Work Gallery

Comptometer Room, Stratford Cooperative Society 1914 BL22762

STRATFORD CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY, Maryland Street, Stratford, Greater London. Interior view of the Comptometer Room at Stratford Co-operative Society, showing girls and boys working on model E compometers, manual calculating machines. The comptometer, invented in 1887 by American, Dor Felt, was the first successful manual calculating machine. The children in the photograph could be employed in work, with the school leaving age only being raised to 14 in the Education Act of 1918. Photographed by Harry Bedford Lemere, 1st July 1914

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Dudley blast furnaces OP02658

Blast furnace, Russell'€™s Hall, Dudley, West Midlands, 1859. Mr Mills, dilute albumen print. Mr Mills, otherwise unknown as a photographer, recorded the blast furnaces at Russell'€™s Hall, west of Dudley, when the industry was producing a vast number of iron products, including nails, boilers, vices and chains. Coal mining around Dudley had been recorded in the early 13th century and the area was famous for the manufacture of iron nails in the early 16th century. By the late 18th century Dudley was at the centre of England'€™s iron industry, and the region was dubbed the €˜Black Country'€™ because of the blackening of the landscape by the coal and iron industries. Russell'€™s Hall itself was pockmarked by clay pits and coal shafts, and significant urban development only took place after the Second World War

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Farrier, Woodbastwick, Norfolk AA98_13563

Woodbastwick, Norfolk. Interior of blacksmiths shop. A farrier shoeing a horse. A working horse would need re-shoeing about every five weeks. Here a hot shoe is measured against the horse's hoof, and the farrier can tell by the mark left how much to alter the shoe. However, the post-war campaign to mechanise agriculture meant that within a decade of this picture being taken there were few working farriers left. Photographed by Hallam Ashley, February 1949

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