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Interwar London after Dark
in British Popular Culture
Mara Arts
Interwar London after Dark in British
Popular Culture
 Mara Arts

Interwar London after

Dark in British
Popular Culture
Mara Arts
Coventry University
London, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-94937-2    ISBN 978-3-030-94938-9 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94938-9

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
­institutional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Acknowledgements

Publishing a book—especially for the first time—can be a daunting pros-

pect. I would like to thank my editors, Camilla Davies and Steven Fassioms,
the rest of the team at Palgrave Macmillan, and my anonymous reviewers,
for their support throughout the publication process.
This book originated from a doctoral thesis undertaken at Birkbeck,
University of London. I want to thank my supervisors, Dr Mike Allen and
Professor Tim Markham, for their steadfast support and guidance which
allowed me to shape and complete this project. The insightful questions
and comments of my PhD examiners, Professor James Chapman and Dr
Sarah Lonsdale, allowed me to improve the work.
I have received invaluable support from staff at the British Library and
British Film Institute which has allowed me to conduct the primary
research for this book. I would like to thank the BFI, the National Library
of Scotland, the Mary Evans Picture Library and Reach Licensing for kind
permission to re-use the images in this book.
At various points throughout the journey I have received advice from
Professor Ian Christie, Professor Lee Grieveson, Professor Andrew
Higson, Professor Matt Houlbrook, Dr Lawrence Napper, Dr Dorota
Ostrowska, Dr Michael Temple, Dr Karolina Kendall-Bush and Dr Chris
O’Rourke. I extend my thanks to all of them for giving me better insight
into my project. Writing retreats facilitated by Dr Catherine Pope allowed
me to make progress on the project at crucial points.
Sandra Bekvalac, Dr Elisa Jochum and Jemma Stewart provided feed-
back and comments on drafts, as well as friendship and support. Charlotte,
Rebecca, Josh, Sarah, Yvette and Chris were there to cheer me on and take

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

my mind off things as needed. A final thank you goes to my parents, Ger
and Jeanne, and my sisters, Petra and Irma, for their support along the
way; and to my nephew Arthur, who arrived during the research for this
book to remind me of what is really important.
 Contents

1 Introduction: ‘Dancing Goes on Until Dawn’  1

2 Interwar London: Nights, Newspapers, Films 17

3 Women on London’s Night-Time Streets 43

4 The Metropolitan Police in Interwar Film and Newspapers 77

5 Suburbs and Public Transport at Night109

6 Mirror Image: Newspapers and Films Reflecting Each Other157

7 Conclusion181

Bibliography191

Index203

vii
 About the Author

Mara Arts holds a PhD from Birkbeck, University of London. Her

research focuses on mass culture in interwar Britain. In particular, she
investigates the intersections between fiction film, tabloid journalism and
popular culture. Her research has previously been included in London on
Film, eds. Pam Hirsch and Chris O’Rourke (Basingtoke: Palgrave, 2017)
and in academic journals. She regularly presents her research at a range of
national and international conferences.
In addition to her research activities, Mara also has several years’ experi-
ence as a university lecturer, teaching film and media studies at under-
graduate and postgraduate level. She currently works as a University
Registrar.
Mara is passionate about increasing the visibility of British interwar his-
tory and maintains a weekly blog at www.interwarlondon.com.

ix
 List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Grace Blackaller (Daily Mirror, 11 April 1925). (Reproduced

with permission from Reach Licensing) 46
Fig. 3.2 Constance Oliver (Daily Mirror, 6 December 1927).
(Reproduced with permission from Reach Licensing) 52
Fig. 4.1 Bobby chorus line in Cheer Up! (Dir. Leo Mittler, 1936).
(Reproduced with permission of the Mary Evans
Picture Library) 96
Fig. 5.1 Plaistow in 1897 (top) and 1919 (bottom). (Reproduced with
the permission of the National Library of Scotland) 118
Fig. 5.2 The back page of the Daily Mirror of 5 November 1931.
(Reproduced with permission of Reach Licensing) 128
Fig. 5.3 Scene from Blackmail (Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1929).
(Reproduced with permission from the Mary Evans Picture
Library)141
Fig. 5.4 Still from A Kiss in the Tunnel (Dir. George Albert Smith,
1899). (Reproduced with permission from the British Film
Institute)142
Fig. 6.1 Scene from Underground (Anthony Asquith, 1928).
(Reproduced with permission from the British Film Institute) 172

xi
 List of Tables

Table 2.1 Estimate of British interwar films containing London night-

time scenes, in absolute and relative terms 34
Table 4.1 Number of newspaper articles identified which related to
police, criminal activity, or both 87

