34 Union Street, Torquay

J C Dinham's shop and photographic studio

Decorated for Armistice Day 1918

© Gordon Higham

Probably none of the hundreds of distinguished clients who visited his elegant studios would have dreamed of venturing into the warren of streets which lay at the rear of his premises. Here  lived the poorest people of the town in conditions of unbelievable squalor. They lacked water and sanitation, they lived cheek by jowl in ancient tenements and yet they were allowed to remain there, perpetuating their manner of living, because they played such an essential part in the economy of the town - supplying goods, services and workers to the wealthy; the very wealthy and to the wealthiest of all, who lived on the higher ground above Union Street and Flete Street in the stylish villas with which the town is associated. Each morning, the local inhabitants clambered up Stentiford's Hill** and the aptly-named Alpine Hill with supplies for the kitchen doors of the gentry or to begin a long day's work as a charwoman or washerwoman or coachman or house servant; as night fell, they clambered back down, to drink in the numerous beershops or get what sleep they could in the smelly, overcrowded slums of Pimlico.

However, James Dinham himself did venture out of the rear of his premises into what would have been for him, an alien place - almost like visiting a foreign country perhaps. But what he saw behind his shop made a big impression on him. In the streets of Pimlico, he found material for a unique series of photographs of colourful characters - a man ahead of his time creating an early attempt at something we are very familiar with today - the story-telling power of photo-journalism. Each photograph he took was given a humorous or eye-catching title - but only as a means of making them acceptable to the people of all classes of who saw them. You could enjoy a superficial reaction or, by looking closer, you could see what Dinham saw - mean streets, abject poverty, men and women old before their time, neglected animals, and ragged, undernourished children, hardship and disappointment - it's all there.

* James Dinham attended the Primitive Methodist Chapel in Market Street, Torquay, not far from where the Pimlico photo below was taken, and took charge of the music there. Sadly, the Chapel is no longer there.

**A name now changed to Stentiford Hill by Torquay Council in spite of vociferous protests from the Stentiford family who lived in the area for years and were quite aware that this was the hill where a stone quarry was worked for many years, under licence from the Palk family, by Robert Stentiford.

© Richard J Brine