London has always been a hub for photography. The very first photo of London was taken in 1839, only a matter of weeks after the French government revealed the secrets of daguerreotype photography in Paris. At first, the new art form was used for portraiture and to capture the city’s famous landmarks. But as cameras became more sophisticated, photographers turned their eye to everyday life in the British capital.
Click through the gallery to see the earliest photographs of London and the fascinating scenes they captured…
The oldest photograph of London focuses on the equestrian statue of Charles I near Charing Cross station. It was taken by Monsieur de St Croix as part of a public demonstration of the new art form of daguerreotype photography just a few weeks after the French government revealed its secrets in Paris in August 1839. Those ghostly forms are people who stayed still long enough to register on the exposure, the first Londoners ever to be photographed.
A broad street connecting Pall Mall East with the eastern end of Piccadilly, Haymarket was a place for the sale of farm-produce as far back as the reign of Elizabeth I. By the 18th century it had become a centre of entertainment and home to theatres, hotels, supper-houses and cafes. Here we see the Theatre Royal with John Nash's frontage of 1820 on the right, opposite Her Majesty's Theatre, and a street teeming with horse-drawn traffic.
The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations was an international event held in Hyde Park, London in 1851. Also known as the Great Exhibition, it was attended by all the great luminaries of the day including Charles Darwin, Karl Marx and Charles Dickens. Pictured is the ‘Crystal Palace’, made from iron and glass and built especially to house the event, plus the decorative cascades and lower fountains. After the exhibition was over, it was dismantled and re-erected in Sydenham, southeast London.
Considered to be the prototype of the modern ocean liner, the Great Eastern was the largest ship in the world when it was launched, measuring 692 feet (211m) long, 83 feet (25m) wide and five times larger than any other ship on the planet at the time. It was designed by renowned Industrial Age engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who we see here at the launch at Millwall Docks. The ship’s great size and weight made the task of pushing her sideways into the Thames more difficult than foreseen, but luckily the spring tides early in 1858 provided a helping hand.
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For a 30-year period, between 1830 and 1860, the Thames was packed with paddle-wheel steamboats, weaving between the many piers on either side of the river and belching smoke from their funnels. Their introduction in the early 19th century made it possible to commute to London from as far afield as Gravesend and gave Londoners the chance to take day trips to estuary and coastal resorts like Southend, Margate and Ramsgate or upriver to Kew, Richmond and Hampton Court. By the time this photo was taken in the 1860s, over 200 vessels were working the river.
Today Kensington is one of the most affluent boroughs in London, but back in the 1860s it was a working-class suburb full of decrepit Victorian slums. As the population of London grew, any open space was quickly taken over by jerry-built houses with dirty floors, holes in their roofs and crowded shared privies that were so disgusting that people preferred to defecate openly on the streets. Here we see residents of the Potteries, a self-built colony of potters’, brickmakers’ and pig-keepers’ cottages west of Notting Hill.
When this photo was taken in the 1870s, the Tower of London was in a state of flux. The Royal Mint had been moved out of the Tower to a new factory on Tower Hill in 1812. Animals in the menagerie were moved to the new London Zoo in 1835. And the moat surrounding the Tower had been drained in 1843. By the end of the century, however, the Tower would be opened to tourists, setting it on a course that has seen it become one of London's most popular attractions.
One thing remained constant at the Tower of London and that was the Yeomen Warders, affectionately known as ‘Beefeaters’. The Yeoman Warders have been guarding the Tower since Tudor times and still perform the ‘Ceremony of the Keys’, locking the outer gates of the fortress as they have done every night for the past 700 years. Today, as always, the Yeoman are appointed based on exemplary military service of at least 22 years.
Victoria Station was designed in two parts by Robert Jacomb-Hood and John Fowler, with the first side opening on 1 October 1860. Serving the West End of London, it connected the glittering lights of the capital with the south of the city, Brighton and the continent beyond. The uninspiring entrance of crude wooden huts and garish billboards was a compromise after much of the budget was spent enclosing the tracks from the station back to Eccleston Bridge to placate the rich and influential residents of Pimlico and Belgravia, who were concerned about the noise, soot and smoke of the steam engines.