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: ‘Dancing Goes on Until Dawn’

It is at 12.30 a.m. that London’s real night life begins, the hour when twin-
kling green and blue lights flash on, proclaiming the whereabouts of the
‘bottle parties’ sprinkled over the West End and Soho (…) Dancing goes on
until dawn or until the last group of guests chooses to leave, by which time
the milkman is well on his round, the Tube stations are open, and the earli-
est shop assistants and clerks are beginning to stream back into the West End
for another day’s work.1

The above quotation comes from an article published in the Daily Mail
on 1 September 1937, which describes the male journalist going out at
night to explore illicit drinking parties held in London. These ‘bottle par-
ties’ tried to circumvent licensing laws to allow patrons to legally drink
alcohol throughout the night. 12.30am was the latest possible time for
alcohol to be sold legally, so bottle parties allowed patrons to purchase
their alcohol before that time, but consume it later in the night.2 For this
journalist, the start of the night coincides with the start of illegal behav-
iour. The article also draws an explicit juxtaposition between the night-­
time revellers and those Londoners who start their working day early.
These two groups are presented as socially separate, but briefly inhabiting
the same spaces at sunrise. In this journalist’s description, London’s nights
are about pleasure, transgression and abandonment, whereas its days are
about labour and responsibility.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
M. Arts, Interwar London after Dark in British Popular Culture,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94938-9_1
2 M. ARTS

Articles such as this, purporting to provide an exposé into London’s

nightlife, were common in the popular press of the interwar period.
Journalists and editors evidently believed that their audiences were inter-
ested in reading about what went on in London’s nightclubs, bars and
restaurants after dark. Although these spaces became more democratic and
accessible during the interwar period, many newspaper readers across
Britain continued to have no direct experience of them. Reporters such as
the one quoted above were apparently not too reluctant to go out at night
for their work, to allow readers a glimpse of how some Londoners spent
the hours after dark. As is common to news reporting, these articles were
an opportunity for readers, in the capital and beyond, to experience that
which was otherwise not accessible to them.
Fiction films could give audiences a similar opportunity, albeit with the
added benefits of replicating the pictorial (and, from the late 1920s, the
auditory) splendour of nocturnal places of entertainment, which allowed
the audience to be more fully immersed in the environment.3 The poten-
tial for illicit pleasure made engaging storylines possible, which were often
set in bars, clubs, theatres and restaurants. Consequently, these spaces of
performance and leisure, which only made up a small part of the capital’s
total night-time landscape, became synonymous with nocturnal London
in the popular imagination.
Throughout the interwar period, then, London’s nightlife attracted
attention from British popular press and cinema, the two forms of mass-­
media that enjoyed the largest consumption in this period. Newspaper
articles and films both allowed audiences a glimpse into the exciting and
sometimes glamourous goings-on of London’s nights, and provided an
opportunity for media producers to reaffirm that its spaces and their
attendees were not decent. The two media warned against the disruptive
potential of these spaces, which harboured illegal activities and allowed
white men to mix with women and people of ethnic minority back-
grounds; and those of upper-class backgrounds to mingle with people
from lower strata of society. They had the potential to destabilise key
tenets of British society. Both forms of media held a duplicitous relation-
ship with nightlife—on the one hand revelling in depictions of opulent
entertainment; on the other warning audiences of the dangers lurking in
dark corners.
This book considers how London after dark was represented in the
popular press and cinema of interwar Britain. It goes beyond the night-
club to investigate the spaces and people whose lives were affected by
substantial social change. It explores how, in a period of significant social
 1 INTRODUCTION: ‘DANCING GOES ON UNTIL DAWN’ 3

