Jarrow Hunger Marchers
, British, 1910 - 2005
Material and Medium: gelatin silver print
Dimensions: Mount: 596 x 420mm
Image size: 393 x 265mm
Department: Visual Art
Accession Number: VIS.5459
In October 1936, a group of 200 hundred people travelled from Jarrow in the north east of England to London. They wanted the government to understand the conditions they were living in and highlight the extreme poverty and unemployment of their home town. One of the marchers described where he lived as ‘...a filthy, dirty, falling down, consumptive area.’
Despite the support of their MP Ellen Wilkinson, the crusade achieved very little. The Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin refused to see any of the marchers and no new jobs were created in the area.
Humphrey Spender was a pioneer of documentary photography. He captured these images on a small 35mm Leica camera which was cutting-edge technology at the time.