Time for some postcards featuring unskilled manual labour - the jobs nobody wants to do unless economic necessity prevails. Curious that postcard producers should take an interest in such humble activity but their efforts resulted in many types and subsets. Local colour was the polite term for singling out workers from the bottom of the economic ladder and printing multiple copies of their likenesses to be sold to visitors, travellers and tourists. As the decades passed these images would become documentary evidence of lost ways of life but nothing could have been further from their minds. Sales figures and turnover were paramount and if demand could be generated for such subjects the market would provide. For the purchasers and the recipients back home they were mildly diverting examples of life’s rich pageant and a reminder of the road that led from indigence and idleness to penury. Plus the self satisfaction derived from observing those trapped by a fate that you have avoided. Miners and metal bashers served as respected exemplars of the dignity of labour - none of that applied to the street sweepers, porters, agricultural labourers and scavengers featured here.