change, the two most consumed mass media managed the increasingly
prominent cultural phenomenon of urban nightlife; a phenomenon that
fascinated the public but also threatened the stability of British society by
allowing previously powerless groups increased agency. It argues that the
popular press and film primarily sought to reinforce existing values of
national pride; patriarchal power; and government control; whilst at the
same time seeking to exploit the commercial opportunities of depicting
illicit night-time activities. This led to an inherent tension in films’ and
newspapers’ relationship with the urban night which represented both fas-
cination and threat.
The chapters in this book consider a wide spread of newspaper articles
and films produced in Great Britain between 1919 and 1939 which repre-
sent nocturnal London. Qualitative and quantitative analyses draw out
how both forms of media negotiated the depiction of a rapidly democra-
tising time-space. The primary film sources used are a mix of well-known
and studied texts, and texts that have hitherto not received extensive
scholarly attention. Together, this corpus provides a broad and egalitarian
set of sources from which to draw conclusions about the general represen-
tation of London nights in popular media in interwar Britain. It also high-
lights the research possibilities of using lesser-known texts for cultural
studies work, as opposed to working on a limited number of texts which
have gained elevated cultural status. Primary sources are considered as
valuable cultural texts regardless of their aesthetic merit, as each text com-
ments and reflects on the society in which it is produced.
The analyses of the primary material are limited only to representations
of the night-time for two reasons. One is practical: it provides a clear limi-
tation to the amount of data that the book engages with, and makes its
scope manageable. The second reason is conceptual. In Western cultures,
the night has traditionally been considered as a time for transgressive and
unruly behaviour.4 As such, it has received specific attention by scholars,
who have been particularly interested in the changes to the urban night in
Europe in the long nineteenth century. By assessing how these two media
represented the London night in the interwar period, this book expands
on recent scholarly work done on cultural representations of the noctur-
nal.5 Despite making up a significant part of the human experience, the
night has been relatively under-researched. The night was a time and space
of increased possibilities in the interwar period, but also one that evoked
stereotypes along a restricted number of narratives.
4 M. ARTS

This book aims to demonstrate how two maturing forms of mass-media

negotiated the representation of changing aspects of society in interwar
Britain, in a way that attracted audiences but also protected the media
organisations’ commercial interests. Through this, it contributes to exist-
ing scholarly work that has argued that the British cultural industries of
the 1920s and 1930s managed changing audience tastes’ by rejecting radi-
cal ideas and expressions.6

London’s Nightlife in the Interwar Period

This book uses a broad definition of London nightlife, which encom-
passes anything that happened in the city between sunset and sunrise.
This includes activities in pleasurable locales such as theatres, restau-
rants, parks and nightclubs; criminal schemes occurring in public and
private space; domestic tasks; and the labour that takes place to keep
the capital going. What all these activities have in common is that they
happen under the cover of darkness, lending them an air distinct from
daytime activities. During the interwar period, nightlife became
increasingly public, as more and more people participated in it and the
activities received more coverage in the media. Night-time activities by
their nature were disruptive and challenged accepted notions of appro-
priate behaviour. Investigating mass media’s response to these activi-
ties, then, reveals how instruments of power handled activities that had
the potential for transgression.
As is evident from the quotation opening this introduction, nightlife
was usually seen in juxtaposition to the day-time, when the regular busi-
ness of the city took place. The night-time, by contrast, was a time for
transgressions and, therefore, also for increased scrutiny and attempts at
control. Activities could gain an aura of mystery simply by being con-
ducted in the dark. Cultural historian Joachim Schlör refers to the use of
‘languages of the night’ which consist of slippery metaphors and imagin-
ings.7 Films gratefully used these ‘languages’, for example by consistently
linking night-time with criminal behaviours. In The Love Test (1935), a lab
technician uses the cover of darkness to break into the lab and sabotage
the experiments; in Cocaine (1922) going out at night is fuelled by drug
and alcohol use.8 Films in this way played into audience’s expectations of
the urban night, further consolidating the cultural ‘language of the night’.
The history of nightlife is closely intertwined with the history of tech-
nology, as it was technological advancement that allowed people to be
 1 INTRODUCTION: ‘DANCING GOES ON UNTIL DAWN’ 5

