Photographer Nick Hedges documented the life of poverty-stricken Britain’s slums from 1968 to 1972. He traveled across the country for the housing charity Shelter, taking pictures of families living in run-down homes in Glasgow, Leeds, and Birmingham. He donated 1,000 prints from his Shelter work to the National Media Museum in 1983.
He found families who slept with the lights blazing to keep the rats away, children sleeping on wet floors and mothers cooking over an open fire, sewerage water on the streets, and children playing in the trash. It’s heartbreaking to see that the people had to live under these miserable conditions.
Here below are some heart-wrenching photos of poor families living in Newcastle-upon-Tyne from the 1970s.
Unfortunately, you may still see a slightly updated version of this on Tyneside when you enter a house.
Old pictures like these are my favourite. Even when they were relatively new, those tower blocks in Cruddas Park looked old and dirty! Ten years ago, when they cleaned them up, it made a massive difference in the area
Posts like these always make me think of the sheer number of people evicted from their homes to build the Byker Wall. The project was supposed to be the apex of modern artistic design, but thousands of households were forced to pay for it. I am horrified that it remains on the list today.
The situation is a mess. Yes, the photos depict poverty areas, but that’s about it. If the worst things in the actual images are dirty faces and a little boy with a scar allegedly caused by falling on a rusty nail, then the full description above seems almost offensive.
There were terraced houses and street children, but these places had tight-knit communities that looked after each other and took pride in their homes, although they may not have had much money. Even though these pictures are accurate, the narration tells an entirely false story.
Wey slum is a bit harsh.