• Welcome to this forum . We are a worldwide group with a common interest in Birmingham and its history. While here, please follow a few simple rules. We ask that you respect other members, thank those who have helped you and please keep your contributions on-topic with the thread.

    We do hope you enjoy your visit. BHF Admin Team
  • HI folks the server that hosts the site completely died including the Hdd's and backups.
    Luckily i create an offsite backup once a week! this has now been restored so we have lost a few days posts.
    im still fixing things at the moment so bear with me and im still working on all images 90% are fine the others im working on now
    we are now using a backup solution

Slums

I agree Astonian, the first thing we had to do after learning to walk was learn to fight, but I look back on my childhood with fondness. I watched ordinary folk digging with bare hands to get people out from under the rubble caused by Hitler. Little babby's carefully wrapped in bits of torn blanket, waiting for it's mother still buried alive. These were my people and no one is more proud than I am to say so. Regards, David.
 
What we refer to as slums are of course the buildings and conditions, some areas known as slums were spotlessly clean and the children were clean and well behaved
 
Very true stitcher. The day we moved from our house in Clifford St Lozells in 1968 my mom still mopped the rooms out and they were due for demolition. Mom/Dad said if only the council would have modernised the houses and put a bathroom in they would never have left.
 
Well Stitcher I certainly was, but I did know a few who weren't. They were difficult places to keep clean, as in the one I grew up in, where the only living room was directly off the pavement, and dusty cellars with no door at the top. I remember the TV was often cleaned on the inside glass due to coal dust etc. Fortunately on the old Pye TV it was possible to pull the internal gubbins out to clean the screen.
 
bernard .i lived in conybere st in the 50s in an attic high house .we had gas mantles for lighting .an outside toilet which froze every winter and a cubbyhole for a kitchen.but we had good neighbours and we kept clean in the old tin bath in front of the fire .
 
I note the BBC are starting a new series called 'The Secret History of Our Streets' on Wednesday, 9pm BBC2. Although the streets they will be looking at are in London, I guess much of the content will be relevant to the redevelopment that took place in Brum in the '60s and later.
 
Back yard in Freeth Street..jpg
A back-yard in Freeth Street, I lived in Freeth Street in the 60s and I know the gas lamps had been changed to electicity but the small kitchen at the foot of the stairs was still there as was the cellar but it was warm and clean and could never be described as a slum.
 
Looks very similar to our in Little King St, Hockley. "Slum" is a word too often bandied about by people who never lived in such housing!
 
Hello Brian, I doubt there is a house standing in England today that could really be described as a slum.
 
I have posted several times in recent months that I am/was de-cluttering because over the years I amassed a large number of books, photo's and posters all about the city. Most of them were or are about old Birmingham and the following few pics are from a book I would urge anyone interested in the city and its criminals to read. it is titled Birmingham, The Sinister Side. The auther is Steve Jones and it went to print in 1998.

Navigation Street.jpg---oo1.jpg---ooo.jpg---Summer Lane.jpeg.jpg
We must understand that these are the type of houses that many of us spent a period of our lives in and although I never knew of any neighbours that were linked to the stories in the book I believe my dad knew a few at the turn of the century.
 
Stitcher said:
Hello Brian, I doubt there is a house standing in England today that could really be described as a slum.
Click to expand...
I dont know Trev, that depends on your interpretation of the word.I have seen many families over the
years who could turn anywhere in a slum in a very short space of
time.my Oxford book says"Overcrowded, squalid, unfit for human
habitation", etc, etc.Not everyone chooses to live in cleanliness
and comfort Im afraid. I am getting a little cynical in my old age Bernard
 
When referring to somwhere as being a slum I understand it to mean 'not fit for human habitation'. I do not think that a nice house occupied by filthy idle people is a slum because the property is fit for human habitation. It is the inhabitants lifestyle is that is causing the problem, not the property.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Image.jpg.jpeg 1871-ish.
I feel this may have been posted previously, if so forgive me for re-posting it. I do not know if it was before the attack or what thread it may be on.
It is Court No1 in Thomas Street
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Stitcher
I have seen a couple of others of courts in thomas st of about that time, but I dont think i have seen this one
 
Corporation Street 19th century.jpg on site of Corporation Street in the mid 19th century, the garden of the Cadbury family in Bull Street
 
Last edited by a moderator:
These 3 photos were taken in the 60s. 61/62 Freeth Street and Alexandra Street both Ladywood and William Street, Lozells.

61 & 62 Freeth Street Ladywood.jpgAlexander street Ladywood.jpgWilliam Street, Lozells.jpg
 
great pics carolina..love the alexandra st one...if anyone is interested in william st there should be a thread for it where i posted about 18 pics which i think were lost when the forum was hacked...if anyone would like them reposted just give me a shout...

lyn
 
Sue
I don't think the old picture was necessarily actually in corporation st, but was one of the areas that disappeared when corporation st was built. I have a copy of this photo which is labelled "The Priory 1875 ". Therefore it would presumably have been somewhere around what is now the Corporation st/Bull St junction.
 
Sue the photo description is just part of the site on Corporation Street, obviously before all the demolition work started to take place.
 
Just love looking at old photo's and I think it would be very good of you to re-post ones that where lost in the hacking if only for the newer members of the forum who missed ut first time around.

The photo of the lady in the pinney with the shopping bag in Alexandra St had me thinking how many ladies to-day would go shopping with there slippers on just brilliant.
 
Thank you Carolina, A very vivid reminder of what those poor souls had to endure as little as the late sixty's, that one poor woman's conditions could have been in the mid 1800's, cooking over an open fire with no amenities at all. Paul
 
Amazing photographs Carol, in some cases those could have been Victorian children.
It makes you realise that although a lot of us were poor, we were rich compared to some poor beggars.
 
i can remember my mom cooking on the fire becouse she had no gas and candles on the fire place when she had no

electric.
but we was always fed well mainly stew and was loved dearly
josie
 
very good link carolina thanks for posting it...those photos are so very typical of just how bad the housing was even in the 60s and 70s...but as i have always said it was the housing conditions that coined the name slums not the folk who lived in them...like charlie i consider myself very lucky not to have grown up in such conditions although my house in villa st dated from the middle 1800s....it was very damp..had 2 cellars with lots of creepie crawlies and only a candle to light the way down to put money in the gas meter and when we could not afford coal us kids would go down the cellar to make up slack bricks but on the whole it could have been a lot worse...dad always had to put that black pitch paper up before the proper paper went up...this was meant to help stop the damp coming through but i would not have swapped my childhood for all the tea in china...

lyn
 
Last edited:
when we moved from bsw to small heath the house my mom/dad had was huge i think at one time it was a out door becouse there was big wooden doors on the pavement for the coal to be put down i was told that the celler was use as a air raid celler i dont know i never went that far down the steps it was that dark
josie
 
The thing about living in the slums was, that no matter how bad off you thought you were there was always some one else worse off than you were. The other thing was if you decided to improve your lot in life then you didn't have far to go, because anywhere was better than where you were.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top