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They Were Caught In Our Old Street Pics...

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oldMohawk said:
When I used to have new tyres fitted years ago, I remember pieces of lead crimped on to the rims for balance. With the alloy wheels I have these days I'll have to have a look see if anything is there.
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wheels balanced "on" the car required a sit on machine scooted up to the wheel (vehicle jacked up) spun up the wheel and balanced the wheel brakes & hub, vary rare.
steel wheels balnced off the car with crimp on wieghts inner & outer rim
alloy use stick on weights & a good fitter can place them inboard of the external spoke face.
Loving the site.
 
oldMohawk said:
This forum pic caught a man standing on a narrow ledge on the Council House. No health and safety back then - they probably would not have stopped the parade if he had fallen off !
Image3_The_silver_jubilee_Bham_Council_Hse_1935.jpg

The original is here
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I appriciate these are dress uniforms, but this is only 4yrs before Germany invaded Poland and the British Exp Force went flying into Europe under part French leadership. In WW1 uniforms in some cases. Brave men, Lions.... Thank you.
 
DavidGrain said:
Nico From 1933 to the enforced closure of the system in November 1941 Coventry trams were maroon and cream as were the buses prior to the takeover by WMPTE
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Hello David, my first memory of the Coventry buses circa 1961 were maroon all over with the Coventry Emblem on the side, cream was added much later my schcool blazer and cap were the same maroon colour. There should be a tram in the Motor Museum I will go and have a look, this building replaced the Coventry Hippodrome. I remember when WMPTE arrived well as we called it Wumpty.
 
Brilliant spot - that chap on the narrow ledge, reminds me of the "Dont look down" docu on Channel 4 last week.
It looks high from here, from there it must of been real hairy.
 
Stephen0002002 said:
Brilliant spot - that chap on the narrow ledge, reminds me of the "Dont look down" docu on Channel 4 last week.
It looks high from here, from there it must of been real hairy.
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Definitely not allowed on the council house these days .... go out in the city today and you will be in a pic somewhere !
Not so many cameras in the old days so those caught in the old pics are special ...
See some of the folks who brought the old street pics alive by just being in them ... click the icon to choose any one of 100 pics when a PDF file opens in your browser.

if you want instructions, they are in post#482
 
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The frequently run film Thirty Nine Steps, staring the great Kenneth More, ( https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0603336/ ) has just started on tv.

In the opening scenes there is a beautiful maroon coloured high pram, the sort my children rode in , but ours was a black Silver Cross.

It seems to me that children that rode in those prams had a very nice comfortable ride as the prams were well padded and sprung. Babies were almost rocked to sleep in them, whereas to day children seem to have a very rough ride in most of the small wheeled modern pushchairs. With the larger wheels pushing of the pram required far less effort. Children seem far more vulnerable in modern pushchair type prams, in my view, as they are far closer to traffic and road fumes as they are much closer to the ground. All this, I presume, is due to cars, out of town stores and the general dislike by many people of walking anywhere. :biggrin:
 
I absolutely agree Alan, wonder what the state of their necks and shoulders will be like when they get older. You see the little ones in these pushchairs with no support for their heads, sometimes in obvious
discomfort. Bring back proper prams! Anne
 
Ah! Maypolebaz, women are far more adept with prams and shopping trolleys. The modern double decker bus whose entrance is quite wide and without steps and whose platform lowers at bus stops, might well allow such a pram to get on board. Today it would be more likely a matter of the driver allowing it, or not, I believe. :friendly_wink:

Yes Anne, it prevented many women becoming tubsters. :biggrin:
 
How I agree with what you are saying about modern buggies/pushchairs .............. it really 'bugs' me to see a crying little one who can't see their Mommy (who is probably on her mobile phone anyway & not noticing her baby crying) but can see strangers............no reassurance from them. :mad:

Bring back facing Mom pushchairs at least, if not the good old prams.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest :cupcake:
 
There are many prams in the old pics and they had various uses. The one in this 1970s pic of Green Lane Eversley Rd has seen better times but was probably very useful to the man pushing it.

