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Petticoat Lane on Sunday
Lively panorama of the East London market
Overview
This wonderfully lively scene captures a busy shopping day in East London's legendary (and, to some, notorious) clothes market. The camera is far from unobtrusive, and one or two of the traders are visibly struggling to compete with it for the attentions of passers-by. The names on the shop hoardings - Isaacs, Ginsberg - testify to the fact that this part of East London was then home to much of the city's Jewish population.
This copy is derived from a paper print held in the Library of Congress, which was itself created as a record of the film's patenting in the US on 28 November 1904. It is substantially the same as another film long held in the BFI's collections, known simply as Petticoat Lane and dated 1903 (also on BFI Player). Though the paper source inevitably affects the image quality, it's valuable all the same since it preserves some footage missing from the BFI's version. Such paper prints frequently serve as vital evidence of films otherwise lost altogether. Its survival, too, shows how active the international trade in film was even this early in the history of the medium. The difference in dates suggests that the original film was shot more than a year before it was distributed across the Atlantic - though it's also possible that the 1903 date is incorrect.
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