Blacking Collection

Cartoon, E W Mackney, Ethiopian entertainer (blackface minstrel). 1880s

Silver Street Boys School fancy dress group
Silver Street Boys School advanced class fancy dress group, most of them with blacked-up faces and hands. Their names are: Harold Blanchard, Philip Wilson, Arthur Thorne, Ernest Trafford

Shoe black (shoeshine boy) and client, in 18th century style. 18th century

Scene inside a blacking factory, Holborn, London
Scene inside the packing warehouse of the Day and Martin blacking factory, Holborn, London. Date: 1842

Shoeshiner 1867
What a polish! The youngsters were astonished! The gentlemen delighted! Date: 1867

Huntley Wright and Gracie Leigh in The Cingalee, or Sunny Ceylon, a musical play about tea planters in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), which opened at Dalys Theatre, London, in 1904. circa 1904

Shoe-Black Brigade 1851
The Shoe-Black Brigade were an offshoot of the Ragged School system. Date: 1851

Abraham Lincoln, a play by John Drinkwater, performed at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1918 and at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, West London, from 1918 to 1919. 1919

Page of Victorian adverts 1889
A variety of advertisements in The Graphic dated August 1889, showing Nuda Veritas hair restorer, Nubian, black polish for boots and shoes, Nortons Camomile Pills, for indigestion

Victorian Scrap -- Boot Black. late 19th century

Happy Hampstead - Coster Saleswoman at Hampstead Fair, who also seems quite open to offers for her noisy offspring! Date: 1899

Police Squad
Led by their sergeant, a clutch of constables march to their duties, passing a shoe black who uses only Carrs Blacking - no doubt this is an advertisement ?

Horse Van on the Ice
For a bet of 100 gunieas Mr Henry Hunt Jnr. drove his Fathers Matchless Blacking horse-drawn van across and back upon the ice of a frozen Serpentine in Hyde Park

Advert / Blacking / Polish
Diana Blackings and Polishes

Children / London Street
Children on a London Street: one is posting a letter, another is taking her dog for a walk, and a little boy is blacking shoes

All Professionally Made to Order for Quick Shipping