active after dark. This is explored more fully in Chapter 2 with reference
to Wolfgang Schivelbusch’ work Disenchanted Night.9 The interwar period
did not mark the birth of nightlife—people have pursued social and leisure
activities after dark at least since the early modern period.10 However,
technological advances continued to make the London nights more acces-
sible through the end of the nineteenth century and the Edwardian period.
These also allowed daytime activities to be extended into the night.
Historian Judith Walkowitz, for example, notes that the pre-war Berwick
Street Market was able to stay open until 9pm thanks to gas and electrical
lighting.11 During the First World War, the Defence of the Realm Act
(DORA) placed restrictions on opening hours of theatres and other places
of entertainment, thus curtailing London’s night-time economy. After the
First World War, the relaxation of these restrictions led to a night-life
boom with many entertainments on offer for a cross-section of Londoners.
In the interwar period London’s nightlife became more democratically
accessible and it established itself as a feature in the lives of Londoners.
Walkowitz has considered this development as a turn towards cosmopoli-
tanism, placing London’s West End in conversation with Britain’s global
empire rather than its strict national boundaries.12
The film industry, too, was a cosmopolitan affair, especially during the
silent era when filmmakers and actors from across Europe participated in
making ‘British’ film productions. The source material used in this book
are media outputs which were produced in Britain, regardless of whether
all parties to the production were British-born. British audiences con-
sumed large numbers of American film productions as well during the
1920s and 1930s. Indeed, Hollywood’s dominance of the British box
office sufficiently spooked legislators to introduce an exhibition quota for
British films under the 1927 Cinematograph Films Act.
The content of both films and newspapers worked to strengthen audi-
ences’ feelings of being part of a national community; as all audience
members consumed the same media, they built up a common understand-
ing of the world around them and the nation’s position within that
world.13 During the interwar period, the sites of production for both pop-
ular daily newspapers and popular film in Britain were either in London or
the South East of England. The primary source material used in this book
was consumed by a national audience, but created in a specific part of
Britain. As a result, films’ and newspapers’ presentation of nightlife was
heavily influenced by the experiences and ideas of those in and around the
capital.
6 M. ARTS

Newspapers and Films as Common Culture

The exploration of newspapers includes the analysis of the reporting on
London nights in the three popular daily newspapers of the period with
the biggest circulations: Daily Mail, Daily Express, and Daily Mirror. All
three titles were founded around the turn of the century and matured into
market-leading tabloid newspapers during the interwar period. Their edi-
torial offices and printing presses were based in the heart of London in
Fleet Street, and their primary audience base was in London and the South
East of England.
Popular daily newspapers and fiction films both matured in Britain dur-
ing the interwar period. Popular newspaper titles reached daily circula-
tions of well over one million each in these decades, and their increased
competition with one another pushed each title to develop ever more
sophisticated reporting and design practices. This changed the face of the
British printed press irrevocably, increasing the amount of entertainment,
sensationalism and advertisements found in newspapers. The interwar
period saw the consolidation of the tabloid press as it still exists in Britain
today.14 By 1937 the three newspapers considered in this book had a com-
bined circulation of over 5 million copies daily, against a population of 47
million.15 These figures do not take into account the many readers who
shared the family newspaper or consumed newspaper headlines and film
advertising as they navigated through the city streets.
In the same period, cinema became the most popular leisure activity
in the country, receiving an estimated two-thirds of the nation’s total
spend on entertainment activities.16 It was not unusual for young, work-
ing-class Britons to visit the cinema multiple times a week. By 1937, an
estimated 946 million cinema visits were made in the country; equating
to an average of 2.6 million cinemagoers a day.17 Although audiences
were not passive consumers, the volume of newspapers and films that
were distributed and consumed influenced public imaginations of
Britain. Depictions of new types of social activity, which took place at
night, had the power to challenge previously held beliefs about British
national identity.
At the start of the interwar period, the majority of films screened were
American productions. The British government implemented a far-­
reaching legislative intervention in 1927, the Cinematograph Films Act,
to boost the British film industry and to curb the perceived Americanisation
 1 INTRODUCTION: ‘DANCING GOES ON UNTIL DAWN’ 7

