Life in Stourbridge was in a three bedroom house in Brook Street the back entered via an entry which we shared with the house attached. It was L-shaped with a yard where access to the living space was. Two rooms were on the front of the house with the front door centred in the building. Stairs were opposite the front door. A cellar was under the two front rooms where the coal was stored and any rubbish we did not want or need any further.

Number 53 was where we all began our family life together. Father who was a bad tempered man and who drank to excess had a violent streak that we were to encounter many times over the time we grew up. Mother was from poor stock but the advent of marrying a man who had been educated and had a good job she thought a good catch. She herself had gone into service and lived with a family in Birmingham till they left England and went to Australia to live. If she had gone we may not have been here.

So this combination of parents began a new family in the winter and Christmas of 1936. I remember the beatings very well with the leather strap which cut into ones skin with ease or left weal’s that were sore for days. It was the norm in those days for father's to lay down the law and expect to be obeyed without question and violence was considered normal. In retrospect I think it showed a weakness.

My mother never showed me any motherly love at all and by the time I was aged seven I knew she hated me beyond reason. There was nothing I could do about it so I just adapted to the hatred and lived with it. By the time I was born she had realised that her life had become more drudgery with three children to care for, a violent husband who liked to drink.

My grandfather was the tenant of a pub in Stourbridge called the Spotted Cow; it was in Union Street, now long gone. Perhaps this was the downfall of my father having access to drink through his father's pub. My mother cleaned the pub for my grandparents and my father worked behind the bar selling the beer. We were not allowed in the pub we were deposited in the rooms at the back where we had to sit and wait for them to finish. We did however have where we lived in Brook Street a large garden with the biggest apple tree I've seen for many a year.

These apples were sold during the war to the Ministry of Food. Our neighbour next door had pigs and they too were sold off for the war effort only being allowed one to keep. I cannot really remember the war it's self but after the war when I became more aware of where we lived and how we lived memories now are vivid. The old shelter we must have used for air raids we played in for many years after. My brother and I had it for a den. The garden was never cultivated although would have produced plenty of crops but my father hated gardening and it was left to grow wild, but a haven for children to play in. Clothes were handed down and me being the third and second girl I had all the leaves off from my sister.

This was the norm for me till I reached fourteen years of age. My mother wouldn't bye me any new clothes at all if she could get away with it. I remember being in the Secondary Modern School and being a girl of ample size needed a bra to support a growing bust. She declined to buy one and I resorted to asking my father to buy one, he hit the roof at my embarrassment and two were purchased rather quickly to hide my swinging boobs. I was grateful to him for that.

Children can be cruel they are now and were then. Washing days were a grind, the boiler was lit and fired early in the morning and washing took most of the day to complete. The big iron mangle on the yard we took in turns to turn and swilling the washing in blue to get a strong white hue before pegging out was important. By the mid fifties we had our first washing machine which one did manually with much rhythm and speed, but we also had a mangle attached which was stored beneath the machine and clicked on top, very modern then. My mother had her first electric washing machine by 1960 which was a 'Parnell' with a middle agitator and electric rollers.

Life in those days was tough, but good family made all the difference and the closeness of one's siblings made the life even more bearable. There were no mod cons we see today. A broom or pan and brush were the cleaning utensils of the day or a scrubbing brush. The floors were covered in Lino, if you were well off. The front room was where visitors sat and we were not allowed only by permission. Furniture was either utility from the war years or what one had bought before the war. No duvets in those days but thick army blanket cast offs with a cotton bedspread to cover them.

Winter we had bricks wrapped in newspaper to warm our feet, or the metal plates from the oven. Chilblains were often the result. To keep shoes on one's feet was another great effort. The cobbler was the man I visited often getting shoes back from the Friday night and ready for Monday morning for school. Sometimes they were fetched just before 7am on the Monday morning, 1/6 for a soul and heel. Adults were dearer.

We had to wear school uniform when attending school. The gymslip, pleated down the front with a coloured striped belt, white shirt and tie, black stockings and black shoes, blazer and hat. Expensive in those days with four children to bye for, but my mother always sent us to school properly dressed and when we came home we had to change immediately to preserve the clothing. My childhood was mixed. Good relations in the 1950s with my siblings but these would disappear as time marched on and we became older, much to my regret, but can be blamed on my parents for this, their bad parenting particularly my mother who blatantly had clear favourites.

My younger brother and I however by the time we were in our sixties had good times together and the past was debated and then put to rest where it should be. We now have many happy times together. I see the fifties as a time of growing into life with emotional troubles that one had to deal with one's self and face life head on.

There was no Social Service to fall back on, one had to deal with it and developed as best one could. Money was short in all areas, hours long when in work, although work was plentiful then. I chose nursing and enjoyed it although it too was tough going with its long hours. In those days nursing was hands on and intensive, not like today.

Do I have regrets? My biggest regret is the misunderstandings that my parents created between my siblings and myself and their selfish attitude to life that they bestowed up on us, in my case my mother's hatred she later clearly stated to me at the age of fourteen. Having such complicated parents made life much more difficult to deal with as well of the pressures of the day, but on reflection I now understand how difficult it must have been for them too with four children to feed and clothe and keep in employment themselves.

That and their nature made a recipe for disaster, but we survived and learnt from it. My children were better off for my experiences so may be I've got the crown in the finish a happy fulfilling marriage and two great children. Life it seems has to be worked at and my parents refused to work at their family life at all, it was always them first children second and money played an important element in their lives, short many times and in later years money a plenty made them even more selfish. Hard times emotionally but it was a good ready reckoner for the future and as made me a more balanced person and able to face any situation that life as to offer.

User: Willamina
Location: Stourbridge