This is an undated interview of three sisters. Similar interviews were taken in the 1980s.
Miss. Brettle: What other shops were there?
Mrs. Porter: Well there was a chemist. He was a bit of a doctor, he used to help the women out in Stirchley didn’t he, Mr. Churchill.
Mrs. Langley: Oh yes the chemist. He’d take teeth out as well.
Mrs. Porter: Our mom used to say he was ever so good with all the mothers in Stirchley. They used to go to him for a bit of help hadn’t they, if they couldn’t afford the doctor.
Mrs. Langley: That’s right, he wasn’t exactly qualified really but he knew enough to help us.
Mrs. Porter: Well mom always said that he failed his exams as a doctor. He looked like a doctor didn’t he. I don’t know whether that was true but that’s what she used to tell us children and that was Mr. Churchill.
Miss. Brettle: It’s still a chemist now and in that window they had the huge bottles for the chemist sign, one side was green, blue deep blue, and the other side was red, you know what I mean don’t you. They fascinated me, I mean they weren’t small and also there were two or three barbers poles up there as well.
Interviewer: What did you used to do for entertainment?
Mrs. Langley: When I started work I was fourteen – the kind of entertainment there was, was I used to go down to the Salvation Army, they used to have what they called a gym beforehand doing all sorts of exercises and they would finish it off with a bit of dancing or some kind of country dancing. Then at the Institute mainly again on a Saturday night they would have what they called a social evening and you were in sort of groups doing things you know. When you were young, Sunday School was the thing everyone went to, every Sunday and I remember at the Institute we were given sand trays […] pictures and all that kind of thing.
Miss. Brettle: I was at the Stirchley Institute, well we went from so high because I can remember the sand, playing with the sand, well it was mostly to do with. They were all Quakers and we always had a party, what happened there was we were in this hall and we were split up into groups you know, various, boys on the one side, girls on the other, no mixing of course that’s why we’ve all got inferior complex where men are concerned but the boys one side and the girls the other never mixed. […] every year they used to have a party which was a very good party really when you come to think, I mean ‘cause used to have a bag with a bun in or some bread and butter or something like that, but they gave a party like that in Summer and you’d have a bag of food like that you know and it was always held in the manor on the Bristol Road, that Manor Park where all the students are. Well I mean there wasn’t anything like that then, it was just a farm belonging to them [the Cadbury’s] and their house at the back […].
Mrs. Porter: They used to have a religious picture at Stirchley Empire didn’t they.
Mrs. Langley: The Stirchley Empire, the picture house on a Saturday afternoon, now I must have been scared of the noise, I’d go with them all and I could hear them all shouting. It took me ages before I’d go in and when I did go in I’d sit on the very end of the seat so I could get out quickly. But what I do remember, was when the lady used to come down to play the piano, all of us would be out carrying her down to play the piano, all of us would be out carrying her down.
Mrs. Porter: Patting her on the back and cheering her and carrying her down to the front.
Mrs. Langley: We used to go and see these serials, all cliffhangers they were. Pearl White would be hanging somewhere.
Miss. Brettle: Or tied on the railway line.
Mrs. Porter: Every child in Stirchley went in there on a Saturday afternoon, they didn’t half cram us in didn’t they.
Miss. Brettle: Because 1927 you see the talkies started but until then it was silent movies you see and I mean I can remember them.
Mrs. Langley: Charlie Chaplin.
Miss. Brettle: Ooh Charlie Chaplin of course, no radio, no television, wireless at first.