Sweating its holdings, the Mirrorpix archive’s compilation of photographs of the London Underground was published by the History Press in 2018. The editors were constrained by what was in the Mirrorpix files, and Tube Life: London’s Underground in Photographs has a slapped-together feel. These, or photographs like them, will be familiar to anyone with an interest in the subject
There is a brief introduction followed by photographs of construction work at Uxbridge in 1936, presumably the earliest in the collection. Among the general photographs showing the Underground, its staff and its passengers, some sections of the book are grouped thematically, each with its own introduction. The first is the Blitz, showing the network as a place of refuge from danger.
Other sections show it as a place of tragedy: the Moorgate crash in 1975 (for a long time afterwards I felt uncomfortable when passing through the station), the King’s Cross fire in 1987, the 7/7 bombings in 2005, and the Parson’s Green bomb in 2017. The book concludes on a positive note with photographs of the Crossrail construction project which, we are confidently informed, will open in 2019.
We tend to think of modern manners as degraded from a time when we were polite and considerate, especially to women, but as long ago as 1953 June Clark of Chiswick was taking her own stool when she travelled on the Underground because ‘Men just won’t give up their seats to women nowadays.’ We may nostalgically assume people used to be better behaved than they are now, but Mrs Clark tells it differently.
The Joy of Mere Words 