I liked the horse and carriage traffic jams.

It also looks more crowded than today at times.

are no motorized vehicles and no traffic lights or lane markings to regulate the traffic.

it must have been incredibly noisy and dirty. Note the dung on the ground. Someone would come and sweep it up later. Congestion moves along almost by social agreement since there appear to be few around to direct it. Nestles has been around a long time.

People walking in and out are amazing. I feel for the horses. Many died on the street and some were terribly abused. Imagine drawing a double decker bus all day in that chaotic noise and movement. I imagine horses didn't live as long as they were intended because of that alone.

Almost at the very end as the horse drawn vehicles were going all in one direction a car comes against the flow all by itself. I consider that a portent of doom for that life and an omen of the future to come. Extraordinary thing, watching people from another world and era ... another world filled with smells, sounds and sights that might as well be on an alien world go about their business on streets I have walked with buildings around them that I have entered. Lovely thing, this.

that Nestle had altered old footage.

Practically all horse traffic. Lots of double deckers.

Lipton Tea, still going strong!

thanks indeed!

The 'Berlin 1900' film is restored & colorized like the History Channel's 'Apocalypse WWI' series. That's quite a tram/electric street car system the Germans had, esp. compared to 1904 scenes of London. And handsome people in the capital city, active & healthy. PBS did a great program this year on Dorothea Lange, maybe you saw it.

Thank you for sharing those!

Thanks.

the change to right-hand traffic came from revolutionary France and was adopted by many countries in continental Europe thanks to Napoleon.

Nestles
Quaker Oats
Bovril
Liptons Teas
Pears Soap
Kodak
Old Gold Cigarettes
Grape Nuts
Colmans Mustard
Allsopps

This was interesting



The Crimean War Memorial is a memorial in London that commemorates the Allied victory in the Crimean War of 1853–56. It is located on Waterloo Place, at the junction of Regent Street and Pall Mall

Cadbury's Cocoa (1st bus, though tricky to read)
Bird's Custard
Hovis (bread)
Fry's Cocoa (merged with Cadbury)
Jeyes Fluid (disinfectant)
Reckitt (household products, merged with Colman's of the mustard)
Holstein (lager)

Interesting how many of those were non-British brands, even then:
Nestle
Quaker Oats
Kodak
Old Gold
Holstein

I hadn't heard of Allsopp's before. Wikipedia says it was a brewery. Or was there something else with that name?

People pining for the "good old days."

I did a class report on what the "good old days" were really like, including a picture of a traffic jam in some city, when there were no cars, just horses.

Can you imagine that?

While they could sweep the road apples up, the urine was another matter and if you've ever seen a horse take a leak, you know what a problem it must have been.

Cars, reeking of half combusted oil and other hydrocarbons, must have been a huge step up, which is why everybody wanted one. You didn't have to pay a trainer, hitch them up or pay someone to do it, and the useful lifespan of the average cart horse was far less than the earlier cars, which were built to last and easily repaired. You just got in, set the spark, cranked the sucker, got in and fiddled with spark and carburetor until it purred and took off.

Out in the country, most roads were dirt, (not even gravel,) and they turned into mud with a good rain or some wet snow.

by Henry Ford was in 1908 only two years after this film was made. It would have been cool to see the first automobiles in London as well.

were produced in Germany by Karl Benz in 1888.

In the US Duryea and Olds beat Ford as early as 1902.

in this film, it would have been great if there had been. Not so popular or common as yet.

will look again.

edit: How cute

Ford just figured out how to make them less elaborate and easier to repair and thus cheap enough for the middle class to buy. My dad said his first car was a Model T in the early 30s, out of production by then but being recycled among teenagers until WWII came along and in use by rural folks for longer than that.

My grandmother had a Model A, bought new probably a hundred years ago and chauffeur driven until she kicked my grandfather out and learned to drive it herself. I rode in it as a little kid and thought it was neat. My mother thought it was a thrill a second because my grandmother never learned how to drive all that well. That was in the early 50s.

Ford Motor Company's first production car was in 1903, though Henry Ford had begun building experimental cars in 1896. The car seen briefly in this film near the end is indeed probably one of the first in London.

The average speed of motor vehicle traffic in central London today? Eight miles an hour.

Which is better?

No lane markings or traffic lights, few of the rules, laws and regulations we have today. We complain about rush-hour traffic but that's a lot better than it was a hundred years ago.

Thanks for the post!
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Treat your body like a machine. Your mind like a castle.[/center][/font][hr]

compared to now. Freedom of movement was a thing of beauty back then, now not so much.

