Who stole my words and pictures? ……..on the wireless today

 I don’t make any great claims to my stories, pictures and research.

Be Happy, Manchester, 1979

Mr. Shakespeare, Bill Brandt, and Edward Gibbon outshine me but when I write and publish a book or post a photograph these are works which are mine and mine alone.

All Saints, Manchester, 1981

So, what follows is that I should be asked before they are reproduced in a format and in a context which I approve of, let alone the basic one of being offered payment.

And this led me to listen with great interest to today’s edition of In Our Time, which was on  Copyright.*

In the early 18th century the British Parilament passed the first copyright law, officially known as  An Act for the Encouragement of Learning and popularly as the  Statute of Anne.

To quoute the BBC's footnotes "Copyright protects and regulates a piece of work - whether that's a book, a painting, a piece of music or a software programme. It emerged as a way of balancing the interests of authors, artists, publishers, and the public in the context of evolving technologies and the rise of mechanical reproduction".

Before the Rush, The Loyds, Chorlton, 2024

The programme offered up stories about writers and artists such as Alexander Pope, William Hogarth and Charles Dickens and the heated debates about ownership and originality which continue to this day.

All of which today is reinforced by the emergence of artificial intelligence.

Hot days in a garden, Chorlton, 2025

The contributors included Lionel Bently, Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the University of Cambridge, Will Slauter, Professor of History at Sorbonne University, Paris and Katie McGettigan, Senior Lecturer in American Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London and was produced by  Eliane Glaser.

The broadcast ranged over the history of copyright, the complicated question of what constitutes originality and to what extent protecting someone’s work restricts the development of art and technology.

All good stuff but doesn’t detract from that simple observation that copyright exists to protect the work of any author who has invested time labour and their imagination and wants to do so again.

So, often on social media people lift material, repost it without any acknowledgement, gratuity and often in an inappropriate context.

And use that simple excuse that “I saw it and thought it was alright to use”, an excuse made absurd if instead of a piece of writing or a picture, it was a bike left outside a shop.

My River, London, 1979

Location; Radio 4

Pictures; Manchester, Chorlton, London, 1979-2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Copyright, In Our Time, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002c3bm

Who owns old Chorlton? ………..

 Now, this isn’t a rant about that that pernicious historic ground rent which a full century after it was instituted locks property owners into paying a small amount twice a year.

Palais de Luxe, circa 1928, Barlow Moor Road

Nor is it a bid to lay claim to the Rec, the site of Chorlton Precinct or a heap of land across the township.

No, it is a reflection on the practice of posting images and other people’s research about Chorlton across social media with no regard to where they were sourced or an acknowledgement or credit.

Of course many old images are well out of copyright, and I fully accept that knowledge should never be shackled or hidden away, but there is a but, and that but is simply that all too often the pictures are presented with no context, other than “photograph of old Chorlton”.

If you are lucky, you might be able to recognise the location, but with no date the picture is of little use.

Nor do the perpetrators supply the source, and that matters.  

Detail of the iron work made by the Lion Foundry

So, a few years ago I came across an old picture of the Palais de Luxe, which opened in 1914, beside the tram terminus on Barlow Moor Road, and later became a workshop and later still a supermarket.  

The image was taken by a local photographer called Charles Ireland around 1928 and was lodged in the East Dunbartonshire Archive. *

And so the story was less about the cinema and more about how Charles Ireland’s picture ended up in a Scottish Archive, and the answer was that it was in a collection of records from the Lion Iron Foundry in Kirkintilloch.

Look closely at the picture and you can see the iron work which supports the glass canopy and the conclusion is that the Lion Foundry commissioned Charles Ireland to photograph their work, all of which connects Mr. Ireland, a Chorlton cinema and the Lion Iron Foundry in Kirkintilloch.

Which in turn makes for a much better story.  Not that the person who lifted the image from the blog site commented on its origins or offerd a comment to help anyone who saw the picture and wondered where or which “old Chorlton picture house this was”.