H.G. Wells is probably best known as the author of The War of the Worlds and The Island of Doctor Moreau. But when this photo was taken in the 1880s he was studying biology under Thomas Henry Huxley at the Normal School (later the Royal College) of Science, in South Kensington. Wells had been born into poverty in Bromley in Kent, but after winning a scholarship aged 18, he was able to pursue his studies and, in turn, a successful career as a novelist, journalist, sociologist, historian and godfather of modern science fiction.
Being a barmaid was a tough vocation in Victorian London. Not only were the hours long – 15-hour days were not uncommon – but there was also the unwanted advances from publicans and salty language of carters and draymen to deal with. Despite this, a study in 1892 by Eliza Orme, the first woman in England to get a law degree, found that most barmaids were teetotal, adept at fending off unwanted attention and dab hands at handling rowdy customers. So much so that many publicans preferred to employ them over barmen.
During the latter half of the 19th century, horse buses were the most popular way to get around London. These oversized carriages pulled by two horses, with basic seating on top of the carriage, ran to strict timetables and could be hailed anywhere along their route. They were eventually replaced by motorised buses in 1899, but when this photo was taken in the 1890s London had over 2,000 horse buses and a small army of grooms, blacksmiths and saddlers to keep them going.
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London Zoo in Regents Park was opened on 27 April 1828 and is the oldest zoo of its kind in the world. Originally intended for scientific study only, it then welcomed the public in 1847 and quickly became one of London’s most popular attractions. Despite the zoo’s scientific credentials, when this photo was taken in the 1890s, animal rides were an essential part of any visit. Visitors were carried around the zoo in giant baskets atop Jumbo the elephant, or on camels, pictured.
Canals were the Industrial Revolution’s first mass transport system. When the Grand Junction Canal opened through to Paddington in 1801, it connected London with the rest of the country’s network. At first the canals were used to transport goods, but by the time this photo was taken in around 1890, soaring rents and poor accommodation options saw many people turn to canal boats as somewhere to live. It’s a tradition that continues to this day, with as many as 10,000 people living on the rivers and canals of London.
London’s Chinatown near Soho is famous around the world, but very few people realise that it only came into existence with an influx of Hong Kong immigrants after the Second World War. London’s first Chinatown was established in Limehouse when Chinese sailors discharged from East India Company ships settled in the area from as early as the 1780s. By 1890 it was a bustling area of restaurants, grocery stores and community centres and equally infamous for its seedy opium dens.
Lambeth Palace has been the London residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury for almost 800 years. It sits on the banks of the Thames almost directly opposite the Palace of Westminster and houses a library that is home to a vast collection of ancient and modern documents. In the 1860s it was separated from the river when the Albert Embankment replaced the previously private Bishops’ Walk promenade. It opened up this part of the Thames to the public, including to these children pictured in the 1890s, promenading and paddling on a hot summer’s day.
The four enormous bronze lions at the foot of Nelson’s Column have always been a popular meeting spot for Londoners, even to this day. They were designed by the British painter and sculptor Edwin Landseer, who used the body of a dead lion from London Zoo as a model. This photo was taken barely 20 years after they were installed in 1867 and the presence of a policeman suggests that even back then, keeping people from climbing on them was a thankless task.
London's main fish market, Billingsgate Market, was established in 1699 by an Act of Parliament that declared it "a free and open market for all sorts of fish whatsoever". Until the mid-19th century, fish were sold from stalls and sheds around the dock until a purpose-built market hall was built in 1850 before being demolished and replaced with a bigger building in 1876. The market moved to a new location near Canary Wharf in 1982.
Life was tough in Victorian London, with no government safety net to catch you should you fall upon hard times. This was the London of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, made worse by the 1834 Poor Law, where charitable missions, like this one pictured in the East End, were left to pick up the pieces, offering down-and-out Londoners food, somewhere to sleep and help towards finding gainful employment.
When Madame Tussaud first opened her waxworks museum at the Baker Street Bazaar in London in 1835, it was famous mainly for its displays of gruesome relics of the French Revolution. But after Madame Tussaud died and her grandsons moved the attraction to its current site on Marylebone Road, the exhibitions began to focus more on the rich and famous, like this display of European royalty in their regal garb in 1895.
