immigration Station
The influx of immigration caused problems of assimilation and accomodation. Many immigrants found themselves relegated to crowded and unsanitary apartments in inner city slums. Still, for many fleeing persecution and dead end poverty in their own country, the living conditions in the worst inner city slums were better than what they had left behind.
This is a pictorial history of some of the people that passed through Ellis island during the heyday of immigration.
Receiving Hall at Ellis Island
Once the immigrants landed at Ellis Island they had to wait hours and hours in different lines while their applications for entry were processed. There were questions, and more questions, and medical examinations. For the lucky, the process ended with permission to board a ferry to New York. For those rejected, the process led to detention and deportation.
In the picture above, you can see the masses of people that went through the screening process every day. The letters in the photograph explain what each line was for:
(A) Entrance stairs; (B) Examination of health ticket; (C) Surgeon’s examination; (D) Second surgeon’s examination; (E) Group compartments; (F) Waiting for inspection; (G) Passage to the stairway; (H) Detention room; (I) The Inspectors’ desks; (K) Outward passage to barge, ferry, or detention room.
Below is a picture of some immigrants who were detained for special examination. It is not known if they were eventually let through:
Immigrants at Ellis Island
In the picture below, an immigrant rejected for admission appeals to a special tribunal.
appealing a deportation order
The lucky ones that made it through the immigration screening were then allowed to take a ferry that landed them in New York. Below is a picture of the newly arrived immigrants landing at Battery Park.
Immigrants arriving in New York after passing through Ellis Island
The immigrants were now in America, but their struggles were far from over.
Next Article: Life in America for New Immigrants
The First Automobile
Henry Ford did not invent the automobile, but he revolutionized the production of the car by using assembly lines and standardized parts. His famous line, that” people can have the Model T in any color as long as it’s black” was said only half in jest: the secret of his success was indeed standardization
in order to achieve uniformity of quality and speed of assembly. Before the rise of the Ford Motor Company, early automobiles were hand crafted, expensive, and used unique improvised parts so that maintenance was difficult and replacement parts hard to come by.
Before Ford developed his assembly line system, he was like many other inventors experimenting with the new combustion engines. In 1893 Ford built his first automobile. The technology was so new at the time that the word “automobile” (which literally means self-moving) had not yet been invented. Ford called his first automobile “a wagon driven by gas.”
This first automobile design was not a commercial success. People laughed at the inventor and said that the contraption was useless. Horses were afraid of it.
