Description:(from Issue One of the Ladywood Magazine - the Brew 'Us Bugle)
In December Carrie Coles celebrates her 90th birthday. She’ll have many memories to recall and if she needs help she can call on her sisters, Doris who is only 88 and Clara who is 92! That’s 270 years of experiences between them! This is their story of life in 1920s Ladywood around Morville Street and Sherborne Street, as told to Gordon Cull of the `Old Ladywood Reunion Association’ and Norman Bartlam.
“Well it was a bit rough, our mother reared 16 children, 14 girls and two boys and we had a one-house attic with a downstairs living room and the coalhole where we threw the coal in. Outside there were big bay windows and just a yard with the toilets just a 100 yards away from where we were. On the down the side the toilets were near where the dustbins were. Further down there were about nine cottages. The washhouse was at the bottom of the yard.
If you got on anybody’s ground on the Monday to wash then god help ya! Rows! They used to say, `that’s my part and you shouldn’t put that line out so far'. Across the yard there was a big wall and over that wall was the canal and it ran from where we were up to Gas Street. There was a lot of ground and at the back was the Spread Eagle, which my dad used to use. My poor mother she used to go and get half a pint and it take to the old lady in the front of where we lived, Mrs. Cable and sit in the little smoke room a Sunday lunchtime. That was all they could afford and that was their pleasure.
Mother used to get up in the morning, she used to work at Lloyds Bank on Colmore Row, she worked there for 28 years and after each child was born she went back to work and the oldest one at home looked after us and sent us to school and that’s how it went on.
There was a wall and the youngsters used to get on bricks and look over the wall, which was next to the canal. And sometimes when there was strike or when we had no coal they used to climb over to the coal boats and shovel the coal out on to the side. The kids used to go and collect the coal and collect it in buckets to bring it up so we ccould have a fire.
Our father was a painter and decorator by trade but never seemed to be at work. Father used to find some money from somewhere to go boozing. We had Daily Mail boots and the clothes as well. There used to be red jerseys and they had black stockings with the ribs up them. The girls had them as well. If our teacher said I’ve got some clothes that I’m bringing tomorrow to sell we couldn’t get there quick enough to see if we could get the best ones! We thought we were the cat’s whiskers when we got the Daily Mail boots at Christmas!
My poor mother used to have stuff on the strap from Riley’s, that was in Ledsam Street by Morville Street and we used to have boots and we had to take them off and she’d rub them up and take them to the pawnshop. Then we‘d have to wait twelve months. She had to pay off a penny a week for them to keep them and we had to go the next Christmas to see if they still fitted us!
I’ll tell you the position our mother was in. She used to go to the pawnshop and with her being out early in the morning I used to work at the GPO when I was 18 and I used to do shift work. If I was on at ten o’clock to six I used to get all the sheets off the beds and wash them and peg them out then I used to go to work and Mom used to say: Whoa there’s a hole in this sheet so I’ll turn it in side out'. They used to open the clothes you know at the pawn shop and Miss Reader never took a lot of notice of our Mom's washing because she knew she’d got a big family and our Mom used to say its your turn to stand in the queue this morning. That was on a Monday and then she'd meet us and stand in the queue while we ran to school and many a time we’d get a walloping for being late!