The Yorkshire Film Archive collects, preserves, and shows film made in, or about Yorkshire. Our collections are non-fiction, dating from the 1890s to the present day, and providing a rich and visually compelling record of all aspects of lives, cultures, landscape, industries, major events and everyday activities, many of which are available to watch, free of charge, on our website.
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Bradford Laundry, Meat, and Coal Adverts
Meeting the everyday basic needs of the locals: keeping the family clean, warm and well fed.
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Overview
What do advertisements tell us about the lifestyle of their times? Well, here is evidence of the importance of the local laundry and coal merchant, and of the family butcher, in between the world wars. These animated ads from Bradford also tell us something about life at home, with the gender division in roles, and the labour-saving appeal of a communal laundry providing freedom from domestic drudgery.
This film originated with Mr Spink who owned a cinema in Yeadon, West Yorkshire. It isn’t known who made this film, very possibly Youngers Shoppers Gazette who made similar advertisements in Bradford during this period. Information on historic local shops and services is usually hard to find, but it seems as if the Holme Top Laundry lasted at least 50 years, from 1913 to 1963 (and even had a Victorian age incarnation). Rhodes Family Butcher appears to have disappeared in the mists of time; while, according to the London Gazette, Mark Fletcher & Sons Coal Merchants was dissolved on 7th November 1929 by the two sons, Albert and Abraham Fletcher – and so the date for the advert is problematic.
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