Shine 'em up – a shoeshiner boy in Flanders. Poor orphan boys in Ypres. 1920.
Shine 'em up. A "shine" in Flanders is not usually the operation that it is on Broadway and takes place much less frequently. When school children in this war torn part of the world begin to make themselves neat and tidy they take off their little wooden shoes and scour them with something akin to a sapolio until they gleam like a kitchen table. But these orphan boys in Ypres have just received their first leather boots from a distribution of clothing and shoes sent to their school colony by the Junior Red Cross of America and are seen as their own boot blacks with possibly more blacking on faces and hands than on shoes.
Size: 8444px × 6457px
Photo credit: © JJs / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
Keywords: 1920s, antique, boots, child, childhood, children, depressing, flanders, grainy, historical, labour, leather, orphan, photo, poor, scratchy, shining, shoes, shoeshiner, ypres