of British culture. As a result, the proportion of British films consumed by

domestic cinema audiences steadily increased in the second half of the
interwar period.
The chapters in this book explore the depiction of night-time London
in eighty British feature films made between 1919 and 1939. Almost all
film studios of the period were also based in London, which was the undis-
puted production capital of British cinema at the time.18 Newspapers and
films were consumed by millions of British citizens every day during the
interwar period; by considering them alongside, and in relation to, one
another, the book approaches an understanding of how the interwar pub-
lic’s ideas about the urban night were formed and influenced.
Both newspapers and films were intimately linked to the urban environ-
ment. Cultural historian Peter Fritzsche describes the ‘word city’ that
comes off the newspaper page: ‘the accumulation of small bits and rich
streams of text that saturated the twentieth-century city, guided and mis-
guided its inhabitants, and, in large measure, fashioned the nature of the
metropolitan experience’.19 Films similarly created ‘image’ and ‘sound cit-
ies’ for their audiences. As audiences for films and newspapers were largely
the same people, the consumption of both media by London-based audi-
ences built up an image of night-time London that influenced their per-
ception of the city during day-to-day life. For audiences who did not live
in London, films’ and newspapers’ representation of the capital influenced
audiences’ imagination of the centre of their nation.
By considering newspapers and films alongside one another, this book
takes forward the notion posed by D. L. LeMahieu, that the interwar
period in Britain saw the formation of a ‘common culture’ led by the
increased availability of commercial, mass-produced media forms.20 The
focus is on newspapers and films in particular, because they adapted to the
social changes Britain was experiencing at this time. Both media were
widely consumed on a (near) daily basis, thus influencing their audiences’
view of the society in which they lived. Both industries had their centres of
production in the British capital, which in turn meant they favoured
London as a subject of their output over other British cities. Finally, both
newspapers and films held links to the night-time: cinemas did a lot of
their trade in the evenings, and newspapers were printed and distributed
overnight. They were both dependent on night-time economic activity for
their continued commercial survival.
8 M. ARTS

A hallmark of this common culture was that it was ‘widely shared by

diverse groups within the entire community’,21 as evidenced by the sub-
stantial newspaper circulation figures and box office receipts referred to
above. Yet LeMahieu hastens to add that something being commonly
shared does not mean that it is uniform: ‘A common culture might be
experienced differently by a wide variety of groups and yet retain its value
as a mutually acknowledged frame of reference’.22 The focus of this book
is on the latter half of this statement: how did newspapers and films create
this frame of reference for thinking about the London night? It approaches
this question not by attempting to knit together audience responses from
the notoriously piece-meal surveys that survive from the period,23 but
rather by looking at the texts themselves. Similar to the approach taken by
Charlotte Brunsdon in her book-length study of post-war films about
London, how London at night is ‘constituted (…) and works within the
fiction’ of each film is the starting point.24 What did these films include in
their narratives, and what was left out? Who was given agency, and who
was erased? This content analysis gives insight as to how the night was
reflected to audiences.
Notwithstanding the significant importance of American film texts to
film audiences, this book focuses on films that were made in Britain. It
seeks to determine how British films depicted the nightlife of London, to
identify specifically British preoccupations and concerns with the capital’s
expanding night-time activities. It is not an audience-centred approach in
the sense that the book surveys the range of films the average audience
member was likely to view. Instead, it highlights the specifically British-­
made mass media artefacts that audiences would have come across and
distils from those indications as to how British people saw themselves
reflected in media made by their compatriots.
LeMahieu has argued that in their form, newspapers and films edged
closer towards each other in the interwar period, with newspaper editors
adopting the strategies of film and therefore increasingly including visual
materials on the printed page.25 Consuming films and newspapers taught
audiences to ‘read’ the world around them, which became increasingly
fast-paced and visual, in a new way. In their content, the popular press
were also ‘increasingly invested in the cinema, along with other aspects of
commercial culture, in [their] ongoing attempt to keep step with popular
tastes, to attract readers and to sell advertising space’.26 Newspaper editors
recognised that cinema had become the most popular form of
 1 INTRODUCTION: ‘DANCING GOES ON UNTIL DAWN’ 9

