April 21, 1898. Edison Manufacturing Co.
A 'street urchin' performs for pennies, nickels, and the camera. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century it was not uncommon to see homeless orphans roaming the streets ("like Gypsy's") of the less fortunate neighborhoods around America's cities. In New York the Lower East Side and Hell's Kitchen were 'home' to thousands of them. Among the boys it was usual to make a living by selling papers, performing menial tasks at construction sites, perform in the street, or just become part of a gang trained for a future in crime. Among girls the more usual fare of employment ran from selling matches to sweeping sidewalks, working sweatshops, or eventually prostitution.
There's no telling what the young lad in this film did or whether he was even homeless, but the chances are that he was part of the middle to lower class in New York's society. In all likelihood this film was shot on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Text from a contemporary Edison Company catalog:
A STREET ARAB. Shows one of New York's street gamins going through various acrobatic evolutions; he turns handsprings backward and forward, walks the crab, does cart wheels and other kindred feats. An exceptionally unique part of the performance is his standing on his head and twisting around like a top. It is safe to say he will be bald-headed at an early age.
Recommended reading:
- Lower East Side Remembered & Revisited - Joyce Mendelsohn
- Portal to America: The Lower East Side 1870-1925 - Allon Schoener
(A collection of contemporary clippings)
- How the Other Half Lives / Studies Among the Tenements of New York - Jacob A. Riis (available online)
First published in 1890, this study looks at the quality of life among the city's poor. Living in overcrowded, unsanitary, and segregated conditions were a historically constant cause of urban health and social problems that, until this time, had never been addressed in any consistent way.
Armed with a camera and flash, Jacob Riis recorded the people and the scenes of the Lower East Side. His photographs and writings were the first in depth glimpses of lives ''in the shadows'' and attracted the attention of reform minded individuals like Theodore Roosevelt. With the help of Roosevelt and other progressive individuals, Riis fought for changes in housing laws that probably saved the lives of thousands of people living in New York City tenements.
This book, while certainly of its time, presents an important and detailed document towards understanding New York City's transition into the 20th century and its emerging consciousness towards social and political modernization.
"When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it, but all that had gone before." -Jacob A. Riis
A staged 'actuality' from 1903 featuring East Side boys having summer fun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKakrTafAvw&feature=g-upl&context=G29d...
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@eirefrance thanks
1archer1 8 months ago
@1archer1 thats not what arab means in this context. Go to Wikipedia and look up street arab.
eirefrance 8 months ago
this is probably where breakdancing came from....
props to the arabs
Smokeystyle 11 months ago
arab?! how did we get from this to jihad?
1archer1 1 year ago
life is beyond mysterious
LibertarianParadise 1 year ago
wow arabs used to be so jolly
yuriythebest 1 year ago
wow, who knew t his is where breakdancing originated?!
Hlybry 1 year ago
For those who didn't see this earlier, 30 second film by Thomas Edison of first break dancer 1898.
therdcommissioner 1 year ago