Welcome to rush hour in central London in the 1890s. Early motor cars, probably German-built Cannstatt Daimlers, jostle with horse-drawn carts on busy Regent Street. As it is now, Regent Street was a lively shopping precinct full of tailors, pharmacies, shoe stores and more and is the bustling heart of commercial London. Also like in the present day, you took your life into your own hands when you attempted to cross the road.
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It's hard to believe now, but ice skating was a popular winter pastime in Victorian London. Most years the Long Water recreational lake in Kensington Gardens (also known as the Serpentine) would freeze over, allowing Londoners to skate and frolic on it, just like these skaters in 1896. Sadly, it's not an option for modern day Londoners. The last time the Serpentine froze was during the Great Freeze of 1963.
The Woolwich Royal Arsenal was a British armaments manufacturer and supplier based in Woolwich, southeast London. It was originally established in the 17th century as a royal laboratory for the manufacture of ordnance and expanded after the Napoleonic and Crimean Wars to become the largest munitions factory in the world by the time this photo was taken in 1896. Here we see workers using a taper-finished boring tube on a 50-tonne gun. Fun fact: the factory’s football team, founded in 1886, went on to become the world-famous Arsenal, now based at the Emirates Stadium in Holloway.
Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897 was a moment of immense celebration in London. It was the first time a British monarch had ruled for so long and Londoners honoured the occasion with concerts, parades and street parties. Here we see crowds cheering the Queen as she passes by in her royal carriage on a procession through London on 22 June. The day was declared a public holiday and hundreds of thousands of people crowded the sidewalks in the hope of catching a glimpse of the Queen along the six-mile (9.7km) processional route.
At the turn of the 20th century, public health was a matter of life and death in overcrowded London. Cramped, squalid conditions meant that infectious diseases spread quickly and draconian public health laws allowed health officers to seize your belongings and take them away to be steam cleaned. In poorer areas, like Hackney, cleansing stations were built to disinfect people infested with vermin and diseases, like these children seen here in around 1900. Some stations even included accommodation for those who needed to undergo a longer cleansing regime.
Costermongers, or costers as they were better known, were hawkers who sold fruit and vegetables on the streets of London and across Britain. The term is derived from the words costard (a type of apple) and monger (seller), and historians have noted that there was a strict hierarchy within the costermonger class, with costers who sold their wares from a handcart or animal-drawn cart, like these photographed in Kensal Rise in around 1900, considered a cut above those who sold their fruit and veg from baskets. As hinted at by the costermongers' outfits embossed here with pearl buttons, London's iconic Pearly Kings and Queens evolved from the costermongers' Coster Kings and Queens, who were elected as leaders of London's street traders.
Today Covent Garden is a popular shopping district full of high-end shops, bustling restaurants and street performers. But back when this photo was taken in the early 1900s, it was where many of London’s food supplies were bought for sale and redistribution. Here we see Mary, Queen of the Pea Shellers, on the left, shelling peas as she had done every day in Covent Garden for 56 years. She was quite the fixture, with onlookers gathering to watch her, amazed by the speed of her work.
Napoleon once famously described Britain as a nation of shopkeepers. It was meant to be an insult, but for the thousands of shopkeepers across London at the turn of the 20th century, their stores were not just a source of pride, but of a very good living as well. Long before the appearance of supermarkets, shoppers visited butchers like this one in Hammersmith for their meat, a little bit of social interaction and all the latest neighbourhood gossip.
When the Metropolitan Line of the London Underground opened on 10 January 1863, it was the first underground railway in the world. It quickly transformed the city and other lines connecting different areas soon followed. Here we see Marble Arch Underground station of the Central London Railway shortly after it was opened by the Prince of Wales in around 1900. The Central Line ran from Shepherd's Bush to Bank and quickly became known as the ‘Twopenny Tube’ – the initial cost of the fare.
Tower Bridge was opened with great fanfare by the Prince and Princess of Wales on 30 June 1894. It was the largest and most sophisticated bascule (seesaw opening) bridge ever completed and quickly became a beloved landmark, as seen by the Londoners gathered here in around 1900. Interestingly, the original colour of the bridge was chocolate brown. It only took on its current iconic colouring in 1977 when it was painted red, white and blue to celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee.