
They show a poverty that is hard to comprehend in modern Scotland.

Dampness and rats abound, while rubble from demolished buildings litters doorways.

In a world where microwaves, televisions and even fast wi-fi connections are deemed basic household necessities, it is hard to believe these images of Glasgow slums are less than 50 years old.

Families living in one room without running water and electricity but surrounded by damp and vermin might sound Dickensian.

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A life of despair: These images of Glasgow slums in the 60s and 70s include a father and his children sat silently in their Gorbals tenement flat in 1970. Above the fireplace, the wallpaper is peeling and clothing has been hung on a makeshift line to dry

Doomed: A Gorbals mother wheels her baby through rubbish into their condemned block in 1970. The pictures show what it was like for many living in the city’s squalid tenements in the late 1960s and early 1970s

Overcrowded: Bunks in the recess, a mattress on the floor, this photo shows a mother living with her children in one room in Maryhill

Yet it was reality for many living in the city’s squalid tenements in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Make Life Worth Living, sobering images by Nick Hedges, are on display in a free open-air exhibition in Edinburgh after a restriction on displaying them was lifted. The photographer had limited their use to protect his subjects.

As shocking as the photos are the stories behind them. One image shows a mother pushing a pram across rubble at the entrance to her Gorbals tenement.

Only a few days earlier she and her family had been woken by a wrecking ball demolishing the tenement block. Her husband had to leap out of bed and scream for the demolition to stop.

The conditions were so bad the demolition men did not think people could still be living there and did not think to check.

Another photograph shows a family living in one room in Glasgow’s Maryhill.

They slept with the lights on to scare off rats and on one night alone counted 16 of the vermin in the small, damp room.

Made public: Make Life Worth Living, sobering images by Nick Hedges, are on display in a free open-air exhibition in Edinburgh after a restriction on displaying them was lifted. The photographer had limited their use to protect his subjects

Poverty: Two children are pictured playing in the street by Leith tenement in Edinburgh in 1972. In some of the slums families were surrounded by damp and vermin and had no electricity and running water

Stand and deliver: News boys in Glasgow's Maryhill are pictured left, while, right, a young boy looks out at flood water in front of his home

The photographer, now in his seventies, spent three years visiting some of Scotland’s poorest areas as part of a project commissioned by housing charity Shelter.

Mr Hedges said: ‘I was a young man when I took these photos. They shaped my understanding of documentary photography – how images can serve a purpose.

‘In the years which followed, I became committed to photographing the everyday life of people. I never pursued anything more exotic.

High living: Children play in the shadow of the Govan shipyards in 1970. For many living where they did there was no running water

Escape from reality: A girl applies make-up amid her squalid surroundings at the Gorbals tenement in 1970 in this sobering image

Shut out and alone: A child waits outside his flat door (left), while, right, a pair of teenage girls can be seen in a Maryhill back court

‘There is no single picture I am most proud of in the collection. The people’s words, the stories I heard while I photographed them are just as important. Together they mean more than any single image can.’

He added: ‘I haven’t forgotten any of the names of people I photographed or the conversations we had 40 years ago. They are as clear in my mind today as if they happened yesterday.’