194
Public health inspector measuring alleyway width for safety, Liverpool, UK, 1907
(media.piefed.social)
this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2026
194 points (99.0% liked)
HistoryPhotos
1286 readers
273 users here now
HistoryPhotos is for photographs (or, if it can be found, film) of the past, recent or distant! Give us a little snapshot of history!
Rules
- Be respectful and inclusive.
- No harassment, hate speech, or trolling.
- Foster a continuous learning environment.
- No genocide or atrocity denialism.
- Photos MUST be at LEAST 10 years old, and ideally over 20. We appreciate that we are living through events which will become history, but this is ultimately not a comm for news or current affairs, but events which have occurred some time in the past.
Related Communities:
- !militaryporn@lemmy.world
- !forgottenweapons@lemmy.world
- !historymusic@quokk.au
- !historygallery@quokk.au
- !historymemes@piefed.social
- !historyruins@piefed.social
- !historyart@piefed.social
- !historyartifacts@piefed.social
founded 8 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I would think that would have been better measured to establish safety parameters BEFORE the buildings were finalized.
"Hmm, an inch shy... I'm afraid we'll have to knock them both down."
"Move the dumpster a few more inches, that doesn't look like six feet."
Hey!
...
Alright, alright, alright.
'I say, let's not be too hasty. Just move this building .5" over, and this one .5" in the opposite direction, and Robert's your avuncular figure.'
Iirc, Liverpool had a health crisis due the expansion of the city during the industrial revolution. A lot of streets were very narrow, making it very difficult to clean up waste and provide access to firemans.
If a street was too narrow, they actually would demolish one of the buildings to make space
Edit: or buildings in plural now that I think about it. You couldn’t just demolish one of them if they are so close
Luckily we contracted the Germans to do a lot of the demolition work, for free, in the 1940s
Maybe he's checking whether a horse can fit through there. That would probably be important when making a city map back then.
It also would've been better measured by holding the tape with the numbers facing him and the tip actually against the wall. Kind of reminds me of these stock pictures about any trade with someone lying bricks with the help of a hammer, using a stethoscope without putting it in their ears, or grabbing a soldering iron by the tip and probing into a computer board...
Unless the point of it was a verifiable record of the measurement, I suppose. I don’t really know the state of photography back then, if that would be cost prohibitive for a government to employ or even worth doing.
Welp, i'm afraid to tell you that these 12 buildings have to be moved