When poverty meant more than not just owning the latest Playstation: Shocking photos capture the real squalor of Britain's slums... 40 years ago

Standing against moulding wallpaper in a small, dank bedroom, a woman known only as Mrs M, looks grimly at the camera as she clutches one of her four young children close to her chest.

Her three others, two boys and a girl, huddle beneath two grubby rain coats - their blanket for the night - as they fight for space on two sodden cushions so they are not forced to sleep on the rickety bed's exposed metal springs.

The house that they share with Mrs M has no bathroom, no hot water and the walls are running with damp. Outside, there is a thick layer of snow and blasts of the freezing winter air sweep through a hole in the broken window.

This harrowing scene of a young British family living in abject poverty is just one of the shocking images included in a new photography collection that captures the real squalor of what it was like to live in the nation's slums - just 40 years ago.

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Squalor: Mrs M huddles with her four young children in the council house that they share with her husband in Balsall Heath, Birmingham. Their home has no bathroom, no hot water and the inside walls are running with damp. The children slept on sodden seat cushions covered by a couple of old 'macs'. They are pictured in January 1969, when a thick layer of snow lay outside and the windows were broken

Desperate: Mrs H lived with her husband and her baby boy in a tenement block in Glasgow which had been deserted by all other families. One morning the couple woke up to find that a demolition gang had started to tear down their home. Here, Mrs H is seen pushing her child over building debris into the cold, unlit building

Deprived: Mrs T and her family of five, including her child pictured in this photograph in May 1969, lived in a decaying terraced house owned by a steelworks in Sheffield. They had no gas, no electricity, no hot water, no bathroom and no bathroom. Mrs T's cooking was done on the fire in the living room see more

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Cramped: Three generations of this Irish family, pictured in November 1969, lived together in a single basement room in a multi-let house in Toxteth, Liverpool. The nine family members pose beneath their washing that is strung up on a makeshift washing line as a fire heats the room

Poor Britons living in squalor in 1960s London City's slums

But the series of photos - which are to be shown publicly for the first time as part of an exhibition entitled Make Life Worth Living - don't depict life in the distant past. Rather, they reveal the harsh conditions that millions of Britons were forced to live in as recently as the 1970s. 

Today, most families who claim to be the nation's most deprived can afford those basic needs - and many can afford luxuries such as Playstations. But then, being poor meant not being able to afford electricity, having no running water or even sleeping without a roof over your head

Photographer Nick Hedges spent three years visiting areas of deprivation throughout the UK in the 1960s and 1970s to create these stirring images for the housing charity Shelter.

Launched in December 1966, the charity's campaign aimed to dispel the myth that only living on the streets were homeless and to change the way people think about social issues, using the power of photography.

Hungry: A woman and her child look up from the kitchen of a council-owned property in a slum in Balsall Heath, Birmingham in November 1969. Above them a makeshift washing line is tied to the exposed water pipes attached to the peeling, damp-ridden walls in the dank room

Grasping at normality: Peering into a fragment of mirror stuck on the wall, a young woman puts on make-up in her Glasgow basement flat in October, 1970. Next to her a tap slowly drips into a dirty sink as light pours in through a shattered window - hastily covered with cardboard taken from discarded cereal boxes

Infested: Mr and Mrs Gallagher, pictured here in January 1970, lived with their four children in a ground floor tenement flat in Maryhill, Glasgow. Their bedroom was covered in pools of rainwater and at night they sleep with the light on to keep the rats away - one night they counted 16 rats in the room. Above, Mr Gallagher with one of his children

Harrowing: A young girl tries to soothe a crying infant by holding it close to her chest. The pair stand in front of peeling, moulding wallpaper in what the photographer describes as a 'substandard property' in Balsall Heath, Birmingham in June 1969

With mould and cracked plaster adorning the walls, and a makeshift washing line sweeping across the cooker, a young boy stands alone in the kitchen of a slum house in Birmingham, Duddleston, in August 1970 

Mr Hedges photographed slum housing in major cities such as Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Bradford and London, documenting the daily struggle of the nation's poorest and the distressing conditions faced by more than three million people.  

At the time it was highly unusual for a documentary photographer to focus on domestic issues, as war and international stories were more favoured in the media world.  

Despite being taken decades ago, the photographs have not been shown publicly since then following a 40-year restriction to protect the anonymity of the subjects. He donated 1,000 prints from his work to the National Media Museum in 1983 but they could not be used for that reason. 

During the project, Mr Hedges came across families who slept with the lights blazing to keep the rats from scurrying around their house at night; bedrooms filled with pools of rainwater and kitchen walls decorated with reams of peeling wallpaper.

In one photograph taken by Mr Hedges, a father looks desperately at the kitchen wall in his rat-infested Glasgow home as his young son looks innocently into the camera. In another, a young girl dressed in rags cuddles a screaming baby close to her as she stands in a lonely, dark house.  

Appalling: Mrs Chichockjy and her daughter, pictured in July 1971, were visited at their home in Liverpool by then Housing Minister, Peter Walker. Speaking to the photographer at the time the picture was taken, Mrs Chichockjy said that Mr Walker had said it 'wasn't fit for human habitation', before adding 'and I'm still here'

Dinner time: Mrs T crouches over the open fire at the home she shares in Toxteth, Liverpool, with her husband Mr T (pictured). The photograph is one of 100 that will go on show in the new exhibition - entitled Making Life Worth Living - which opens at the Science Museum, London on Thursday

Bleak: A young girl stands in front of a row of terraced houses in Manchester's Moss Side. During the 1960s and early 1970s, Manchester City Council demolished many of the Victorian and Edwardian terraced houses to the west of Moss Side and replaced these with new residential properties

Desolate: Terraced houses stand in a deferred demolition area in Salford, Manchester, in June 1971. The photographs, including the one above, have not been shown publicly since then following a 40 year restriction to protect the anonymity of the subjects.

Mr Hedges came across one family living in Glasgow - Mrs Gallagher and her children - who kept their lights on at night, to keep an army of rats away from their home at night. They once counted 16 rats in their room. 

He met one woman - Mrs Chichockjy - in Liverpool in July 1971, who had been visited at their home by then Housing Minister, Peter Walker. She told the photographer that Mr Walker had said it 'wasn't fit for human habitation' - before adding 'and I'm still here'. 

Meanwhile, Mr Hedges photographed one property where three generations of an Irish family - consisting of nine people - lived squashed in a single basement room in a multi-let house in Toxteth, Liverpool. 

Haunting: A little girl looks out from a window panel in a door in a multi-let house in Toxteth, Liverpool in March 1969. With each moving image, the photographer Mr Hedges included detailed contemporary notes, extracts of which will appear alongside the collection of 100 photographs when the exhibition

Wasteland: A man, hands in his pockets, walks away from dreary terraced houses in Leeds in July 1970. Behind him, a woman walks her dog, a buggy next to her

With each moving image, Mr Hedges included detailed contemporary notes, extracts of which will appear alongside the collection of 100 photographs when the exhibition - entitled Make Life Worth Living - opens at the Science Museum, London, on Thursday.

Mr Hedges said: 'Although these photographs have become historical documents, they serve to remind us that secure and adequate housing is the basis of a civilised urban society. 

'The failure of successive governments to provide for it is a sad mark of society's inaction. The photographs should allow us to celebrate progress, yet all they can do is haunt us with a sense of failure.'

The exhibition, co-curated by the independent Dutch curator Hedy van Erp and the National Media Museum's Curator of Photographs Greg Hobson, starts today and continues until 18 January, 2015 at the Media Space, Science Museum, Exhibition Rd, London SW7 2DD. Entrance is free.

Grim: Three boys play with guns along cobbled streets between rows of back-to-back terraced houses in Leeds, West Yorkshire, in July 1970. The title of the exhibition - Make Life Worth Living - apparently takes inspiration from the Beechams Pills advertisement painted on the brick wall

Modern day poverty in the UK: Save the Children 2013 advert

THEN AND NOW:  HOW THE MEASURE OF POVERTY HAS CHANGED IN BRITAIN IN THE PAST 40 YEARS 

The main measure used by the Government to define poverty in the UK today is whether or not the household income is below 60 per cent of the median income, Before Housing Costs (BHC) such as council tax and rent.

The median-related threshold was first introduced at the end of the 1980s by Maragaret Thatcher when she initiated the Households Below Average Incomes (HBAI) series.

By introducing this series, the then government aimed to set up a measurement process that revealed the full effect of wider economic, social and policy trends.

That measure was later defined in law under the Child Poverty Act 2010 to recognise child povery but still relates to poverty among adults, households and pensioners.

Since then, there have been other types of poverty introduced which are recognised by the Government, though many are still waiting to be defined in law.

These include fuel poverty and material deprivation, which refers to the 'self-reported inability of individuals or households to afford particular goods and activities that are typical in society at a given point in time, irrespective of whether they would choose to have these items'.

The Government also recognises the combined factor of low income (less than 70 per cent of the median household) and material deprivation, as well as 'persistent poverty', seen as those living in households where income is less than 60 per cent of median household, for at least three out of the last four years.

In the latest figures, released by the Department for Work and Pensions in July this year, the average household income After Housing Costs (AHC) for 2012/2013 was £374 per week, which related to 21 per cent (13.2m) of UK residents.

The average figure Before Housing Costs was £440. The report found 15 per cent (9.7m) Britons were living in poverty based on that figure. 

In the 1970s, when these photos were taken, the then Ministry of Social Security simply adopted the basic scale rates paid by the National Assistance Board, plus rent, as the poverty line. Those who had income of less than that were deemed to be living in poverty.

In a pioneering study on poverty in 1965 entitled 'The Poor and the Poorest,' Professors Peter Townsend and Brian Abel-Smith decided on measuring poverty based on the number of people living below the National Assistance levels of living.

Using this poverty line, Townsend and Abel-Smith estimated that some 14 per cent (around 7.5 million) of Britons lived in poverty. 

The Tory Government has been pushing since 2012 to broaden the definition of child poverty to go beyond the simple 60 per cent calculation to include other measures such as drug and alcohol dependency and whether parents work.

The 60 per cent measure is criticised because it is relative to the current economic state of the country - meaning there could effectively be 'less people' living in poverty during a recession - and because it does not take into account other factors such as work, access to health or access to education. Some say it does not address the root causes of poverty. 

In a report, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation said that, in modern times, more households have become poor, but fewer are very poor

Even though it found there was less extreme poverty, the overall number of 'breadline poor' households increased – households where people live below the standard poverty line.