By 1921 the make up of Roebuck Street had changed. There
were 141 households Fewer people worked at Sandwell Colliery and many more at
the carriage works. There were also a lot of people out of work. Families
seemed to be smaller with most couple only having two or three children at
home.
As far as the Hamilton were concerned in 1921, at no 17 lived my grandparents Walter and
Gertrude Lily. He was a turner at the carriage works. Their children at that
stage were Arthur Dorothy, Alfred, Frederick and Joseph Sydney (my father).
Also living with them were my grandmother’s brother Alfred Timmins, a butcher.
According to my father he was an invalid who had been gassed in the First World
War, and who didn’t live long after that. In 1939 the family were still there,
with my father who had not yet joined the army being shown as a coachbuilder.
My grandmother stayed in the house until the street was demolished in the early
1960s
Yet another Alfred, Alfred Hamilton, who I assume was my
grandfather’s brother, lived at no 36. He also worked at the carriage works. He
had two sons, Alfred and Walter. I think Walter must be my father’s cousin and
friend Waller, as they were born in the same year. Waller famously refused to
go down the pit as a Bevan boy and was sent to jail, after telling the judge
that if it was so important then the judge should go down the pit himself. He
later joined the army. I believe that in the 60s and 70s he also lived in Great
Barr but I do not remember him. Number 36 isn’t listed in the 1939 register for
some reason, so we don’t know what happened after that.
Number 66 was the home of my great grandfather Joseph, who was
an engine winder at Sandwell Colliery. Here’s a picture of a winding engine now
in the Black Country Living Museum J&C Stark Winding Engine ©
Ashley Dace :: Geograph Britain and Ireland. As far as I can make out an
engine winder worked above ground and was responsible for the maintenance of the
machinery. His father Samuel Amblett had been killed maintaining the winding
machinery at Tipton Green colliery. By 1921 Joseph was 71, so presumably he had
retired. Only two children are at home, Joseph Sydney (after whom Dad must have
been named) and Phyllis Lilian. According to Dad she was a modern woman. In
1921 when she was 21 she was a bookkeeper and typist and according to my father,
in the 1930s she rode a motorbike, and ran away to Tenbury Wells with a married
man and kept a sweet shop. Unusually my great grandfather had owned no 66, and
by 1939 my father’s eldest brother Arthur and his wife Minnie lived there.
Dorothy (Auntie Dorrie) also lived there until she married in 1940. There was
someone else whose record has been redacted.
In the 1950s we lived at no 85. It wasn’t one of the family
houses and in 1921 William Bytheway lived there with his wife Ethel. He was an
engineer at Turners Engineers in Birmingham. In the 1939 Register they had left.
Herbert Alford an inspector of castings
lived there with his wife Winifred who was the manageress of a grocery shop.
And finally at no 102 were Ernest Hamilton, my grandfather’s
brother and his wife Gertrude. He was a fitter at the carriage works. They were
still there in the 1939 register, and I remember them in the 1950s when we
lived opposite.