 
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Should have kept ours slung it about 15 years ago the local cats slept in it. The modern solid buggies have dodgy wheels now, they come off easily. How dangerous is that!
 
Continuing on the pram theme, I'm not sure whether this is a pic of The 'Drovers Arms' or of a 'Street Market' or of a 'Pram'. Nicely dressed little girl in the pic by another pram.
 
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Maintaining the perambulator topic, but in fact describing the use of a low push chair which can be opened up to lay an infant in the prone position, we used to put an old dog in this push chair we have. This meant that when we took two other dogs out for their walk this dog was not left at home but was able to still be with us and the other dogs. We have done this with a couple of dogs and the seemed to enjoy their journeys. This push chair is also useful for collecting wood for fires and in fact using for anything which might be awkward to carry.
 
Do you know, it never fails to impress me when viewing this pre1900 photo's, the crisp whiteness of the linen in some of these photo's, this of course was mainly done with hard work in the pre industrial washing machine days of white goods. paul
 
And starch I think. Weren't some prams called landaus, like the carriages? I have seen old wooden boxy type and wicker prams in illustrations in my Nan's story book.
 
I also love the #636, of the "Totter", with pram in profile, I wonder if it was used as (evidence at his trial). paul
 
About a year or so ago I saw someone with an old style pram, not sure of make, get it on a local bus in Reading, with some difficulty I will add. it could just turn the corner at the top of the ramp and took up the whole space for wheelchairs/ buggies etc (3 folding down seats) and the owner had to stand in the gangway beside it.
 
A man walking with his wheel barrow meets a friend and they have a chat in the middle of the road, probably easy to do in the traffic free days c1914. This pic appears to have been taken from a position of where the tram is in #826 click/here and shows the front of the Queen's Head Hotel.
SixWaysOW.jpg
 
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A few years ago a lady came to our house. Her gt Aunt Harriet lived here in 1920s and her Mother used to come here on holiday from Coventry, I have a copy of an article published in The Warwickshire Life where she describes what it was like. This is a photo of one of her lodgers shaving, next to where the well was. Not actually Birmingham but the reason I have posted it is because of the pram in the background. Hopefully, this has worked, first time I have posted a photo. Anne
 
That is a wonderful photo Anne. I'm not too interested in the pram...the whole shot is tremendous and gives a history lesson about conditions that were around in 'the old days'. Had forgotten how high pants came up with the waist almost up to the armpits. Shaving with cold water was not something to relish getting out of bed to do either. Belt and bracers...frowned on generally, but probably a necessity for the lifter of heavy loads like coal sacks. A broad belt, to resist the onset of a hernia perhaps.
With one sink in the kitchen, an outdoor venue for this activity was probably needed with the urge to get moving in the morning. Your aunt no doubt came out with a bucket of water to swill away the soap and whiskers; after the rush. Wonderful...I love it.
 
Re Silver Cross prams, the daughter of a friend of mine aged about 18 and unmarried bought a Silver Cross pram for when she hopefully married and had a family, it was some 15/16 years later when she married and had a baby and finally got to use the pram. She said every time she went out people stopped to comment on how lovely it was to see a "proper" pram.
 
Thanks Rupert, glad you like it. She wasn't my Aunt, she was the gt Aunt of a lady who called here. I think this chap probably worked at a gypsum mine which was at the bottom of our drive until 1940's. Harriet used to pay £1 a year rent and made her living selling goat's cheese and eggs at Henley in Arden market. Anne
 
What a lovely photo Anne, he is wearing his old army issue leather belt, I actually remember old men doing exactly this still in the 1950's, (shaving outside).paul
 
that is a cracking photo anne and a nice story to go with it...thanks for sharing it with us all and keep on posting...

lyn
 
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