Birmingham 1838 - 1938

[Vivienne14]

A concise summary of Birmingham over 100 years.


Source: British Newspaper Archive

 

[wilkesworld]

 

[A Sparks]

Awww bless them, the smiles on their faces!
I wonder how their lives turned out, probably better as time went on and they started work.

 

[wilkesworld]

Suppose that they got to eat too much fresh fruit.
Scurvy, a disease caused by severe Vitamin C deficiency, profoundly affects your hair due to the breakdown of collagen production.

 

[Radiorails]

Those children were very shabbily dressed but it seems that were "well scrubbed", probably for the photograph, but also their faces showed that they were reasonably fed. 1898 was well before the advent of junk and fast food availability.

 

[Morturn]

The average life expectancy would have been around 47 years. Almost one third ( 228.8 per thousand) of children did not reach the age of five and looking at how impoverished these kids are and with WWI most of these would have not lived beyond 1940.