• 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

What went into the dustbin?

Em... am I missin' summat - I can't see Len's photos.
icon_cry.gif
 
Jean, It was the front room of our terrace house converted into shop in a road near the Swan, Yardley. Len.
 
Re what went into our dustbins, this is my Mom in her little general shop you can see the food in tins that folks bought, she opened in 1929 & closed 1966 she would have been about 68 yrs young, the other photo is when she was eighteen. Len. Sorry folks having trouble with photos. Len.
 
Last edited:
Alberta: I have only just read your message about Kenny Trappett. I can't say I ever met Kenny if he was George Trappett's son. There were a couple of Trappett families in business in the Stockland Green area decades ago.
One of the shops was a Newsagents and Stationers right on the Green, well on Slade Road. The grocery and greengrocery shop run by George and his wife was on Marsh Hill just passed Bleakhill Road. George had a son called Neville who sadly died when he was l8 years old.

Great to hear about Kenny. What kind of music does he play?

Sadly he died in 1989
 
Pig bins.

:D Does anyone remember the pig bins?. My Uncle Fred used to keep pigs at the back of the old fire station that was in Perry Barr. Just down from Holdford Drive. We had a pony called Prince which was a ride and drive Pony. We would sit on the cart and collect the pigbin contents from caffe's as far afield as Handsworth. My favourite call was at Mr Minty's cafe in Franchise Street. He would always give us a cup of tea and a large lump of bread pudding. After dropping the rotting food of in the swill tank I would see to Prince and go home for a hot bath to get rid of the smell. Bye for now. Jean. :D Just found a photo of Prince and a pig in the background.
I was brought up in Sutton Coldfield in the 1950s and we had a pig bin that was collected every week.
 
If you think back to the old days the good old dustbin men ,had the hard job of emtying
To galvanised binns one for swill and one for ash noe of this rubbish you get today
By the moderen bin men wont get there hands dirty,now will they
They moan about the plastic bags being to Heavvy or not tied up or wrong contents in the bag
Or its not a council bag one of each or its left and do not take it away
They find the job to heavvy going
If they done what the old council workers done humping up and down those back house asnd huge terraces
Of houses with the swill and ash bins which was heavby without the contents
They would no about it rather moani g aboutpicking up plastic bags
And of course the smell,,,,,, Astonian,,,,,
 
I know our dustbin was rarely full when collected. Don't remember what exactly went into it. But I vividly remember throwing tea leaves and peelings out into the garden. And we used the ashes from the fire on the garden path in winter if it was icy. I think the ashes also went into the garden in summer if we'd had a fire. Newspapers were used to light fires. Some magazines we posted to our family abroad and comics went to other families. I suppose our bin must have mainly contained tins and jars. Viv.
 
dustman in Bimingham..png
In our house was Mom, Dad and three sons, mom cooked all the food as there were no ready meals in those days and the dustbin was rarely, if ever full. After the bin had been emptied and returned to the back garden there was never a scrap of rubbish left anywhere because if the binman dropped anything he would pick it up again.
 
View attachment 118481
In our house was Mom, Dad and three sons, mom cooked all the food as there were no ready meals in those days and the dustbin was rarely, if ever full. After the bin had been emptied and returned to the back garden there was never a scrap of rubbish left anywhere because if the binman dropped anything he would pick it up again.
What a super picture, was that an electric dustcart? I remember the old green electric dustcarts that used to work out of the refuse department near Witton cemetery. Living on the boundary, we had Birmingham collect our rubbish (yes a tin bath to the dustbin, empty it and carry the tin bath back to the Dustcart. Across the road Sutton Coldfield had brown coloured Shelvoake and Drewery dust carts and carried the dustbin rather like the guy in this picture. The other week we had a note on our unused food caddy, to be sure to put it bags as the dustman did not like handling the loose food. Two thoughts on all these wheelie bins, no longer have to give the dustman a Christmas box and watching the local pensioners struggle with heavy bins, if they were council employees, councils would have done a risk assessment and set out a method statement that would have prevented one person moving a heavy bin up inclines and steps and made it a job for two or three!!! Sorry its the cynic in me. Just off to the local tip with the green rubbish that wont go in my two weekly collected (paid for separately) green rubbish bin.
Bob
 
View attachment 118481
In our house was Mom, Dad and three sons, mom cooked all the food as there were no ready meals in those days and the dustbin was rarely, if ever full. After the bin had been emptied and returned to the back garden there was never a scrap of rubbish left anywhere because if the binman dropped anything he would pick it up again.
Back in the day, a very very long time ago ( well 40s/50`s ) my old dad used to call the dustbin a middin. I can still see him now, stark naked except for his donkey jacket, dragging the middin near to the back gate so that the middin men didn`t have to run the gauntlet of our dog.
 
The dustbin was always know as "The Miskin", There was a thread about the miskin men some time ago.
 
Birmingham’s WW2 efforts to salvage waste paper saw the appearance of this in Victoria Square (January 1942). Would businesses really be prepared to dispose of their ledgers in this way ? Viv.

D260C741-D508-4A27-BAC4-C2210103623D.jpeg
 
No doubt much interesting information was lost, but would probably have been lost later anyway unfortunately
 
Hi Paul,
I lived in Marsh Lane in the police houses and my boyfriend (now exhusband ) lived at the top of Milverton road, whenever we passed the house Kenny was playing the piano
We were a whole gang of teenagers that used to hang out together and Kenny used to be amongst them.

I left Erdington when I got married but my parents moved to Dare Road.
The last time I heard of Kenny was in 'possibly' the late 70s when he went to a party in Sutton at my husbands sisters house, they were Mick and Brenda O'Brien.
 
Back
Top