The 14th January 1939 issue of Picture Post magazine included a feature on unemployment entitled 'They Had No Work'. For this article Kurt Hutton took a number of photographs at...
The 14th January 1939 issue of Picture Post magazine included a feature on unemployment entitled "They Had No Work". For this article Kurt Hutton took a number of photographs at the Silver Lady's Kitchen in Trafalgar Square, London, where proprietor Betty Baxter (nicknamed 'The Silver Lady' for her donations of a silver sixpence to her many patrons) offered a free meal to the area's homeless.
This is one of a group of strikingly dramatic character studies of the people there, beautifully lit as though by candle or lamp-light. It was part of a featufre in Picture Post that gave a human face to poverty and unemployment.
In Picture Post this work is reproduced reverse as the far left image of a spread of four close-ups of me, presumabky as it worked better on the page to have him looking inwards. It is captioned with the subjects name and with some biographical information:
"Daniel Sweeny. He comes from Glasgow. Has been here six years; was working on the railway as a porter till last March. He has been staying in a big lodging house in Victoria; but now hopes that, through the Silver Lady, he may get a job. Besides providing 75,000 free meals a year, the Silver Lady can sometimes find work."
"They had no Work", Picture Post, 14 January 1939, vol 2. no. 2, pp.50-52 (illustrated) Kurt Hutton, Speaking Likeness, Focal Press, 1947 (illustrated) Creative Camera Internatonal Year Book, 1976 (This print illustrated p.198, and entitled "Midnight, Admiralty Arch, 1938")