This photograph belongs to a very rare group of vintage photographs by one of Britain's most important photographers, Bert Hardy.

As chief photographer for Picture Post magazine in the 1940s and 1950s, Hardy travelled widely recording people and places across the world. Amongst the most famous of these pictures were an award-winning series depicting life in London's Elephant and Castle district. Photographed over a three week period, between 18 November and 8 December 1948, these photographs were taken for a picture story entitled 'Life in the Elephant', which appeared in Picture Post on 8 January 1949.

Although not selected for publication, the subject of this photograph, a prostitute named Maisie who helped Bert Hardy and journalist A L Lloyd gain access to the local community, is discussed by Hardy in his autobiography Bert Hardy. My Life:

"After our first meeting, Bert and I used to go round to her place whenever we went down to the Elephant to work on the story. When we arrived in the morning, Maisie would be sitting up in bed with a Woodbine in her mouth. Wherever she had been on the previous night, she always returned to her basement flat to sleep.'

(Bert Hardy, Bert Hardy. My Life, Gordon Fraser, London and Belfast, 1985, p. 105)


We are grateful to Mrs Bert Hardy for her assistance in cataloguing this work.