From Disinfectors to Mush-Fakers, Photos of Real Life in Victorian London (2016)

In communist Poland, street vendors frequently offered carbonated water as a refreshing drink in the summer - but they only had a glass or two, so you would buy a glass of water, drink it, and return the glass for the next customer to use - in the best case, it was quickly rinsed before re-use. The last one was in use until 1995.

Sadly wiki only has an article on this in Polish, but google translate does a decent job:

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturator

When I was a kid growing up in the late '50s, the restaurants had a jar of mustard and a jar of mayonnaise at the table, and you used your table knife to spread whichever you wanted on your sandwich, just like you would at home.

This was a problem if you wanted both mayonnaise and mustard. It wouldn't be polite to contaminate one with the other, plus you might get bits of lettuce and bread in the jar.

So we were taught that after putting the mustard on the sandwich, rather than dip the dirty knife in the mayonnaise jar, we should first lick it clean.

They appeared to be quite aware and concerned about contagion though: http://www.victorianlondon.org/publications/thomson-6.htm

Besides the large plates, I think you're reacting to the focus as well. We've gotten very used to our small lenses and their infinite depth of field that keeps everything focused. We're so used to it that now it's a feature to have a smartphone camera that can blur the background. But those old cameras did that automatically, because they were only capable of a narrow depth of field and the photographer had to be really careful about where the focus was when he composed the shot.

I believe the photographic plates of the day would have been large, maybe 8x10 inches and developed or printed at 1:1 scale.

That would give a pretty good head start on quality.

It is easy to forget just how good film or plate photography is. I scanned some slides from the 80s and they were amazing, easily printed at A4

It struck me to realize the similarities of hardships to common US citizens (and developed world citizens to a lesser extent) today.

Medical episodes cause a cascade of ill-circumstance tumbling once-stable positions into the streets: "...who is now in difficulties through ill-health..."

Retirement a binary condition ill-suiting putting purpose to people's lives: "I’m lost, I’ve been put off my perch"

Substance abuse inures the senses of those who have given up, and thereby tragically reinforcing cycles of abuse into future generations: "...early acclimatizes her infant to the fumes of tobacco and alcohol"

Poor squeezed by land prices into living in the flood plains, with predictable disastrous consequences if their unlucky number comes up: "The sufferings of the poor in Lambeth, and in other quarters of the Metropolis, caused by the annual tidal overflow of the Thames"

"Improvements" displacing common people to the benefit of rentiers, and destroying the micro-culture of a neighborhood: "As a matter of fact, the inhabitants of Church Lane were nearly all what I may term “street folks” – living, buying, selling, transacting all their business in the open street...condemned as an unwholesome over-crowded, throughfare, and the houses on either side are now almost entirely destroyed, and the inhabitants have been compelled to migrate to other more distant and less convenient parts of the metropolis"

Industrial disruption comes at a steep cost to those whose lives are disrupted and swept under the inconvenient rug of the disruptive effects to individuals, even military veterans, to the benefit of the overall economy: "...two boardmen who seemed worthy of a better position..."

There are some, but too few, bright points, considering the progress we trumpet ourselves possessing. Some parts of the human condition remain quite thoroughly embedded within our civilization's mien for the time being.

View some Photochroms to give yourself sense of the color of that era [1].

[1] http://fiveminutehistory.com/photochrom-victorian-era-color-...

Likely a polio shoe: http://members.upnaway.com/~poliowa/Polio%20Feet%20Problems....

It must be some kind of prosthetic for a short leg, because his other shoe is normal-sized.

He was a professional arse-kicker.

In very early photos only horses and people who stood very still, such as a fellow getting his shoes shined, are visible since the exposure times were so long.

> having obtained an umbrella to mend, they prefer sitting out doing the work in the street, in front of the house. This attracts the attention of the neighbours, and the fact that they have been entrusted with work by the inhabitants of one house generally brings more custom from those who live next door. When the job is terminated, the “mush-faker ” looks about him, as he enters the house, in quest of an umbrella which has passed the mending stage ; and, in exchange for the same, offers to make a slight reduction in his charge. Thus he gradually obtains a stock of very old umbrellas, and by taking the good bits from one old “mushroom” and adding it to another, he is able to make, out of two broken and torn umbrellas, a tolerably stout and serviceable gingham.

They went from house to house asking for old umbrellas, and from two old ones they could make a new one.

"Mush" for "mushroom" (slang for umbrella) and "fake" I assume from make (fecit pronounced "fake-it"in Latin which had more weird vestigial remnants than today).

One was not presentable without a hat!

Now we commonly sport sailors' underwear (t-shirts) as outerwear in public, and even in places of business! And low-class rugged laborers' trousers (denim jeans) are worn about by merchants and businesspersons, and can be expensive, high fashion.

Clothes are weird.