Construction contractor Thomas Vale has apparently put the lives of 11 young schoolchildren in jeopardy by sending them out on a skyscraper girder high above the Manhattan skyline.

But of course in fact it has not. With a little photo trickery it has merely re-staged a famous photo from 1932, Lunch Atop A Skyscraper, showing New York steel erectors taking a break.

The children pictured above are from Billesley Primary School in Birmingham, where Thomas Vale is working on a refurbishment and extension.

While the New Yorkers shown in the original photo (below) were more than 250 metres (800 feet) in the air without even hard hats to protect them from plummeting to certain death, the Birmingham children were safely perched on a beam just one metre above the ground – and surrounded by crash mats.

The original