Looking at Source C (a photograph of unemployed men in Jarrow in 1932) I can see that most of the people in the photograph are male therefore this could show us that mostly men

In this essay I am going to be looking at Source C and comparing it to Sources A and B to see whether it supports them. I will start by analysing Source C to find what it shows then analysing sources A and B to see whether they show the same thing.

Looking at Source C (a photograph of unemployed men in Jarrow in 1932) I can see that most of the people in the photograph are male therefore this could show us that mostly men were unemployed in Jarrow, 1932. But also it could only just be men because at this moment in time many women just worked as housewives so they would have been at home anyway. Just because the men are standing around doesn’t mean that are unemployed but because it is labelled “unemployed men in Jarrow” I would have to rely on this information though I do not know if it is reliable enough or not. I can also see that many of the men are dressed quite poorly showing either a lack of money or no shops were open for them to buy new clothes. They also look quite bored and sad this could be due to the fact that they are unemployed and can’t find a job. The shops around the picture look either deserted or even closed, this could have been because it was a Sunday and maybe all the shops were closed but it is more likely that they were bankrupt and could not afford to open or because there was no business because everyone else was out of work therefore they didn’t have money to spend on clothing. Who took the picture is unknown to us, this could have been a set up and the purpose of it could have been to show unemployed men but in reality this may have just been set up, this makes source C quite unreliable.

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Now looking at Sources A and B, source A gives us a description of Jarrow, it tells us that “there was no prospect of a job”, this tells us that either all the jobs were taken by others or that the businesses could not afford to take on more workers probably because they were running out of money and business. “then in 1931 everything went bankrupt”, this clearly tells us that all businesses and people were bankrupt meaning that businesses could no longer function and people therefore had no more money to spend on things they needed and there was no way they could find a job to earn that money. “often my wife and I would go without a meal on Sunday in order to feed the children” and “we patched up our clothes just like all the others”, these tell us that this particular family could either not afford food and clothing or there was nowhere to purchase them and finally “ in town 156 shops were closed or empty” lastly this shows us that many of the businesses were not running probably because they were bankrupt. We do not know who wrote the source and where it came from therefore we don’t know what the writers purpose was and whether it was used for propaganda such as a newspaper article. Source B is a table which shows us unemployment figures for Jarrow from 1927 - 1936 (the towns workforce was 9, 700). To back up source A its clearly shows that in 1931 there was a definite rise in unemployment figures, in source A it reads “then in 1931 everything went bankrupt”. We don’t know where these figures came from and therefore whether they are reliable or not. They could have been written by the government or they could have just again been propaganda trying to show how bad employment was in Jarrow at that time.

Comparing Source C to Source A, it states in source A that “there was no prospect of a job” and in Source C it could back this statement up as many of the men are just standing around on the street looking like they have no jobs and are not looking for them either. Source A tells us about how they went without food and patched up old clothing, in source C it does not appear that the peoples clothes were patched up but also they did not seem of god quality also we can see that the shops are empty so they support each other because the shops are probably empty because people had no money to purchase goods because of unemployment or the businesses were bankrupt. Lastly source A tells us that “in town 156 were closed or empty”, Source C supports this because we can clearly see in the photograph that most if not all of the shops along that road are either empty or closed. Therefore Source C supports Source A.

Comparing Source C to Source B, looking at Source B and looking at unemployment figures in 1932 (date of when the photograph was taken) it shows us that there was a lot of people who were unemployed, more than the year before definitely. In the photograph we can clearly see that the men are just standing around doing nothing and certainly not working therefore I take it that they are unemployed. Therefore Source C also supports Source B.

To conclude this essay I think that, yes, Source C’s evidence does support the evidence of that in Source’s A and B.