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// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhat did Delivery After Raid say? "I'm data driven.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Delivery After Raid (1940)[a]

Delivery After Raid is a black-and-white photograph taken in London the day after the night air raid of 8-9 October 1940, during the 32nd consecutive night of the Blitz of World War II. It shows the remains of a street in Holborn, Central London, after it was bombed by Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe. A figure dressed as a milkman appears in the foreground, seemingly calm and unperturbed on his usual route, while firefighters in the background work among the smouldering ruins.

The image was staged by press photographer Fred Morley using his assistant who dressed as the deliveryman. The constructed photo accentuates what became known as the "Blitz Spirit", the courage and morale of the British people in spite of the bombings, allowing Morley to bypass military censorship and reveal the actual devastation of the city in the background to the wider world, while also promoting positive propaganda. The photograph is one of a series of constructed or manipulated images used to boost morale during the war.

Composition

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The photograph depicts the aftermath of a German bombing of a London street during the Blitz in World War II.[1] An outline of buildings appears in the background, still standing on the left and right, as the bright sky shines down from the top centre-right to now destroyed buildings. The street is difficult to see due to the rubble and detritus completely filling it. Fires still smoulder in the upper-left corner, as steam and smoke rise from where the firefighters, shown slightly blurred in the background with their backs to the camera, hold a firehose as they spray down what is left of the now flattened buildings, extinguishing the last of the blaze.

Directly to the right of the firefighters, the milkman appears in the foreground wearing a shining, white jacket, carrying a crate of milk bottles in his right hand,[2] and a single bottle of milk in the right pocket of his jacket.[3] The man strides confidently through the rubble with a bold, determined look on his face, an incongruous image in the midst of the widespread destruction.

The milkman is sharply in focus, with one of his legs blurred by motion, indicating a slow shutter speed used by the photographer. The arm of the milkman is slightly raised, compositionally aligned with the firehose behind him in the background, as broken structural elements strewn to his lower left, possibly a doorframe, point diagonally in the distance behind him, visually reminding us that this was once a road.[4]

Background

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Fox Photos

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In the early 20th century, the British press was headquartered in the Fleet Street region of Central London, England. In 1926, investor Richard Fox, photographer Reginald Salmon, and journalist Ernest Beaver bought the "Special Press" company and changed the name to "Fox Photos". According to curator Sarah McDonald, Fox became known for providing photography services to the new media of the time, which increasingly relied on visual storytelling and led to a burgeoning demand for the services of press photographers.[5]

Fox was also one of the first agencies to use colour film, particularly during its coverage of World War II.[5] They specialized in providing coverage of daily news, transportation, industry, and human interest stories. Highlights of their archival photo collection show a focus on images portraying workers, soldiers, and energy generation.[6] In January 1926, Fred Morley began working for Fox.[4] He continued working for the company as a photojournalist after the end of the war. He died in January 1969, aged 67.[7] Fox ceased operations by the 1980s when their collections were acquired by the Hulton Press Library, which was later bought by Getty Images.[5]

The Blitz

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Damaged Library (1940)[8]

The Battle of Britain began in July 1940 as Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe sought air superiority over Britain in a campaign against the Royal Air Force, a prerequisite for a planned invasion of the United Kingdom.[9] Although the Luftwaffe was perceived as one of the most powerful air forces in the world,[10] Fighter Command successfully defended British airspace against German attacks.[11] During its final stages, the Luftwaffe launched the Blitz, an eight-month bombing campaign against British cities. London was attacked for 57 nights, from September 1940 to May 1941, leading to more than 40,000 civilian deaths and leaving over a million homes and buildings damaged or destroyed.[4]

Shortly after the battle began, Prime Minister Winston Churchill directed the Minister of Information (MOI)[b] on 26 July 1940 to work with the media to control the way they covered the air raids, specifying that "photographs showing shattered houses should not be published unless there is something very peculiar about them...it must be clear that the vast majority of people are not at all affected by any single air raid...Pray try to impress this upon the newspaper authorities, and persuade them to help."[13]

