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This story has been entered at Age Concern East Cheshire on behalf of Jean Gunshon and in her presence.

As the eldest girl of the family it fell to me to do much of the household chores and errands to help my mother cope with looking after the family. It seems very unfair, my elder brother and the rest of the boys weren’t expected to do anything, they were off out and playing, missing for most of the day. All the household chores were done by girls and this was the same for all families, that’s the way things were. I even had to go up to my grandmothers house, at the top of our street to do jobs for her. Sometimes I was sent to help my aunt by cleaning here floors because she suffered with rumertoide arthritis. On a Saturday morning I cleaned 3 neighbours’ front steps for threepence each to give me money towards the shilling entrance to the Apollo picture house matinee show. Quite often I had to stay off school to look after the house while my mother went to visit my father in hospital. He was in Withington hospital several times suffering from pneumonia, I also missed school to look after my mother who suffered from jaundice. I remember there were queues for everything. Sometimes my mother would get me to save a place in a queue and would come up when I got near the front. I bought 3 or 4 cigarettes in a sweet bag for my mother, bags of coal and coke, put bets on at the bookies for my uncle Stan (and sometimes for my Dad).

When I did finish school I went straight into work the next week. My mother found me the job, I complained to her that I would have liked a week or 2 off but she said she needed my wages to keep the house going. It was a sewing machinist job making ladies coats. The job was with CWS (Cooperative Wholesale Stores) On Fairfield St. near Piccadilly in Manchester. It was quite frightening for a young girl, the area was heavily industrial and there were lots of horses and carts for transporting goods from the railway goods yards in the area. The horses were huge and covered with brasses, they were stabled in the under croft and everything was dark and gloomy because all the buildings were black with soot and grime. The fogs were the worst; sometimes you couldn’t see a hand in front of you. By this time I was living in Woodhouse Park, Wythenshawe, I started work at 8.00 so had to get the workman’s bus just before 7.00. A return to Piccadilly was about 1s4d and was cheaper on the workers bus than later ones. I finished at 6pm and got home around 7pm depending on whether I was able to get a bus quickly. There were always big queues but there were lots of busses.

The Family had moved to Wythenshawe in about 1952. We got a letter to say we had been allocated a new house on the new overspill housing estate. The new house was like a palace. We moved as a family of 10 from a 2 up 2 down with no bathroom to a 4 bedroom house. We had a bathroom and 2 toilets, one upstairs and one downstairs. There were t2 living rooms and a big kitchen with enough space for a table that we could all sit round (at a push!). There was also a wash house outside. The rent was 24 shillings a week when we moved in.

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