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A childhood in Handsworth

It was a lovely September afternoon in Canada, the trees were showing hints of autumn, and the garden was aglow with warmth and colour. My sister Jean and I sat together in the golden sunlight and sipped tea: “Do you remember”, I said wistfully “the times when we were children we would hop the fence to granddad “D’s”and grandma’s house for Sunday tea?

My name is Beryl McMullen {nee Darlaston} born on the 8thof January 1927 into a world without television, computers, the odd gaslight still around milk delivered to houses by horse and cart, children attended Sunday school., and most people went to church on Sundays, with the exception of the wireless sometimes blaring the latest hits of the day, the populous breathed a life of quiet simplicity.

Our house 192 Westminster Road, Handsworth, Birmingham, looked very much like any other on the street, it sported a freshly painted green door, a neatly squared off garden with a hedge of golden privet and it was here I recall my early years growing up:

The sun shone through the clouds, after the rain, and the delightful scent of lilac came through the open window. Birds were singing and blackbirds swooped into the garden in search of worms.

Jean pretty in her blue frock and me in my pink raced down the garden path, climbed over the low paling which separated the two gardens, and plant our little feet on the well worn patch of ground.

Savouring the prospect of a tasty treat we hesitated, but for a moment before we took to our heels running eagerly through the long tickly grass where raspberry bushes dripping with fruit had run riot, so much so it was difficult to squeeze our two little persons into one small space, we stopped and listened and hearing only chirps of birds we broke into stifled fits of laughter. We laughed and chattered in the warm sunshine; thrusting tiny hands in among the leaves, popped raspberries into our small open mouths. For a while we were happy till we surveyed numerous yellow stalks covering the bushes!

Walking up the path above the potted geraniums on the windows-sill we could see Granddad’s balding head resting against the cream and red afghan. The deep sonorous notes of the old grandfather clock struck four as we patter through the kitchen’s open door of the into the small Victorian style living room. Grandma sat stiffly one side of the fire place granddad the other a cheery fire would be burning in the grate, Grandma wearing a large blue apron pockets stuffed with odds and ends mending socks. Granddad’s bright blue eyes peered over steel rimmed spectacles as he lay his pipe and book down purposefully within easy reach on the table rises to open a small cupboard stashed with paper for us to draw till it was time for grandma to bring out a steaming rice pudding set it down on the table in front of us. I think it was all Jean came for because after the rice pudding she bid goodnights went home! Granddad would then light the gas and play me a couple of games of draughts. As nighttime drew in I watch shadows chase across the ceiling, the dying embers of fire still burning in the grate now all very peaceful. Granddad leaned his head back against the chair, wrapping his hands through the leather straps of his concertina pressed gently on the ivory keys played favourite old hymns! I have many happy fond memories of my granddad, but unfortunately not so many of my grandmas for she died when I was just 10 years old.

My memories of late summer days Jean and I played together in the backyard. There was a solid fence at the bottom of the garden where I would give a little jump heave myself up till my feet found a stave so my chin would come above the level of the top. There I would see a wild tangled strip of garden, a tall thin man leading his collie and bull mastiff to their kennels for the night. I must have looked like a head without a body because the dogs always barked at me would quickly scrabble down amuse myself making hollyhock ladies and eat raspberries off the bushes dividing our garden,. I made myself a little garden loved to dig in the soft earth for a disinterred worm fascinated me watching them clinging to the earth with their heads their tails while they heaved their middle parts up into the air like a railway-arch. Jean scared of worms sometimes I would wrap them around a stick and chase her, to my mind she failed to realize how wonderful they were able to move along without legs or wings. And marvelous of God to have invented so many ways for the progression of His creatures! Unfortunately my little garden was right in line of grandma’s dustbin and every so often grandma with a dust cap on her would empty ashes into it, sending clouds of gray dust into the air covering the leaves which I washed off.

In the 1930’s my father worked for a company called Adie Brothers Silversmith and Goldsmiths as a silver spinner, England was then in a depression so he was on short time. However, he always did his best and as children my sister Jean and I never felt deprived.

I first started school at Westminster Road School. My earliest recollection of that school is when the teacher plunked in down on my desk a lump of smelly plastercine all twisted with mixed colours that other kids had used for me to make little models just didn’t turn me on! Dad would ask each day what I’d learned at school which wasn’t much so it wasn’t too long before dad pulled me out of the school and sent to Saint Mary’s C of E school.

At 9 years of age I can remember being in (William the Conk) Mr George’s class during mental arithmetic when I made a habit of putting up my hand not being sure of the answer would take a stab at it, just to let him know I was worth bothering about! He would say, “Darlaston, if only you could do your arithmetic as well as you could swim”! I had enormous respect for Mr. George he made lessons interesting that we wanted to learn, and visited him twice at the school after the war.

