Ragged and filthy, their feet bare, they wear grave, careworn expressions. For these children, life was nothing but hard work, empty bellies and the constant struggle for survival. The pictures, taken by photographer Horace Warner 100 years ago in Spitalfields in London’s East End, were later used by social campaigners to illustrate the plight of the poorest children in London.
On these streets and alleys, hordes of urchins eked out a hand-to-mouth existence, fending for themselves while their parents worked 14-hour days in the factories and docks.
Infant mortality was higher in 1900 than in 1800, as increasing numbers of families sought work in the cities. In the East End, nearly 20 per cent of children died before their first birthday. Poor families lived ten to a room with no clean water for washing and drinking.
(via mizhenka)
A Muddy Morning in the Moscow Kremlin at the Beginning of the 17th Century, Apollinary Vasnetsov , 1913
(via palettesandturpentine)
Sit in a train, forget the fact, and live as if you were at home; but suddenly recollect where you are, feel the onward-rushing power of the train; change into a traveller, take a cap out of your bag, meet your fellow travellers with a more sovereign freedom, with more insistence, let yourself be carried toward your destination by no effort of your own, enjoy it like a child, become a darling of the women, feel the perpetual attraction of the window, always have at least one hand extended on the window sill. Same situation, more precisely stated: Forget that you forgot, change in an instant into a child travelling by itself on an express train around whom the speeding, trembling car materializes in its every fascinating detail as if out of a magician’s hand.”
Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka
1910s
Lord I love the German language. Makes it sound (even) more tragic and hideous.
Die Verwandlung! Should start learning German 'cause of Kafka.
illustration
Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” first book edition, 1916.
Ridiculously disturbing.