entertainment, offering something more modern and exciting than the

theatre. The press leveraged the star power of film celebrities to increase
their commercial revenue.27
Newspapers were limited to presenting factual events, although reports
were embellished to appeal to a large readership and increase commercial
revenue. Films were able to present fantasy, but their representations were
in dialogue with reality. As noted by Christine Grandy, British films of the
interwar period ‘engaged with concerns about economy, gender, and
nation after the war’.28 An extensive and methodical analysis of film form
and content can therefore reveal much about the social and moral preoc-
cupations of interwar Britain. At the same time, film remained a commer-
cial product looking to attract a mass audience, and content was adjusted
accordingly.29
Grandy, in her book Heroes and Happy Endings, concludes that the
British interwar period is a ‘foundation of an ideology, steeped in eco-
nomic anxiety and the aftermath of war, which has persisted well into the
twentieth century’.30 Her work investigated the depiction of heroes and
villains in a range of interwar films and written fiction. Building on that
work, which stripped narratives back to their key components, this book
explores the detail of representation of certain groups and phenomena
which were commonly linked with the London nights.
As LeMahieu has demonstrated, during the interwar period many liv-
ing in Britain enjoyed improved living standards and more disposable time
and income, which meant that (daily) consumption of newspapers and
films became affordable. Improved standards of education increased liter-
acy, and government interventions boosted the production of British
films. The content of these mass media products was shaped by an inter-
play between producer and audience expectations, which ensured that the
products whose contents appealed to the largest audiences enjoyed the
most commercial success.31
Because of mass media’s need to be commercially viable, most main-
stream culture did not offer radical opinions, but rather reinforced those
viewpoints already shared by most of the public. As Lawrence Napper has
pointed out, however, those majority viewpoints were in flux during the
interwar period, as British society went through a period of social and
cultural change.32 Consequently, the positions expounded by mainstream
media were not monolithic throughout the 1920s and 1930s, but shifted
as their audiences’ experiences of the world around them changed.
10 M. ARTS

Interwar Britain—A Society in Flux

The interwar period in Britain has received ample attention from social
historians in recent years.33 These explorations have challenged assump-
tions about the two decades between the World Wars, for example around
the impact of the global economic crisis on families in London and the
South East in the 1930s.34 Indisputably, the 1920s and 1930s were a
period of great social change for Britain. For example, technological devel-
opments changed people’s domestic environments, as increased availabil-
ity of household appliances removed a reliance on domestic servants. At
the same time, new industries such as food production factories increased
available jobs for women, who preferred working on a conveyer belt to
working in service.35 This reduced the number of domestic servants on the
labour market which, in turn, encouraged the development of more
household appliances. This is but one example of the ways in which social
and technological development impacted on one another and led to
social change.
The built environment of London also changed during the interwar
period: suburbs developed, and the capital’s public transport network uni-
fied under the name London Underground. The suburbs made it possible
for many people to live in their own family home with a garden; the trains,
buses and Tube allowed for more convenient travel across the city’s
expanse. Public transport was cheap and anonymous, allowing anyone to
travel anywhere in the capital, at almost any time of day and night, thus
greatly expanding individual freedoms. Class differences, previously
enshrined in the physical locations of people’s homes, became progres-
sively less defined.
The increased mobility of previously marginalised groups, such as
women and working-class Londoners, also increased opportunities for
social disruption. To minimise this risk, deviant behaviours were policed
both explicitly and implicitly by highlighting and rewarding ‘acceptable’
behaviour through channels of mass communication. The press and film
industries had a vested interest in maintaining existing social conditions, as
they were profit-driven industries depending on stable revenues. In their
output, they therefore praised behaviours that perpetuated the status quo,
and were critical of actions that disrupted it.36
Newspapers and films themselves also changed significantly during the
interwar period. Film, most notably, made the transition from silent to
sound at the end of the 1920s, which expanded the representational tools
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Title: Cairo to Kisumu

Egypt—The Sudan—Kenya Colony

Author: Frank G. Carpenter

Release date: September 14, 2023 [eBook #71651]

Language: English

Original publication: Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Company,

1923

Credits: Peter Becker and the Online Distributed Proofreading

Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced
from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAIRO TO

KISUMU ***
 CARPENTER’S
WORLD TRAVELS

Familiar Talks About Countries

and Peoples

WITH THE AUTHOR ON THE SPOT AND

THE READER IN HIS HOME, BASED
ON THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND
MILES OF TRAVEL
OVER THE GLOBE

CAIRO TO KISUMU
EGYPT—THE SUDAN—KENYA COLONY
 ON THE GREAT ASWAN DAM

“The dam serves also as a bridge over the Nile. I crossed on a car, my motive
power being two Arab boys who trotted behind.”

CARPENTER’S WORLD TRAVELS

CAIRO TO KISUMU
Egypt—The Sudan—Kenya
Colony

BY
FRANK G. CARPENTER
LITT.D., F.R.G.S.

