This feature lumps together some trades, occupations, activities and crafts which may actually have very little in common.
I’ve gone for the traditional, those tasks at one with nature, those in which muscle and manual skill could well do without the mixed blessings of technology. They satisfied primary, if not primitive, needs and many of them have either faded out or suffered drastic change.
The invention of photography at the very beginning of the Victorian age ensured that their existence, if not their nostalgia, remains well documented. Commercial photographers did not resist the lure of capturing images of toilers at these occupations and turning them into postcards for popular consumption.
This, in turn, shows that camera artists and publishers were responding to widespread demand. Publishers only invested in what they considered would be marketable and yield returns. They opted for the picturesque, bizarre, colourful, curious, or, thankfully, the fast disappearing.
Most of the images in pre-war postcards were either reproduced by the real photographic method or printed by typography. The first gave better results but the second was cheaper, though it reproduced rather poorly.
That is a pity because many of the cuter ‘occupation’ postcards come printed in half tone, like the karawett hawker, the fishmonger, the pastizzi vendor, the lace maker, the tarramaxka grinder or the oarsman of the dgħajsa tal-pass.
A farmer leading a pair of oxen in the countryside, c. 1910.
Farmers threshing the wheat, a common sight in the countryside. c. 1920.
The watering cart, a common sight c. 1930, before roads were tarmacked. Water was sprayed to keep the dust down.
Stone masons at work, building a church facade, possibly Naxxar, c. 1910.
Emptying the granaries opposite Fort St Elmo, in the 1910s.
The stone stove, kenur, was a specialty of Gozitan craftsmen, here seen exporting their wares to Malta, c.1920.
A dramatic postcard showing fishermen, dated 1918.
Basket weavers showing their wares in a village, c. 1920.
A boatman in Grand Harbour, rowing a dgħajsa tal-pass, c. 1920.
An unusual, intimate view of a karozzin, c 1930.
Sellers of sea urchins (rizzi), photographed by Richard Ellis, c. 1910.
A (gentleman?) gardener tending his flowerbeds, c. 1910.
A street pedlar of small household goods, c. 1910.
Fishermen using a nassa tal-vopi in Kalkara Bay, c. 1920.
A boy shepherd tending sheep, c. 1900. All images from the author's collection
Fresh goats’ milk was delivered daily door to door. A 1920s photo.
The numbers to choose from for the purposes of this series prove very substantial and will be spread over two or more instalments. Equally, quite a few will have to be sacrificed.
Does anyone still want to be reminded of the back-breaking suppliers of coal to steamships, of the gaxxin-boys collecting leftover scraps of food from British warships or of the gangs of ballata pounding deffun to waterproof roofs?
This feature follows a previous attempt to record some of the basic, mostly manual, occupations which antique social life in Malta found indispensable for the subsistence of the population, primarily connected with food and drink, clothing, shelter, agriculture, cleaning, rest or entertainment.
"We have to thank those early camera artists, often professional, who bothered to seek out and photograph these rather ‘unglamorous’ subjects and scenes"
The images document activity aimed at the mere essentials for survival – no pampering to extravagance, to luxury, to intellectual achievement, to aesthetics; generally, to those plain minimums expected to keep body and soul together. Skills were handed over verbally from previous generations, the laws of supply and demand reduced to their barest bones.
Today, some suffer an almost compulsory and uncritical nostalgia for the simple life we believe our ancestors enjoyed. But would we seriously want to go back to that? To poverty, ignorance, resignation, passivity, superstition, disease; though, in some ways, we did go back to all that, perhaps even more noxiously than ever before.
In the grand masters’ time, the construction industry, most heavy chores demanding physical exertion and the public cleaning services were all run almost exclusively by slaves, generally persons of colour. Is anything different 300 enlightened years later? You bet! Emmanuel Pinto, your serene highness, here come your obedient serfs.
We have to thank those early camera artists, often professional, who bothered to seek out and photograph these rather ‘unglamorous’ subjects and scenes. How many of us would otherwise remember the ambulant pedlar selling zinc pails, brooms or enamelled basins from his rickety mule-drawn cart? He stopped at every street corner to advertise his wares in a voice cracked by repeated challenges to the decibel scale.
How many would today see the karozzin as the basic cog in the national transport system, rather than the quaint curio for tourists that history forgot to delete entirely?
All images are from the author’s collections.
Lace makers in a village, c. 1930.
Farmers in the 1920s selling field produce. It was common for women to balance weights on their head.
A member of the confraternity of Rosarianti collecting alms on the occasion of the hanging of a delinquent, c. 1920.
A stone mason at work.
Wrapped sweets were sold from trays in the streets by hawkers, c. 1900.
A woman selling fresh milk straight from the udder in the 1910s.