Do you have photographs of your family that were taken in the 1920s? The National Archives are calling for photographs of people living in the 1920s to accompany their records and are providing people with the option to show their family photos in the myth-busting exhibition The 1920s: Beyond the Roar. Marking the release of the 1921 Census on 6th January 2022, Beyond the Roar explores what everyday life was actually like in this tumultuous period, unveiling real stories from real people. It’s always nice to put a face to a name but, in this exhibition, you’ll be putting your family stories to the record.
With the option of having the images displayed on a digital photo wall and have your family be part of the exhibition, submitting photographs will contribute to building a national picture and help historians and census experts understand more about our ancestors a century ago. What stories does your family have to share? How does life compare to our ancestors a hundred years ago? Excitement, social change and champagne-fuelled defiance marks the 1920s, a period sandwiched between two world wars with a populus recovering from the ’Spanish Flu’ influenza pandemic. Polarising social issues and political demonstrations were grappled with as frequently as new fashion and rising hemlines. Rifling through family photographs and tracing family roots through generations will not only help us all see who lived in this fascinating world but find stories that will leave us feeling inspired by the battles people fought.
The 1921 Census provides a complete record of 38 million people living in England and Wales and is a particularly significant survey of the population. Since the 1931 Census was destroyed in a fire, and the 1941 Census was never taken due to the Second World War, the 1921 Census is a rare glimpse of what life was actually like in the period. This period saw the Equal Franchise Act of 1928 finally give women the same voting rights as men, and the Census shows more women occupying professional roles, such as architects and vets. This call for photographs will illuminate the lives of real people who lived through this moment of social change.
Beyond the Roar forms part of 20s people, a wider programme of events and activities at The National Archives. While the programme explores and shares stories that will connect the people of the 1920s with us in the 2020s, the exhibition dives into the themes that marked the decade. Visitors will be guided from the dawn of the decade through key themes: politics and protest, women’s rights, empire, design and concluding with stories about nightclub ’queen’ Kate Meyrick of The 43 Club. The 1921 Census helps reconstruct this fascinating world, accompanied by The National Archives’ vast collection of records, artefacts and the expert knowledge of its historians.
Katherine Howells, Curator at The National Archives, comments, As we start to think about the upcoming release of the 1921 census, which will open up amazing new avenues of family history research, many of us are taking the opportunity to look back at some of our family photographs from the period. We would love for people to share these photographs with us to help build up a wall of images of people’s everyday lives from 100 years ago.
Then, as now, status and identity regularly impacted life experience. Contributing your family photographs will give a deeper sense of personal identity, grounds an individual’s life within a broader context of time and remind us that history and archives are an invaluable tool for understanding the world today.
How to Submit
- Either scan or take a photo of your image to create a .jpeg digital version.
- Complete the online form and upload your image.
- Submit photos using this link: https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/8Z4X87/
For advice on how to recognise whether your photograph was taken in the 1920s, Katherine Howell has shared advice, here: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20s-people/the-1920s-beyond-the-roar/how-to-recognise-a-1920s-photograph
