Snap survey Can you help us unearth tales of city’s female photography pioneers?
ATHOUGHT occurred in my brain the other day. It doesn’t happen often so I wrote it down at once: female photographers.
See, it seems to me that there must have been a lot of ladies taking photographs back in the olden days. Some are now quite well known – Julia Margaret Cameron or Alice Hughes, for instance. But working on the assumption that many professional and enthusiastic amateur lady photograph-takers have been written out of history because of male bias or patriarchy or whatever it’s called, I started having a quick look to see if I could find any in Bristol.
And there were. There are adverts in the local press for “lady photographers” in the early 20th century, though I can’t find out much about them.
So this is where you come in, dear readers. Can anyone tell us about any women who were working as professional photographers or who were keen amateurs anytime between the 1840s and the 1970s? Your Mum or your Gran taking pictures of you and the rest of the family using a Box Brownie or an Instamatic does not count.
But if your Great-Gran ran a studio or your Gran ever bored you about composition or shutter speeds, tell us about her. And show us the pics. I reckon there are some nice hidden histories here.
Of bombs and hoaxes
» Forty years ago, at 2am on Sunday December 17 1978, a bomb exploded outside the Maggs store in Clifton. The following day, another bomb, weighing two to three pounds was found at the Swan National Car Rental premises on Fairfax Street, but this was successfully defused by an Army bomb squad.
The bombs were part of a campaign by the Provisional IRA in the run-up to Christmas, with three devices exploding in London, and others going off in Manchester, Liverpool, Coventry and Southampton as well as Bristol.
Injuries from all of these devices combined could have been worse; five people were hospitalised (none in Bristol) and three were quickly discharged. This was the second time Bristol had been struck by Irish republican terrorists. Four years previously almost to the day, on December 18 1974, two bombs had exploded on Park Street. The first had gone off at Dixon’s photo- graphic shop, while a second device close by exploded 20 minutes later. Thirteen people were injured; there might well have been deaths but many people were shielded from the second blast by an ambulance attending the first one.
The 1974 bombs came as quite a shock to Bristol. They were the first terrorist attack on the city in living memory, and came just a few weeks after the appalling loss of life in the Birmingham pub bombings.
The 1978 incident, though, made less of an impression. If you read reports of it in the Post, it was frontpage news, but only for a day. Coverage for the (eventually successful) UK-wide hunt for the culprits in later days was relegated to the inside pages of the paper.
Obviously Bristol would not have been nearly so nonchalant had lives been lost, but by now there was a weary acceptance that the orgy of senseless murder and maimings in Northern Ireland would occasionally spill over onto the UK mainland.
The December 1978 bombs were small (and made presumably of gelignite rather than the much more powerful Semtex that the IRA was later gifted by Colonel Gadaffi of Libya.) Exploding in mostly deserted streets early on a Sunday morning, they were one of the IRA’s occasional reminders to England that the Northern Ireland problem had not gone away.
It would be another 20 years before British security forces fought the IRA to a standstill and the killing would end with the Good Friday Agreement. And while in Britain many remember IRA atrocities like Warrington and Birmingham, in Northern Ireland itself, people remember “the Troubles” as a long and seemingly-endless era of violence which killed more than 3,500, injured around 47,000 and destroyed families.
An era in which so-called “unionist” terrorist gangs were every bit as culpable as republicans. For Bristol, it’s just a footnote, but for many in Ireland it’s something they still live with every day.
There is one really bizarre and disturbing aspect to the Bristol bombing, though.
The Post reported that after the Maggs bomb exploded, Avon & Somerset Police immediately implemented a prepared plan to deal with hoax calls – because this was something they knew would happen.
Sure enough, in the days after the bombing, police reported 30 phone calls warning of non-existent bombs in and around Bristol. They caught one of the callers, who turned out to be a 16-year-old, who was later fined £200 at Bristol Juvenile Court.
Experience all over the country taught the police that real bombs triggered warnings of non-existent ones. All sorts of people phoned in false bomb alerts for all sorts of reasons. In one case in 1978 a teenager was caught after calling his school about a nonexistent bomb in order to get his girlfriend out of having to sit an ‘O’ Level exam she was worried about, which was very considerate of him. But many more hoax calls were made by others just for sheer devilment.
Nowadays we can look at some of the more putrid corners of social media, or the comments sections on news websites and shake our heads at how sick and spiteful many people seem to be, but you only have to look at the massive numbers of bomb hoaxes that got phoned in in the 1970s and 80s to realise that there have always been some right weirdos out there.
Classic Colsnall gigs brought to book
» Some time ago, Simon Hurford appealed to BT readers for their memories, pictures and mementoes of some of the greatest musical events ever to take place at the Colston Hall.
Now you can read the results in his book, Let It Rock: Pop Music at the Colston Hall 1958-80.
For his researches, Mr Hurford had access to the Hall’s archive of material collected by promoter Charles Lockier, a dominant force on the local music scene from the 1930s to the 1960s. Lockier brought all manner of acts to the Colston Hall, and when he noted that some of these young rock ‘n’ roll whippersnappers were popular, he shrugged and booked them. That’s how Buddy Holly came to Bristol.
Simon Hurford’s book takes in the early rockers, the Beatles (of course) as well as Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, the Stones, the Kinks, David Bowie, the Jam and many more. Along the way he also looks at the legendary Tamla Motown tour’s arrival in Bristol – a commercial disappointment at the time.
And not forgetting Bob Dylan, who outraged devoted fans in Bristol and elsewhere in the UK when he picked up an electric guitar and so in the eyes of many “betrayed” his folk credentials.
The book features rare photos, flyers and programmes and plenty of memories, many of them from Post readers. It also looks at some of the local acts of the 1960s and 70s who graced the Hall stage.
So then … Quite possibly a useful present for the Bristolian rocker in your life, eh?
» Let It Rock: Pop Music at the Colston Hall 1958-80 by Simon Hurford is available from the Colston Hall, price £17. You can buy it mail order, or collect in person. Details at www.colstonhall.org