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We step back to a time sitting on the edge of living memory. Not many people alive today will remember the year 1936.
Our 10 archive photographs recall scenes around Newcastle and its suburbs taken 90 years ago – an era characterised by economic depression and the grim countdown to the outbreak of the Second World War.
Our well-known main image, captured by Daily Mirror photographer Humphrey Spender, shows the Quayside and the distinctive bridges of the River Tyne under an overcast Tyneside sky. It was a gritty scene at the heart of a region defined by its heavy industry. But those traditional industries were struggling badly. Unemployment was high, and times were hard for thousands of families in our part of the world. It was only the outbreak of war in 1939 which led to the dole queues finally disappearing.
It wasn’t the best of times up at St James’ Park. Less than a decade after being crowned champions of England, and four years after lifting the FA Cup, Newcastle United found themselves recently relegated and stuck in the mediocrity of football’s second tier for the first time in the club’s history. We see the now largely forgotten players of the 1935-36 Newcastle squad – but it would be another 11 years, including six years of league action wiped out by the war, until the Magpies returned to the top flight.
On a brighter note, the arrival of the ‘talkies’ in the late 1920s had sparked a massive cinema boom. In that pre-television age, more than 900 million visits to the pictures in the UK were recorded in 1936 – and that figure would continue to rise. Dozens of new cinemas opened their doors across the region during the 1930s. We see the Scala on Chillingham Road,
Heaton, lit up by neons at night, and a billboard advertising upcoming films at the Stoll on Newcastle’s Westgate Road.
A newfangled trolley bus, meanwhile, was manoeuvring in Church Street, Walker. Newcastle Corporation Transport had introduced trolley buses in late 1935, taking city-centre shoppers home to areas like Jesmond and Gosforth and carrying shipyard workers to Walker.
The quiet, fume-free vehicles were powered by overhead electrical wires. For 31 years, the banana-yellow buses rumbled through the streets of Newcastle and its suburbs. The last vehicle from a fleet of 204 trolley buses, running on 28 routes, completed its final journey in October 1966.
In the wider world, 1936 marked the beginning of the Spanish Civil War; American athlete Jesse Owens stole the headlines at the Berlin Olympics; and Italy continued its invasion of Ethiopia. In popular culture, the Hollywood film Follow the Fleet, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, was released; the first music charts were compiled by the US magazine Billboard; and the book Gone With The Wind was published.
Britain was scandalised by the abdication of King Edward VIII, who gave up the throne after less than a year so he could marry two-time American divorcee Wallis Simpson. 1936 became known as ‘the year of the three kings’. George V died in January of that year; his son Edward VIII succeeded him, but abdicated in December; he was followed by his younger brother George VI.
Our 10 photographs offer us a glimpse of Newcastle as it was 90 years ago.
