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11 July 2009
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You are in: Liverpool > History > Discover > The Times > Morning in the Streets

Morning in the Streets

Liverpool in 1958

Morning in the Streets

Watch archive footage of Liverpool 50 years ago and share your memories of the 1950's.

Evocative images of Liverpool 50 years ago, when the city was still recovering from the post war gloom, are pictured in a BBC film now available to watch online.

Filmed in 1958, and shown in 1959, Morning in the Streets was made by acclaimed documentary maker Denis Mitchell.

The film depicts the back streets of a city still recovering from the post-war gloom.

Children play on bomb sites and elderly people reminisce about their childhoods and loved ones lost during World War II.

Children playing

Children played on bomb sites

Shot by the BBC's Northern Film Unit Merseysiders Frank Shaw and Stan Kelly worked on the programme which shows a city on the cusp of Merseybeat era.

The slum housing conditions of many people at the time are graphically illustrated while the fear of the atomic bomb is voiced over pictures of children playing on a school lunch break.

A family are filmed living in one room of a house and their daily routine of getting up and having breakfast is shown.

Sights long since vanished like the weekly round of the rag and bone man and women scrubbing doorsteps are all images of an almost different world.

Man on the streets

The film shows post war Liverpool

The film also includes pictures of graffiti on a wall reading "Save the Rosenbergs" a reference to the trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in the United States on charges of espionage.

The film has been made available online as part of the BBC's archive project which is making available some of the BBC's 4 million physical items of TV and radio archive.

Do you have recollections of the Liverpool depicted in Morning in the Streets. Were you captured on the film?

Add you memories to BBC Memoryshare.

last updated: 11/08/2008 at 12:22
created: 11/04/2008

You are in: Liverpool > History > Discover > The Times > Morning in the Streets



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