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They Were Caught In Our Old Street Pics...

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DavidGrain said:
I think the two uniformed men outside the main entrance to Snow Hill Sttaion were both bus inspectors. They do not look like drivers as BCT drivers and conductors had their PSV badges as cap badges.
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Did they? I always thought they were on a lapel or on the money satchel straps. Surely and official organization such as BCT had cap badges? Too long ago for me to recall.

Maybe I have seen too many Devon General and Western/Southern National crews who did have cap badges. :friendly_wink:
 
If they were wearing caps then the PSV badge was on the caps but over time they stoped wearing caps especially the conductors and then they started to wear them on the cash bag straps.
 
Smashing pics old Mohawk. I was thinking about the man with the wheel barrow... at first I was thinking blow me how big is that mug of coffee he,s bought.
 
Another forum pic I liked when I first saw it, a 'clutch' of 1960's girls are having a laugh, I thought clutches were only in cars. Then there are 'miskins' and I think I can see two of them in the pic, but I never knew them as miskins. Anyway, the washing is drying nicely, and it's a happy pic....
img070_renamed_7608.jpg

The pic is amongst this lot https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/for...d-evening-mail-pics.21690/page-16#post-422536
 
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What a great photo #124. Yeah 1960 and the old back to backs were still around. Not spoiling the mirth of this spirited group though. Yeah, miskins thats what we called them. Contained everything from potato peelings to ashes from the coal fire.
 
I have faint memories of visits to a back-to-back as a child going with our next door neighbour to see her elderly aunt who lived in Aston. I remember a cosy little room, a net curtain half way up the window, and the aunt using a toasting fork to make lovely toast on an open fire in a shiny black grate ... it's funny how these posts can bring back a memory from so long ago...I don't think I've thought about a toasting fork in 50 years !
 
I like this forum pic showing the way we were.
Happy neighbours having an outdoor celebration party somewhere in Ladywood. Only grown-ups in party hats, I wonder where the kids were ?
Plenty of tea in those large teapots, nice table and chairs.
Street_Party_Ladywood.jpg
 
This looks like it's a themed party to me, but couldn't work out what the theme was. Thought it might be an 'upstairs, downstairs' type of theme, but not really sure. There's bunting and also wondered if it was a royal event. Confused ... Viv.
 
The pic was originally in a post HERE but got lost in the hack. I had not thought of it being a 'themed' party but reading the caption I think it is probably in the 1930s. I have studied the chairs in the pic and looked at the chairs in the forum pic below of the street party for the 1937 Coronation, similar but not the same.
1937_Coronation.jpg
 
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A photo of children walking in front of the Theatre Royal in the early 1900s. I like the lady teacher in her long dress and holding a brolly. Looking at the dark stuff on the road surface, a thought has just occurred to me that the trailing long dresses of those times could be a problem when walking in the road, but I suppose they were used to it....
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shoothill
 
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Wonder who 'Mr Tree' was? Maybe it was an acting part he grew in to!

Womens' skirts and dirty roads must have been a nightmare. What a boon when hemlines were raised. Viv.
 
It's funny, looking at the school kids in front of The Theatre Royal; we would have known the view well but to see the long dresses and childrens clothes, makes it all look like a staged scene. It's kind of hard to associate the old dress with buildings that we would have known so much later...75/100 years or so. The plan was all laid out with the teachers spaced along the column...the better to control sheninegans. I don't think that I have seen this photo before. I would have thought that the date was earlier.
 
mikejee said:
Viv
Max Beerbohm Tree was a well known victorian actor-manager. The birm Post is only available up to Sept 1900, but a column in early 1900 states that Mr Tree was intending to bring his production of Midsummer nights dream on tour to places including birmingham
For info on him see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Beerbohm_Tree
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Thanks Mike. Hadn't associated 'Tree' with 'Beerbohm', see now how he got his name. Viv.
 
Thanks for that link Mike. I started to look for information about the Theatre Royal and found many interesting links, one of which led me back here to this photo. Also in the previous photo, Burroughes & Watts Billiard Table Manufacturers seems very prominent.

A school party walks past the Theatre Royal. 1902.
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Amazing the amount of hats. esp on the young kids too.
Is that a rather large white one (towards the back of the line) or am I seeing it wrongly ?
 
Stephen0002002 said:
Amazing the amount of hats. esp on the young kids too.
Is that a rather large white one (towards the back of the line) or am I seeing it wrongly ?
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I'm always fascinated by everyone wearing hats in the early 1900s and 1800s. I think if a child did not have a hat they probably would be questioned by a teacher.
In the pic in post #17 everyone is wearing a hat, even the lad who appears to have been dangling his feet in the water.
I suppose one question we could ask is when did hats go out of fashion, and why ?
 
Talking about hats, when I started driving in the early 1960s, I remember being told to expect all sorts of strange driving from anyone wearing a trilby hat. Probably totally unfair and predudiced, but I would be on alert if I was near that Ford Anglia in the centre of the pic !
Lane discipline had not yet been invented back then.
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oldMohawk said:
Talking about hats, when I started driving in the early 1960s, I remember being told to expect all sorts of strange driving from anyone wearing a trilby hat. Probably totally unfair and predudiced, but I would be on alert if I was near that Ford Anglia in the centre of the pic !
Lane discipline had not yet been invented back then.
cycleintraffic.jpg
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Mohawk-I hear you. The Ford Anglia in the centre looks like a couple of detectives on a case-but anything on the way will do for a caseload! The lady in the A40 looking in the mirror-maybe she thinks her hairdo won't survive the ordeal to Kingstanding!
 
Talking of wearing hats, my mother tells me that many times she has had to run back home for her hat while the church bell was still ringing because she knew that she had to go past her grandmother's house and her dad would get told off if she was seen in the street without hat and gloves.

Ned Williams, the Black Country historian, tells of the Pat Collins's Fair's winter quarters in Bloxwich. The Collins's caravan was alway parked at the entrance and if Mrs Collins saw any of the women of the fair going out into town without a hat, she would call them back and tell them that she did not want the townspeople thinking that fair people did not know the correct way to behave.
 
Re Post 129 I wonder if the celebrations were for the Silver Jubilee of George V this was in 1935 and the clothes worn seem about right for that era.
 
I to started driving in the 60's and my dad always said beware or men driving ford cars whilst wear a trilby hat. So there must be an element of fact in it.
 
The traffic lights have failed and a policeman has the awkward job of controlling traffic on Five Ways. He's only got white covers on his sleeves, 'hi-vis' jackets had not been invented back then. The car behind him almost brushes his back, and it isn't a Ford and I can't see the driver's hat. I remember driving in those sort of jams and often glared at a traffic cop when I thought he was favouring traffic from other directions.

The lady in the white coat looks bemused by the scene....
FiveWays-HagleyRd1966.jpg
 
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Great scene Phil, albeit frustrating for the drivers. It certainly is a picture of its time, showing what a nightmare driving on 1960s overcrowded roads could be. There's a little teeny weeny bubble car squeezed in there. God knows what the learner driver on the motorbike made of it all. And the lady observing (who looks quite young, maybe early late teens judging by the Mary Quant haircut) was probably dithering about whether to cross "Shall I .... yes .... no ... . step back ... now's my chance .... no, missed it again" ! Viv.
 
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