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Hospital Street

hi viv..the brewhouses was where the washing was done..each one had a big boiler in and the water was heated from underneath by a fire and the mangle was usually kept just outside.....they were usually shared by more than one family....the hospital st pic is early 1900s...dek it says place on the right hand pillar as pointed out by mike earlier...bit off thread but i have this pic of the back yard of my nans back to backs...the brewhouse is on the right and you can just see the old mangle outside...

lyn
 
Many thanks Lyn. Washday must have been very hard work. But on the plus side: lower carbon footprint and maybe a pint to quench the thirst!. Viv
 
Viv i don,t know about lower carbon footprint coal was used for heating and every household had black smoke coming out of their chimney some days when we had low cloud the smog was so bad you could not see 10 m in front of your nose. Dek
 
Houses in Open yards like the one in Lyns picture would have an address such as 1 to say 16 .......... Place.
Moss.
 
do you mean where were the loos in the pic i posted of our nans back to back yard dek or just loos in general...lol
 
dek if you follow the houses down on the right hand side it looks like you can turn right at the end one...maybe they were round there...

lyn
 
good bet then dek that the lavvys are tucked round the corner...must say it looked a nice neat little place....

lyn
 
Yes Lyn i was quite impressed with the layout neat and tidy with fenced garden in the court yard. Dek
 
me too dek...must say it didnt look ready to fall down did it...still thats the way it goes...

lyn
 
Just looked again at Lyn's pic 2 and are my eyes playing games or are there little kiddies in the fenced garden? Thought they were shrubs but now I've taken a closer ook I think I can see children. Viv.
 
And there's an adult woman in there too (look to the left against back railings) probably supervising the children? Viv.
 
The original site of the General Hospital was in Summer Lane almost opposite where Hospital St joined summer Lane. That is the only thing i can think of
 
hi mike..yes you are right about that...viv there was also a morgue in summer lane....the building is still there..took these pics of it last year...

lyn
 
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oops sorry viv yes the morgue was in summer lane...thanks dek for pointing out my deliberate mistake..lol.. will go and edit me post...

lyn
 
Thanks Lyn for the photos and Mike for hospital info. Just had a quick look at General hospital history and it's claimed that the original hospital was opened in 1779 (corner of Summer Lane and Lower Loveday St.) It was initially funded by subscriptions and music festivals!! When this first hospital became inadequate, the new General was built in 1897 near the lawcourts. The site of the old hospital was later occupied by a power station. Not sure where that leaves the morgue, as the date on the building in Lyn's pics is 1930 - well past the original General Hospital's existence.
 
Looking at Lyn's photo of that court with the wall and pillar street frontage, it looks as if it was one of the courts that benefited from Birmingham's first attempts to clean up the slum areas.

They would open up a court to the light and air by demolishing some of the buildings at the front as most court's were accessed by narrow tunnel entry's under the street fronting houses. The example in Lyn's photo are what most ended up looking like.

The markings on the pillar capping's could be the numbers of the houses that stood there as most tunnel courts were known as back of number so & so. The markings look like 65 & 66 to me, so an address could have been 2 back of 66 Hospital Street. Well its a suggestion anyway.

Phil
 
hi viv...type in summer lane mogue in the search box...you will find more info about it there..it was not used for deaths from the hospital...

lyn
 
Yes Phil that makes sense because if you look at Lyn's Princip Street pic the wall is built in a different brick. Also the two houses at the entrance to the court in Hospital Street look like they might once have been two semis. As they stand the windows/doors etc look unbalanced and seem like they should have had another house attached to them to make them symmetrical. It looks like some thought was put into the changes to the Hospital St court. I wonder if this was a publicity photo for these improvements?
 
Thanks Lyn. Looked at the summer lane thread. Very interesting. I'm getting a real feel for the place my ancestors lived in as I don't know the area. Viv.
 
Viv

It could quite possibly be a publicity photo showing the great work that was being done to ease the lives of the slum dwellers. It certainly looks posed for. I lived in this type of background and I have to say they rarely looked that clean and tidy.

Here is another photo of a similar scheme where a court in Windsor St Nechells has been opened up.

Phil

NechellsWindsorSt1905.jpg
 
Phil i think you have hit the nail on the head i,m sure there would not have been ornate iron fencing on the wall originally. what a shame there was not the foresight to save these terraces with some cleaning of the brickwork and a few flower-boxes and maybe make 2 houses into 1 they could have been lovely places to live. Dek
 
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