If the photos were questionable, press agencies often submitted their images to the Press & Censorship Bureau of the MOI for review before publishing.[14] Photography scholar James McArdle notes that the British government wanted to avoid any kind of public panic and tried to limit the number of photos showing the destruction from the bombs by censoring images captured by press photographers.[4] Jane McArthur, whose doctoral research examined World War II photographs that were formerly held by the Ministry of Information and later deposited in the Imperial War Museum,[15] found that, of the approximately 11,500 photographs taken by the British press of the London bombing, the majority had never been seen by the public.[14]

The photograph

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Photographer Fred Morley of Fox Photos captured the image of Holborn, Central London,[c] on 9 October 1940, the 32nd consecutive day of bombing raids during the Blitz.[14] Due to wartime censorship rules, it was unlikely that the British government would allow such a photo to be published, as it was believed such images would damage morale.[16] Censors wanted to prevent the Germans from knowing where the bombs had reached their targets.[3] They also believed that such photos had the potential to contribute to public panic and dismay. The only way Morley could get past the censors to document the bombing, writes photography curator Roger Hargreaves, was by creating "a more palatable fiction".[17]

Morley borrowed a milkman's uniform and accessories and dressed his assistant in the clothes and had him walk through the scene as he captured the photo.[16] "His strategy to get such a picture published", writes McArdle, "was to play on the British 'stiff upper lip' cliché that would appeal to the censors; show that life was going to carry on as normal, a formula he and other press photographers continued to employ".[4]

The censors saw the milkman representing the "Blitz Spirit",[18] the strength and resolve of the British people in the face of great suffering and destruction,[19] and allowed newspapers to publish the photo on October 10.[16]

Provenance and exhibitions

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St Paul's Survives (1940)[20]

The press history of Delivery After Raid is unclear. It is believed that the original Fox Photos image was taken by Morley on 9 October 1940, and it is frequently claimed that it was published the following day in a London newspaper. This latter assertion has proven difficult to verify.[d] In 2011, British journalist David Hayes stated that the photograph first became widely known when it appeared in the Daily Mirror, though he did not provide further details.[21]

Tracing the photograph's publication history is further complicated by the complex chain of licensing agreements, archival transfers, and subsequent acquisitions. Images belonging to Fox Photos[22] were later absorbed by the Hulton Press Library, which was officially established in 1947.[23] Hulton was known for cataloging and archiving photographs from British photographic press agencies like Fox. Much later, Getty Images acquired Hulton in the late 1990s, adding Hulton's assets to its own.[e]

Delivery After Raid was exhibited several times. It first appeared in the London General exhibition at the Hulton Getty Picture Gallery in 1999.[26] From July to October 2007, the National Portrait Gallery held the Daily Encounters exhibition, which featured Delivery After Raid along with other press photographs from Fleet Street taken from the early 1900s to the 1980s.[f]

Interpretation

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Historian Lucy Worsley notes that the famous photo was staged by Morley using his assistant to portray a milkman seemingly unperturbed in the ruins of London.[29] American historian David F. Crew believes the image of Delivery After Raid is part of a larger set of British photographs taken during World War II that symbolically represents the steadfast resolve of the British people in the face of an incessant and devastating bombing campaign by Nazi Germany. Crew believes these images informed the stoic myth of the Blitz spirit, helping the British people to survive and emerge triumphant in their battle against Germany.[30]

The photo is often discussed as part of a set of three or more similarly contrived and modified photos from the late 1940 Blitz era. These include several images of postmen[g] delivering or picking up mail (Mail as Usual, 11 September 1940),[31] a staged image of "insurance assessors"[h] examining the damage of the Holland House library[14] (Damaged Library, 23 October 1940),[8] and a retouched image of an attack on St Paul's Cathedral. (St Paul's Survives, 29–30 December 1940).[14]

