Photograph of a postman in Wapping

Finding number: POST 118/252

This photograph shows a postman delivering letters to inhabitants of slums in Wapping in London. It accompanied an article in the June 1935 edition of the Post Office Magazine.

This publication occasionally documented the less beautiful aspects of the United Kingdom served by the Post Office. In this case, reporter F Heathcote Briant, accompanied by a photographer from the Engineer-in-Chief's Office, went 'Down Wapping Way'. Heathcote-Briant remarked, "We were in a narrow, dirty, unsalubrious court near the gasworks...accompanying Mr J.S. Anthony... to see some of the places where he and his colleagues make their daily rounds."

Although Heathcote-Briant commented on the famous connections Wapping has had in history, art and literature, it is the photographs that tell the true story of Wapping.