Wellcome Library Photographic Collection

So many new and once forgotten photographs are being scanned and made digital so they can then be shared around the globe. The newest collection available is from the Wellcome Library in the United Kingdom.

There are two major categories: Historical Images and Contemporary Images. You can select either or both and then place a keyword, hometown or surname.The Historical images can range from advertisements, to photos of business and individuals to scanned documents. Any keyword can produce numerous pages of images. Check in the upper right corner to see how many pages, each with about 15 images on a page.

There is a brief description with each thumbnail image. If it is of interest, click on the thumbnail to enlarge. Not all are photos, some are drawings, illustrations which were commonly used. The images can be downloaded to your computer. The major common theme you will see is medical and social history of England.

  So you never know what you might discover if you did have ancestors from England in 19th and 20th century. The Wellcome Collection has over 100,000 images alone, not counting another 100,000 in scanned documents.

Illustration at top:  In 1862 in Manchester, England, the cotton crops had failed, putting the workers at the textiles mills out of work.  This shows the type of welfare they had to get, handed bread, to survive.