George Simpson, 1918, the Black Watch

And that leads to the other two images, one of which is my uncle George Simpson and the other of the meadows

Both of have featured on the blog.  My uncle despite living in Newcastle Upon Tyne had been in Scotland and so volunteered for a Scottish Regiment, and his story was a reflection of those who came back from the Great War which included two of our uncles, my grandfather, two great uncles, and my great grandfather.

The image of the Meadows has often been used to explore the story of that area, from meadowland, to Corporation tip and now the Mersey Valley.

There will be a few like Eric who says that many of the images from Manchester Library’s collection of historic pictures were donated and any copyright belongs to the person who took them.  It is a widely held assumption which I shared and which Richard Bond in a comment below has corrected me

 Which leaves me reiterating that it is still important to acknowledge the source, if for no other reason than it allows the interested to visit the site and find more of the same.

But where Eric is wrong is that it acceptable to trawl the net find someone else’s’ research or images and post them with no reference to who the author was, or any thought that it breaches copyright.

The Meadows, 2018

Eric, I know would counter that if you put something out don’t be surprised if it is lifted, but the research may have taken years to compile, and be taken from a book which clearly states that the copyright belongs to the author who at the very least expects an acknowledgement and could expect some remuneration.  

As an author I have no opposition to small sections of my work being presented as part of a bigger piece.

This is what we all do when seeking to support a story and is good scholarship.

But when there is no credit, it looks at best to be lazy and at worst a deliberate attempt to steal another’s work.

And that leads me to the last point which is yesterday I came across a painting from a local artist, casually posted on social media…….. no mention of the artist, no request to use it and no thought I suspect that it might a painting that was for sale.

Location; Chorlton in the past

Picture, the Palais de Luxe cinema, circa 1928 GD10-07-04-6-13-01 Courtesy of East Dunbartonshire Archives, George Simpson, 1918, and Chorlton Meadows, 2018, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* the Palais de Luxe cinema, circa 1928 GD10-07-04-6-13-01 Courtesy of East Dunbartonshire Archives, https://www.edlc.co.uk/heritage-arts/archives

** Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

When research becomes something else ......

It's that age old tension between researching a subject, admiring someone else's picture .....and using it without asking.

Copyright protects your work and stops others from using it without your permission.*

Picture; King Umberto, Varese, 2017, © Andrew Simpson

*How copyright protects your work, GOV.UK, https://www.gov.uk/copyright

The day history got a bit more personal

Now in the great sweep of history there are plenty of events that have saddened me, made me angry and alternatively given me a smile.

Manchester 1980/81

On the downside I continue to be appalled at the degree to which people can be abused, hurt, and killed, while on the upside there are countless examples of self sacrifice, and “good acts” which benefited humanity.

Of course all those acts have happened whether I liked them or not, and constitute the “big things”.

But there are also the small things, and here I open myself up to ridicule and may look to some as silly or petty, but I can get cross and angry at the cavalier way some people appropriate the work of others with no reference to where it came from, no attempt to put the image or the article into a context and no acknowledgement of the author.

Given that all knowledge should be freely available to broaden our knowledge and understanding that may seem quite backward but there is a point, in fact several.

First it is courtesy to recognise the work of another, and ask permission to use that work.  More than that by quoting the source, you allow people to make a judgement on its historical validity and its usefulness.

London 1979

I well remember someone using a series of images I had posted, and putting them into a collage of Chorlton, sadly one of the photographs was of Blackpool which rather destroyed the attempt to produce a historical narrative of the area.

While at much the same time, some snapped a photograph of a local cinema in 1924 taken from a blog story and reposted it with no reference to the date or the details of the story making it nothing more than a picture of funny looking building.

Manchester, 1979

All of which rendered the image useless, and missed the point that the photograph had been taken by a local photographer but appeared in the archives of a local study centre in East Scotland, which made the account of how it got there, the real story.

At which point some may be wondering the source of my comments, suffice to say it was on social media, concerned the cover of a book I had written and was used to advertise an event.

And if I want to be really picky the reproduction of the book cover posted on social media, had been done badly.

End of rant ...... but a comment on how we should all approach the use of historical material because that material deserves to be treated with care and respect.

Location; everywhere.

Pictures; Manchester and London in the 1970s and 80s, from the collection of Andrew Simpson