Jamaica Street Glasgow (1901)

A flood of pedestrians and horse-drawn traffic in Edwardian Glasgow.

Jamaica Street was and still is one of Glasgow's busiest thoroughfares, and that's probably why Mitchell and Kenyon took their camera there in April 1901. Showman AD Thomas, who distributed this film, claimed that some 8,000 people saw it screened at the city's Grand Circus. Many of those will have been among the flood of workers in the concluding shot, apparently taken in another street.

The film illustrates a world in flux: many of the horse-drawn buses and carriages seen here would be replaced by electric trams a year later, in 1902. The traffic is almost nose-to-tail, but seems very orderly all the same.