Roadside repairs: early motoring mishaps on the roads of America

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We've found two great photographs in the City of Toronto Archives showing cars undergoing roadside repairs. The first is a Ford Model T tourer with a broken axle, dated 1920, and the other is "An old Overland car after an accident on Coxwell Avenue,” which was snapped a year earlier in May, 1919.

The latter was taken by Arthur S. Goss, who was the City of Toronto's first official photographer, leaving the city archive no fewer than 26,000 glass negatives after his death in 1940. This one shows the Overland two-seater in great detail. Note the tiny little jack, and the fact that, while it's hard to make out details, the two front wings appear to be mismatched. That probably results from an earlier accident, as we see the left-hand wing is crumpled.. And what are we to make of the unusual radiator mascot?

The Ford photo is perhaps not so rich in detail, but it makes a great period picture, too. It was taken by William James, who turns out to be another professional photographer from Toronto, and a prolific one, too—he left 6,000 negatives to the city archives. James invented his own developer to eliminate grain in his photos; he was a freelance, selling his work to all seven of the city's papers at the time.

Words: Jeroen Booij
Pictures: William James and Arthur Goss / City of Toronto Archives

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