[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.] Donna Ferguson (The Guardian) writes, “The Nationwide Railway Museum in quest to inform tales of the West Indian passengers caught on digital camera at Waterloo station as they started a brand new life in Britain.” The museum is interesting to the general public to establish the West Indians portrayed within the photos.
Surrounded by baggage and fellow passengers, they had been photographed arriving in good garments, excessive heels and fedoras, their faces drained and unsmiling because the underwhelming begin of their new lives within the motherland is captured on digital camera.
Now a museum is interesting to the general public to establish the West Indians portrayed within the photos, taken by Howard Gray at Waterloo station in London, which doc the final boatload of Windrush era arrivals to Britain in spring 1962 earlier than a crackdown on the open-door coverage for Commonwealth immigrants.
The Nationwide Railway Museum in York, which has acquired the 37 prints, is eager to seek out out what the folks photographed arriving that day did subsequent and what their expertise of settling in Britain was like. The pictures seize the chaos on the station on a chilly, drizzly day within the capital as crowds of West Indians arrived on trains that they had boarded at Southampton docks.
A number of the photographs tantalisingly show names on suitcases similar to Linda Morgan, J Campbell and O DeBique, hinting that their house owners may be recognized. Others present sharply dressed males, ladies and kids gazing instantly on the digital camera, grabbing baggage and – in among the most touching photographs – embracing long-lost kinfolk in pearls and saris.
Gray’s images signify an necessary second, not solely within the lives of individuals from the Windrush era, however within the historical past of Britain, stated museum curator Karen Baker. “The pictures depict that expectation and disorientation that you’d really feel having simply arrived in an odd new nation. However we don’t have their names and their tales. That’s what we’re lacking.”
She wish to hear from individuals who had been pictured there that day or can establish associates or kinfolk who had been. “It might simply be good to grasp what’s on the market in folks’s recollections – and if we will discover any of the people within the images, that might be the cherry on the cake.”
Gray was aged 20 when he went to Waterloo to take the images. Discovering from a information report that the final boatload could be arriving at Waterloo that day earlier than the change within the legislation that made it more durable for Commonwealth residents to stay and work in Britain, he determined to bunk off work. “I didn’t realise the importance of what I used to be doing, aside from myself.”
He was impressed to document the second by his grandparents, Jewish immigrants who had escaped the pogroms in Ukraine, and The Steering, Alfred Stieglitz’s well-known {photograph} of immigrant passengers in 1907.
“I used to be the one photographer there,” he stated. “I bear in mind noticing all people seemed fairly anxious. There was a variety of trepidation on their faces.”
He additionally remembers among the migrants showing fairly shocked at how shabbily the porters and white folks on the station had been dressed.
It was a darkish, overcast day and he quickly left as a result of lack of sunshine, believing his images could be inconceivable to develop. 5 many years later, trendy scanning strategies allowed him to lastly see once more the faces he had captured on that necessary event.
The remainder of their lives stays a thriller. “I’m very inquisitive about who these persons are and what occurred subsequent,” he stated.
The museum asks anybody with details about the folks within the images to e mail search.engine@railwaymuseum.org.uk. The total assortment may be considered at howardgrey.com/windrush
The museum can be eager to listen to from any Black railway employees – significantly ladies who labored in station catering – who arrived in Britain between 1948 and 1962. “Their voices are probably going to be misplaced. And there’s rather a lot they will contribute,” Baker stated.
For instance, she stated: “Now we have the oral historical past recording of a white male catering supervisor speaking about these 12 Black ladies from Barbados, who got here and labored within the station catering shops, however we haven’t obtained any of their recollections. We don’t know their names, we don’t know the way they discovered the expertise. We are able to infer that a few of them had harassment – however their voices don’t appear to be straightforward to seek out. It’s time to construct our understanding of individuals’s tales.”
[Photo above: Young West Indian men newly arrived at Waterloo station from Southampton Docks. Photograph: Howard Grey.]
Additionally see:
Howard Gray’s webpage at https://www.howardgrey.com/windrush “Bringing our proud historical past to life” Richard Sudan, Voice, June 22, 2022
https://www.voice-online.co.uk/information/windrush-day/2022/06/22/bringing-our-proud-history-to-life