• Registered: 2022-01-21
  • Posts: 1,588

Topic: Slums

Recently, I remembered that in the 1950s I was told that people in Birmingham lived in slums.

Thinking of this I searched on the web about the history of this, also remembering that in the early 1970s by Aston University in Birmingham there were workmen knocking down an area of ancient-looking packed-together houses in an area that was a few years later a grassed area with modern buildings surrounding it.

I found a gallery of photographs of how things were in as late as 1968 and the very early 1970s and there were children in some of the pictures.

The captions said that a charity was trying to identify the children and find them.

What do you think of that?

They would be in their late 50s to late 60s or so now.

Should people be trying to find them?

Hopefully as housing got replaced things got better for them.

Is it fair and reasonable to try to find someone who, as a child, lived in such conditions and bring it back into their life now?

The fact of the matter is that there are people now adults with a home of their own who were in care, perhaps because of being orphaned, divorce of their parents, cruel parents, various reasons.

Although true, should that information be regarded as of such a nature that publication of it by the media is regarded as if it is libel?

A hypothetical example,

A, who has been awarded a Nobel Prize today for ... was brought up in care because ...

That sort of thing.

I remember that there is a famous photograph from the 1930s depression era in America of an anguished looking woman with a baby or young child in one of the places in possibly California after having moved from somewhere like Oklahoma in the dust bowl era of the depression. Many many years later the media found her and drew attention to her as being the woman in the photograph, and caused her great distress in tagging her with it.

Fortunately, I did not grow up in housing like that. If i had, now, in 2022, I would not be at all pleased if some organization started on that I was once that child living in those squalid conditions and wanting to discuss it all with me.

William

  • Registered: 2022-01-21
  • Posts: 382

Re: Slums

Fortunately, I did not grow up in housing like that.

Wow! I bet you had an indoor loo. And perhaps more than one tap!

We had an outside loo, nice in winter....
and one cold tap over a chipped yellow shallow earthenware sink in the "scullery".

3 Reply by William (edited by William 2022-11-20 14:56:47)

  • Registered: 2022-01-21
  • Posts: 1,588

Re: Slums

Indeed.

It was a brand new council house built in 1950, with a front garden and a 120 foot long back garden. Basically because a field had been converted by having a road up the middle and with houses each side, so the gardens that length just because of the size of the field.

Right into the 1970s a lot of council houses in this area that had been built in the 1930s only had an outside toilet.

I was very fortunate, though not realizing it at the time as it was just how it was.

The media image these days of "growing up on a council estate" is always very bleak, as in their image of what a council estate is like.

But it was not like that at all.

I think that a lot of the housing problem could be solved by building in the green belt and insisting that the building be no more than under 20% of the area of the house and garden. That way at least 80% of the green belt would still be green area and gardens could have trees and children have space to play.

This could be done by legislation. At present there is agricultural land and there is building land. If what is agricultural land gets planning permission to be built upon, the value of the land increases. Pokey little gardens have become common because of maximizing profit. If a third category of land such that dwellings can be built on them, but on no more than 20% of each plot were to become introduced by legislation, then the value of that land would be more than it was when it was agricultural land, yet less than it would be as pokey sized gardens housing land, and so it could all work satisfactorily, and people would have decent housing and the land would probably end up with more trees than it did before. And it would be good for the environment because if being 80% green would be conserved.

William

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  • Registered: 2022-01-23
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Re: Slums

Hopefully as housing got replaced things got better for them.

From what I remember of the 60's/70's lots of streets with terraced houses were demolished and the displaced people were moved into newly built tower blocks. This then started the associated troubles with many of these blocks. Even as a teenager I could imagine the anger and frustration felt by many of the residents. One minute you're in a house, you walk out into the street, go to the corner shop and back home. Now you're on the 10th floor of a block, you walk down the stairs because the lifts have broken down, God knows where the nearest shops are, you lug your bags up 10 flights of stairs. You unpack your shopping and realise you've forgotton to buy an item.

I used to be indecisive, now I'm not so sure.