WITH 115 ILLUSTRATIONS

FROM ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS
AND TWO MAPS IN COLOUR

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1923
 COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY
FRANK G. CARPENTER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
First Edition
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the publication of this book on Egypt, the Sudan, and Kenya
Colony, I wish to thank the Secretary of State for letters which have
given me the assistance of the official representatives of our
government in the countries visited. I thank also our Secretary of
Agriculture and our Secretary of Labour for appointing me an
Honorary Commissioner of their Departments in foreign lands. Their
credentials have been of the greatest value, making available
sources of information seldom open to the ordinary traveller. To the
British authorities in the regions covered by these travels I desire to
express my thanks for exceptional courtesies which have greatly
aided my investigations.
I would also thank Mr. Dudley Harmon, my editor, and Miss Ellen
McBryde Brown and Miss Josephine Lehmann for their assistance
and coöperation in the revision of the notes dictated or penned by
me on the ground.
While most of the illustrations are from my own negatives, these
have been supplemented by photographs from the Publishers’ Photo
Service and the American Geographic Society.
F. G. C.
 CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Just a Word Before We Start 1
II. The Gateway to Egypt 3
III. King Cotton on the Nile 13
IV. Through Old Egypt to Cairo 22
V. Fellaheen on Their Farms 29
VI. The Prophet’s Birthday 41
VII. In the Bazaars of Cairo 49
VIII. Intimate Talks with Two Khedives 58
IX. El-Azhar and Its Ten Thousand Moslem
Students 70
X. Climbing the Great Pyramid 79
XI. The Pyramids Revisited 87
XII. Face to Face with the Pharaohs 96
XIII. The American College at Asyut 106
XIV. The Christian Copts 112
XV. Old Thebes and the Valley of the Kings 117
XVI. The Nile in Harness 128
XVII. Steaming through the Land of Cush 140
XVIII. From the Mediterranean to the Sudan 149
XIX. Across Africa by Air and Rail 160
XX. Khartum 167
XXI. Empire Building in the Sudan 175
XXII. Why General Gordon Had No Fear 181
XXIII. Omdurman, Stronghold of the Mahdi 187
XXIV. Gordon College and the Wellcome
Laboratories 200
XXV. Through the Suez Canal 208
XXVI. Down the Red Sea 218
 XXVII. Along the African Coast 224
XXVIII. Aden 229
XXIX. In Mombasa 236
XXX. The Uganda Railway 243
XXXI. The Capital of Kenya Colony 252
XXXII. John Bull in East Africa 261
XXXIII. With the Big-Game Hunters 269
XXXIV. Among the Kikuyus and the Nandi 277
XXXV. The Great Rift Valley and the Masai 285
XXXVI. Where Men Go Naked and Women Wear Tails 293
See the World with Carpenter 303
Bibliography 305
Index 309
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
On the great Aswan Dam Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
The bead sellers of Cairo 2
The veiled women 3
On the cotton docks of Alexandria 6
Nubian girls selling fruit 7
Woman making woollen yarn 14
Fresh-cut sugar cane 15
One of the mill bridges 18
The ancient sakieh 19
The native ox 19
Water peddlers at the river 22
Women burden bearers 23
Threshing wheat with norag 30
A corn field in the delta 30
The pigeon towers 31
In the sugar market 38
Flat roofs and mosque towers of Cairo 39
Tent of the sacred carpet 46
The Alabaster Mosque 47
“Buy my lemonade!” 54
A street in old Cairo 55
Gates of the Abdin Palace 62
The essential kavass 63
In the palace conservatory 66
The famous Shepheard’s Hotel 67
Learning the Koran 67
Approaching El-Azhar 70
In the porticos of El-Azhar 71
The Pyramids 78
Mr. Carpenter climbing the Pyramids 79
Standing on the Sphinx’s neck 82
Taking it easy at Helouan 83
View of the Pyramids 86
Uncovering tombs of ancient kings 87
The alabaster Sphinx 94
The great museum at Cairo 95
Students at Asyut College 102
American College at Asyut 103
Between classes at the college 103
In the bazaars 110
A native school in an illiterate land 111
The greatest egoist of Egypt 118
The temple tomb of Hatshepsut 119
Sacred lake before the temple 119
The avenue of sphinxes 126
The dam is over a mile long 127
Lifting water from level to level 134
Where the fellaheen live 135
A Nubian pilot guides our ship 142
Pharaoh’s Bed half submerged 143
An aged warrior of the Bisharin 150
A mud village on the Nile 151
Where the Bisharin live 151
A safe place for babies 158
Mother and child 159
A bad landing place for aviators 162
Over the native villages 162
The first king of free Egypt 163
Soldiers guard the mails 166
An American locomotive in the Sudan 167
Light railways still are used 167
Along the river in Khartum 174
Where the Blue and the White Nile meet 175
The modern city of Khartum 175
A white negro of the Sudan 178
Where worshippers stand barefooted for hours 179
Grain awaiting shipment down river 182
“Backsheesh!” is the cry of the children 182
Cotton culture in the Sudan 183
The Sirdar’s palace 183
The bride and her husband 190
Omdurman, city of mud 191
Huts of the natives 191
A Shilouk warrior 198
In Gordon College 199
Teaching the boys manual arts 206
View of Gordon College 207
On the docks at Port Said 207
Fresh water in the desert 210
The entrance to the Suez Canal 211
A street in dreary Suez 226
Ships passing in the canal 227
Pilgrims at Mecca 230
Camel market in Aden 231
Harbour of Mombasa 238
Where the Hindus sell cotton prints 239
The merchants are mostly East Indians 239
A Swahili beauty 242
Passengers on the Uganda Railroad 243
An American bridge in East Africa 246
Native workers on the railway 246
Why the natives steal telephone wire 247
In Nairobi 254
The hotel 255
Jinrikisha boys 255
A native servant 258
Naivasha 259
The court for white and black 259
Motor trucks are coming in 262
How the natives live 263
Native taste in dress goods 266
The Kikuyus 266
Wealth is measured in cattle 267
Zebras are frequently seen 270
Even the lions are protected 271
Giraffes are plentiful 271
Elephant tusks for the ivory market 278
How the mothers carry babies 279
Mr. Carpenter in the elephant grass 286
Nandi warriors 287
Woman wearing a tail 290
How they stretch their ears 291
The witch doctor 298
Home of an official 299
The mud huts of the Masai 299
MAPS
Africa 34
From Cairo to Kisumu 50
 CAIRO TO KISUMU
EGYPT—THE SUDAN—KENYA
COLONY
 CHAPTER I
JUST A WORD BEFORE WE START