See also

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Notes and references

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Notes

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  1. ↑ This image is a cropped version originally uploaded by The Times. To view the original, uncropped version, see Getty Images.[1]
  2. ↑ Anthony Rhodes: "Propaganda to the home front and Britain's allies abroad was the responsibility of the Ministry of Information, which had been instituted to inform the public about the war, and how they could help win it...The ministry told Britons about the progress of the war without endangering national security. For these tasks it employed every publicity technique available—films, photographs, broadcasting, booklets, posters, press advertisements, exhibitions, public lectures. It recruited many distinguished publicists, artists, and writers."[12]
  3. ↑ The exact location in Holborn remains unknown.
  4. ↑ The original title of publication remains unknown and unverified.
  5. ↑ The purchase of the Hulton Press Library by Getty Images was portrayed in the BBC television drama Shooting the Past (1999).[24] The film features the photograph,[25] first appearing at 19:22 in the original home media release.[24]
  6. ↑ See for example: Hargreaves 2007,[16] Pitman 2007,[27] and Steward 2007.[28]
  7. ↑ See: Woodward 2015[2] and McArdle 2017.[4] McArdle implies that Morley was the author of at least one of the famous staged postmen images (including Mail As Usual), describing it as a companion to Delivery After Raid. However, the Getty Images archive only credits the image to "Fox Photos", with "Stringer" listed in the details.
  8. ↑ See Hudson 1998.[32] They are alternately described as "city gents" by McArdle 2017[4] and just "readers" by other authors.

References

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  1. 1 2 Morley 1940.
  2. 1 2 Woodward 2015, p. 149.
  3. 1 2 King 2017, p. 321.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 McArdle 2017.
  5. 1 2 3 Cadava 2001, p. 35.
  6. ↑ Streiman 2009.
  7. ↑ Harrow Observer 1969, p. 14.
  8. 1 2 Damaged Library 1940.
  9. ↑ Bungay 2000, pp. 32–33, 141.
  10. ↑ Bungay 2000, pp. 35, 53–54.
  11. ↑ Bungay 2000, pp. 119, 318–336.
  12. ↑ Rhodes 1987, pp. 115–116.
  13. ↑ Churchill 1949, p. 151.
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 McArthur 2017.
  15. ↑ McArthur 2023.
  16. 1 2 3 4 Hargreaves 2007, pp. 75, 80.
  17. ↑ Hargreaves 2007, p. 75.
  18. ↑ Bosman 2008, p. 59.
  19. ↑ Sigee 2021.
  20. ↑ St Paul's Survives 1940.
  21. ↑ Hayes 2011, para. 4.
  22. ↑ Hudson 1998, p. 208.
  23. ↑ McDonald 2004, p. 3.
  24. 1 2 Poliakoff 2006.
  25. ↑ Cloarec 2021, pp. 201–202, 210.
  26. ↑ de Burgh 1999, p. 348.
  27. ↑ Pitman 2007.
  28. ↑ Steward 2007, p. A38.
  29. ↑ Worsley 2021, 1:10:47-1:12:08.
  30. ↑ Crew 2017, p. 111.
  31. ↑ Mail As Usual 1940.
  32. ↑ Hudson 1998, p. 89.

Sources

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Archival collections

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  • Hudson, Roger (1998). An Independent Eye: A Century of Photographs. Sutton Publishing. ISBN 9780750921275. OCLC 607188539.
  • McDonald, Sarah (15 October 2004). "Hulton Archive – History In Pictures" (PDF). Getty Images. Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 May 2013.
  • Yapp, Nick (2000) [1998]. 1940s: The Hulton Getty Picture Collection. Originally published by Könemann Verlagsgesellschaft mbh. Barnes & Noble Books. ISBN 9783829005210. OCLC 1267615029.

Books

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Dissertations and theses

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Exhibition catalogs

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Films and television

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Journals

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Newspapers

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Photographs

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  • "Damaged Library". Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images. Getty Images. 23 October 1940. Retrieved 27 July 2026. The library at Holland House in Kensington, London, extensively damaged by a Molotov 'Breadbasket' fire bomb, 23rd October 1940.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  • "Mail As usual". Fox Photos/Getty Images. Getty Images. 11 September 1940. Retrieved 26 July 2026. A postman collecting mail from a post box surrounded by bomb damage in the Old Kent Road, London.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  • Mason, Herbert (29–30 December 1940). "St Paul's Survives". The Hyman Collection. Retrieved 27 July 2026.
  • Morley, Fred (9 October 1940). "Delivery After Raid". Fred Morley/Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images. Getty Images. Retrieved 26 July 2026. A milkman delivering milk in a street, devastated in a German bombing raid, in the Holborn area of London, 9th October 1940. Firemen are dampening down the ruins behind him.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)

Websites

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Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Delivery_After_Raid&oldid=1366457824"