1-192-002 - © London Museum/Heritage-Images

Sunday bird fair, Sclater Street, off Brick Lane, London, 1900s. A bird seller standing outside a shop, the wall of which is covered with cages full of birds. A poster to the left of the shop advertises variety entertainment. Galt came to London in 1890 to work as a missionary for the London City Mission. In the early 1900s he took a series of photographs, mainly of the East End, which he had made into lantern slides to illustrate lectures publicising the work of the Mission. Galt sought to show that though there was great poverty in the East End, the people were not sub-human, as was popularly imagined by the middle-classes, but ordinary folk trying to do their best under difficult circumstances.