Unless their jobs required that. Most people were in service, worked in shops or factories, etc. They put in 12+ hour days and didn't get to stroll around the streets in the daylight.

It was only the well off who got to promenade in the daytime.

people and vehicles. I was chuckling because there was actually a traffic jam. I was wondering if it was some sort of holiday because so many people were out and about.

and yes it could also mean that this footage was taken during the weekend or during rush hour.

Wiped out by automobiles, which poop into the air.

...even if it still applies. This seems like a worthy replacement.

Most of the changes have been to the placement of the lines. How far down the neckline drops on the vest, the tail length of the coat, the size of the lapels and collar, etc. The biggest single change has largely been to the materials. Heavy wool suits have been replaced by lighter varieties and other materials that are far more comfortable and durable.

But the basic structure of the modern suit (collared shirt, decorative tie, slacks, and waistcoat) appeared in the mid 1800's as the "lounge suit" and rapidly became popular. The older and more formal suit styles had been completely relegated to special events by 1900 or so.

If a man were to walk down a street in 1900 wearing a modern suit, most people would simply think that it was oddly tailored and a bit too small for him.

But yeah, there's been a lot of variety when it comes to mens headware. Tophats, derbys, bowlers, fedoras, boaters, trilbys, hombergs, flatcaps, porkpies, and on and on. All started as suit hats.

I love my suits. I own seven of them, all perfectly tailored, and I wear them regularly. The last time I wore a hat with a suit was at my wedding, where we put all the men in fedoras just for the hell of it (screw tuxes, we were all in matching tailored suits and we looked GOOD). While it worked there, I just don't like the look for day to day wear.

it marked what class you were in in.

Like a way for people to establish pecking order without having to talk about it.

Hats are a tool of oppression used to enforce artificial social hierarchies! I'll have to remember that the next time my wife complains about my dislike for hats (she LOVES hats). The hoi polloi will NOT be subjugated by headware!

I honestly can't thank you enough!

Yes, they were -- and other stuff besides manure.

One job for the lower classes or the unemployed was known as "crossing sweeper." These were like the guys who "clean your windshield" at stop lights in major cities these days. The sweepers had their own territory, usually a city block or a busy corner. When a woman with a long dress came along, or even a man with expensive shoes or boots, the sweeper would sweep the path in front of them, expecting a gratuity. At the next block another sweeper would take over.

First thing that jumped out at me is that EVERYONE is wearing a hat.

Mother told us how her grandfather from outside Phila. rode one of the first Model T Fords across the Brooklyn Bridge. I saw the BB & NY skyscrapers many times but never appreciated the significance until recently. Very interesting, thanks. TCM shows silent movies on Sunday nights. The plots & scenes are fascinating. Last night it was early Rudolph Valentino, with one film from 1920.
I read how one of JFK's Harvard profs called him & other students a vile term for 'street sweeper,' something like lagger, or slagger. It was intended as an insult since most of those laborers where Irish, no surprise in Boston & New York. Kennedy wanted to obtain horse manure to decorate the profs classroom floor but the prank didn't go forward.

flowers. GLOVES were also popular. No FAT PEOPLE as a poster wrote- but regular walking, pedestrian life in towns & cities; no giant portions & sedentary lifestyle like now; obesity was uncommon. Women were slim in the 1940s; a friend said b/c they grew up in the Depression. One influence, but also social conformity. Dinner plates were 8"- not 10" or 12" & few fattening, chemical laden processed foods & snacks before the 1950s +.

Women's hats nearly devastated wild birds in America (thus was born the Audubon society). There was a movement to save them because so many pheasant etc had been wiped out to satisfy the millinery industry in Victorian times. So after birds became protected in the USA, guess what happened?

Milliners went overseas and proceeded to devastate jungle birds in Asia and South America.

The book is called "Why The Chicken Crossed The World".

flowers on fabric or straw. The mania for bird feathers drove hunters to kill off heron, snowy egrets, pelicans on the East Coast & in FL, then exotic birds in SA, elsewhere. Thankfully it was banned. The historic Audubon House in Key West, FL is so nice. Wish I was there, snow here today.

Traveling billboards, and traffic jams, kicked up dust and horse shit… (those poor horses)…

I'd of hated it then, too!

chaotic.

other than cars and paved roads...

I think seeing old footage with normal people going on with their lives reminds viewers about their own mortality. This creeps them out. It's also a type of cognitive dissonance, imo - We see all of these people moving around, but we know that they're dead. It's different than seeing a movie with a dead actor because in this instance, nobody from this video is alive anymore.

Very cool movie. Thanks for posting.

by having them run over by carriages.