One of my American friends, Jerry Coffey, sent over a whole bunch of photos of car accidents in the early days of motoring in the US. These were taken by Leslie Jones, who was the staff photographer at the Boston-Herald Traveler newspaper from 1917 to 1956.
Mr Jones captured everything that happened in the city for five decades and when he died in 1967, his family donated a vast collection of 34,000 prints to the Boston Public Library.
He certainly had a nose for wrecks, some of which seemed totally destroyed, due in many instances to the construction methods of the day with wood framed bodies on steel ladder chassis. Car design and primary safety have come along a lot since the 1920’s.
Did the Mail get through?
