Spitalfields nippers: London's poorest children in the early 1900s – in pictures For 100 years, they stayed hidden in family albums. Now amateur photographer Horace Warner’s intimate portraits of London’s poorest children are being printed for the first time, giving a glimpse into a forgotten world
The Gentle Author
Sat 25 Oct 2014 00.00 BST Last modified on Thu 26 Mar 2020 14.44 GMT
Celia Compton was born in Mile End in April 1886 to Charles, a wood chopper, and Mary Compton. Celia was one of nine children; only six survived into adulthood. On 25 January 1904, she married George Hayday, who was 10 years her senior. They had no children. She remarried after his death in 1933, became a money lender and died in 1966, aged 80Photograph: Horace Warner/Spitalfields Life
Share on Facebook Thomas Neale was born on 1 September 1891 to William and Eliza Neale. The family originated from Aspenden, Hertfordshire, and his father was a horse groom. Eliza, his mother, died from exhaustion in 1897. Tommy and his two brothers were conscripted and fought in the first world war – Tommy was killed on the battlefield on 9 October 1917Photograph: Horace Warner/Spitalfields Life
Share on Facebook Charlie Long was born on 10 November 1892, the youngest of eight, to his father, William, an eating house keeper, and mother, AnnPhotograph: Horace Warner/Spitalfields Life
Share on Facebook Nellie and Annie Lyons Born in 1901 and 1895, the ninth and sixth of 10 children of Annie Daniels and William Lyons, both street hawkers. Only half the Lyons children survived into adulthoodPhotograph: Horace Warner/Spitalfields Life
Share on Facebook Adelaide Springett was born in February 1893 in Wapping, both her parents were street sellers. Adelaide’s twin sisters, Ellen and Margaret, died at birth; another sister, Susannah, died aged four. Adelaide’s last known address was recorded in 1901 when, aged eight, she lodged with her mother at a Salvation Army shelterPhotograph: Horace Warner/Spitalfields Life
Share on Facebook Children on washing dayPhotograph: Horace Warner/Spitalfields Life
Share on Facebook An alleyway in SpitalfieldsPhotograph: Horace Warner/Spitalfields Life
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