Entitled: Bridges by which the night police of the roofs cross the streets, Canton, China [1900] Underwood & Co. [RESTORED] It is listed in the US LOC under Reproduction Number LC-USZ61-929. It is from half of a paired stereoscope image. I made the usual corrections of spot and defect removal, contrast and tonal improvements, along with removal of the arched upper border (typical of stereoscope images).

While trolling through the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog pages of the US Library of Congress, using a general search term of "China" I came across this very interesting image. Like any municipality, there is a thin line between law and order versus crime and chaos. Law enforcement in late 19th century Canton (modern day Guangzhou) used whatever means necessary in order to hold that line and protect life and property. The photo was taken by an unidentified work for hire photographer for the Underwood and Underwood Company (one of several stereoscope image businesses that provided western civilization with a visual taste of the late 1800's to early 1900's world at large).

This is a rare image. In all the years that I've been looking at photographs, I do not remember having encountered a photograph of what is essentially an overpass walkway in a 19th Century Chinese city. If one is to take the wording of the image as gospel, then it seems that there was a dedicated nightly police squad that patrolled the rooftops of Canton. This obviously points out that if the police took the time and efforts to set up such an elaborate defense system, then one has to assume that rooftop break ins were routine. Thus, it was enough for Qing officials to justify the expenditure of building overpasses for their officers to do nightly rounds on.