Dangerous Death-Traps to burn: a look at a 1938 scrapyard

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With all the glamour and glitz of Pebble Beach just behind us, it’s good to have a look at a different aspect of the automotive industry, isn’t it? This is an intriguing photograph captioned just ‘Autos ready to be destroyed’. The year is 1938 and the venue is a scrapyard in what has to be the Massachusetts area. Look closely and you will see that several of the cars on that huge pile have words painted on them as some kind of warning. We can read: ‘Death-Trap’, ‘Condemned', 'Dangerous’, ‘Unsafe’, ‘The Last Ride’

The car at the top on the right-hand side offers a bit more. This one spells out: “I am condemned: unsafe. I burn Friday nite. Per order Paul B. Smith Co. Inc. Waltham”.

What’s going on here? We found Paul B. Smith to be an authorised Ford, Chrysler and Plymouth dealer back in the 1930s. And, aided by a traffic safety campaign, this dealer must have advised the car’s owner to have it scrapped in this rather vigorous way. This was an answer to the problem of what to do with the increasing number of old cars, many of them deemed unsafe, that filled the American roads and supposedly killed thousands a year.

At least we can say that it’s not only the safety of our cars that has improved over the decades – the way of getting rid of them has also certainly been improved upon!

(Words Jeroen Booij, Picture Leslie Jones, Boston Public Library)

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