Chester Street slums, Douglas
Date(s): January 1965
Creator(s): Manx Press Pictures
Scope & Content: 'Living (for Some) in Douglas - 1965 Style, A Visit to a Blot in the Capital Town Landscape. Some of it Boarded Up - some of it a home, the scene in Chester Street, under the distant tower of St Thomas.' (Isle of Man Examiner, 28 January 1965, p.5.)
"The shadow of fear stalks Chester Street. “Don’t publish my name” pleads the tired, worn woman in the shabby dress. “Our landlord will throw us out.” It does not matter that she lives in a rat-ridden home and pays twenty-five shillings a week to stay.
It does not matter that winter and summer the walls weep with the peculiar sadness of mould and decay and damp. It does not matter that there is no bathroom, no hot water and only a backyard privy to provide the crudest, more primeval form of civilisation. There is nowhere else to go. Nowhere else that comes at twenty-five shillings a week. Nowhere else that a working family existing on a working income can afford to live. Nowhere else but a Council house, but in the matter of social priorities Chester Street is a poor runner limping along at the end of the field." (Thursday 28 January 1965, Isle of Man Examiner).
This Is Winter exhibition (House of Manannan, Peel, 5 October 2019-1 March 2020).
Language: eng
Collection: Photographic Archive
Level: ITEM
ID number: PG/13633/1/1965/87/1