This volume on Egypt, Nubia, the Sudan, and Kenya Colony is

based upon notes made during my several trips to this part of the
world. At times the notes are published just as they came hot from
my pen, taking you back, as it were, to the occasion on which they
were written. Again they are modified somewhat to accord with
present conditions.
For instance, I made my first visit to Egypt as a boy, when Arabi
Pasha was fomenting the rebellion that resulted in that country’s
being taken over by the British. I narrowly escaped being in the
bombardment of Alexandria and having a part in the wars of the
Mahdi, which came a short time thereafter. Again, I was in Egypt
when the British had brought order out of chaos, and put Tewfik
Pasha on the throne as Khedive. I had then the talk with Tewfik,
which I give from the notes I made when I returned from the palace,
and I follow it with a description of my audience with his son and
successor, Abbas Hilmi, sixteen years later. Now the British have
given Egypt a nominal independence, and the Khedive has the title
of King.
In the Sudan I learned much of the Mahdi through my interview
with Sir Francis Reginald Wingate, then the Governor General of the
Sudan and Sirdar of the British army at Khartum, and later gained an
insight into the relations of the British and the natives from Earl
Cromer, whom I met at Cairo. These talks enable one to understand
the Nationalist problems of the present and to appreciate some of
the changes now going on.
In Kenya Colony, which was known as British East Africa until after
the World War, I was given especial favours by the English officials,
and many of the plans that have since come to pass were spread out
before me. I then tramped over the ground where Theodore
Roosevelt made his hunting trips through the wilds, and went on into
Uganda and to the source of the Nile.
These travels have been made under all sorts of conditions, but
with pen and camera hourly in hand. The talks about the Pyramids
were written on the top and at the foot of old Cheops, those about
the Nile in harness on the great Aswan Dam, and those on the Suez
Canal either on that great waterway or on the Red Sea immediately
thereafter. The matter thus partakes of the old and the new, and of
the new based upon what I have seen of the old. If it be too personal
in character and at times seems egotistic, I can only beg pardon by
saying—the story is mine, and as such the speaker must hold his
place in the front of the stage.
 Beggars and street sellers alike believe that every foreigner visiting Egypt is not
only as rich as Crœsus but also a little touched in the head where spending is
concerned, and therefore fair game for their extravagant demands.
 Among the upper classes an ever-lighter face covering is being adopted. This is
indicative of the advance of the Egyptian woman toward greater freedom.