I was adventures kind of child. Once I bought a fish net in Perry Barr and went to the park fished for newts and tiddlers. When mom caught sight of the jar filled with little black wiggly things, she told me to take them back to where I got them from they were not happy in a jar! The only other time I went fishing was on holiday in Devon when I went out to sea with some fishermen. With the roll of the boat and the smell of the fish jumping about in some tin container in the centre of the boat I was feeling sick , and I didn’t get a bite, even if I had I don't think I would have been able to take the hook out of it . When we came ashore one of the fishermen was kind enough to give me two of his mackerel which we took back to the boarding house and had for breakfast.

How I looked forward to my Grandmother Parish visits on Wednesdays, the little presents and cakes she brought from Wimbush’s or Bains’s in Perry Barr. How I would make her laugh with my silly little acts and poetry.
Granddad and grandma owned their own coal business at 35 Cliveland Street. At the back of the wharf ran a canal s being an adventures child I would stand on the tow path watch Clydesdale horses pulling the barges of water gypsies loaded with wares, wave to factory workers tossing coins over the canal for me to pick up! .It’s no wonder mom and grandma were nervous!. On a hot day our neighbour Mrs. Thorn would treat us all to ice cream cones I would get from Woods then take licks from all of them on the way home knowing no one would be any the wiser! About once a week ran errands for old lady McCartney, she looked like something out of a Dickens’s novel, shuffling to the door in her long black dress to send me to the Swiss cottage for a jug of draught ale! I never drank any of it because I didn’t like it. She always paid me with religious medals once with a missile which judiciously I set on my bedroom shelf along with books mostly fairy tales.

Often on Sundays evenings I attended services at St Mary’s C of E church, arriving early enough to climb the steep winding steps to the tower and talk to the bell- ringers. After church I walk up Hampstead Road to meet dad, mom, and Jean in the gardens at the Endwood pub, there we were treated to grape-fruit drink and a packet of crisps. Strange, how the sun always seemed to shine in those days particularly in Handsworth.

My friends Beryl Clarke and Winnie Marlow lived near the shops at the top of our street At Truman’s I would buy dolly mixtures or a surprise penny dip which was usually a waste of money. Neil’s is where we bought our cottage loaves, Harris’s green grocers there was Edwina who I coaxed into taking piano lessons from my piano teacher Miss Perrot.lived on n Upper Grosvenor Road. There was Erott’s mini market, that my mom still called it “Shuffs” because the previous owner’s name was “Shufflebottom”. And a little shop where I would go with Winnie to buy some rainbow wool to knit clothes for my doll. Across the busy Wellington street dad sent me to “Smiths” the little tobacconist for the Birmingham Post., then near Wood Lane and the turn of the century cottages, is the Calthorpe pub where dad and granddad would routinely go for a drink.

I was 12 years old when I climbed out of bed Friday September 1 1939, when German troops made their way across the border into Poland! September 3 1939 Britain declared on Germany and the horror of listening to the news that Germany had torpedoes the 13,.500 ton passenger liner :”Athenia” on route from Glasgow to Quebec, Montreal.1,130 passengers aboard, 118 lost their lives many of them children. This caused such a furor that Hitler ordered there would be no more attacks on passenger ships, no matter what the nationality! That summer had been a hot one mom took us on a picnic to Stratford where Shakespeare was born and in August a holiday to Seaton a coastal seaside place in Devon, well known for its cider and clotted cream. Dad was away with the Air force, but being in the reserve was called up before things started to happen. I was relatively a happy child, but life for everyone slowly began to change: Air raids started and the Germans began dropping their bombs, everyone was issued with gas masks, and smaller children like my little brother Martyn a Mickey Mouse gas mask and in every other garden an Anderson air-raid shelter were assembled.

Within a few weeks the evacuations of thousands of children from London Birmingham and other big cities began. It was an operation that would have a profound effect on many of us later on in life. We were uprooted from our homes and dispatched to live with strangers some of us for a few years! There was abuse not all children were welcome in families that took us in. and I certainly had my share of rough treatment from some! Children with name tags pinned to coats, carrying gas masks, suit cases or shopping bags containing their belongings, teachers carried placards with the name of their school, came from all over snaking their way to bus stops and railway stations Tearful parents saying good bye to their kids wondering where they would be sleeping that night. As I boarded the train biting my lip I waved good bye with my handkerchief like the rest of the children till our parents standing on the platform were out of sight!

Some children enjoyed their life in the country others hated it - mine was mixed. Our religious beliefs were tempered and attitudes towards authority, because as evacuees we suffered the humiliation of being picked out and treated like cattle and taken away by strangers! Parents who listened to calls of help from their children brought them home again I wish it had been me, but unfortunately at the time my mom was a Red Cross nurse and Dad serving in the Middle East. However, it must be said, the independence forced on us at such an early age gave us an education - an appreciation of life’s incongruities that no school could have provided. It all seems so long ago, but one thing for sure I would never send my children away, because memories still linger!

Beryl McMullen

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