1977 - Hall - Married Women at Home in Birmingham in The 1920

Oral History Society
Married Women at Home in Birmingham in the 1920's and 1930's

Author(s): Catherine Hall
Source: Oral History, Vol. 5, No. 2, Women's History Issue (Autumn, 1977), pp. 62-83
Published by: Oral History Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40178501
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- 62 -
Married Women at Home in Birmingham in the 1920 's and 1930' s,

by Catherine Hall.
This study arose from an interest in the lives of women in the home and
a concern to try to begin to establish both some of the determinants of the
way in which domesticity is experienced and what some of the elements of that
experience might be. The idea of this particular study has been to explore
through interviews what the lives of married women on the new suburban
estates in Birmingham were like in the 1920 fs and 1930 's.
1. Housing and Industry.
At the end of the First World War it became clear that there was a
serious housing shortage. The 1921 census showed that 9.7m. families were
living in 8.8m. dwellings which meant that the deficit was larger than it had
been in 1911. Furthermore, 14% of the ponulation were living more than two
to a room. The political demand for houses fit for heroes made housing an
urgent question that would have to be tackled on a national level. The
problem facing the Government was how to get the necessary houses built
given the slump in the building industry, soaring costs and a serious
shortage of labour. The Housing and Town Planning Act of 1919 obliged
Councils for the first time to provide houses which would be backed by
Government finance. This emphasis on subsidised municipal housing was
badly affected by the retrenchment of the 1920fs. Neville Chamberlain's
Housing Act of 1923 offered subsidies to private enterprise for every house
built 9 providing it was of standard dimensions. Local authorities should
only build where private enterprise wouldn't.
Housing needs were being discussed in Birmingham as early as 1917 and

a new Housing and Town Planning Committee was set up. Their first report
was accepted by the Council in July 1918; Birmingham with its long
tradition of municipal provision was very willing to co-onerate with the
Government, and between 1919-39 50,268 municipal houses were built, housing
about 200,000 people, and 54,536 houses were built by private enterprise.
Between 1924-31 municipal building dominated and then, as the Depression
caused increasing cuts between 1932-8, more private houses were built.
The high demand for private houses depended on the sharp fall in building
costs, a low rate of interest, a relatively favourable unemployment rate in

the city, rising real wages for those at work and the favourable terms
- 63 -
offered by Building Societies which made a point of helping areas which
had a good employment record. The societies were making arrangements which
allowed clerical workers and the better paid industrial workers to start
buying their own homes. In my sample of eleven, for example, one family
where the man worked at Austin were buying their own house 9 as were a
couple where the man worked as a shop assistant (later a manager), a couple
where the man worked at Cadbury's on biscuit making and a couple where the
man was a skilled worker at Lucas. About one fifth of the housing in
(3)
Birmingham's outer ring was developed on these lines. This building
catered for the lower middle class and the better paid working class. It
left the slums untouched. The main areas of housing development in this
period, both private and municipal, were on the outskirts of the city, the
outer ring. As Asa Briggs says,
'Most of the phases in Birmingham's growth can be studied in the

bricks and mortar of main roads leading out of the city, like
the Bristol Road or the Coventry Road.' (4)
The scale of expansion in Birmingham in the 1920' s and 30 's was related to
the particular industrial development of the city. On a national scale,
there was an overall shift from heavy industries to light industry based on
semi-skilled factory production. Between 1914-18 in Birmingham there had
been large-scale conversion of the local industrial structure to war-time

needs. Following the war, there was contraction of employment for both men
and women and a considerable exodus of workers from the city. But the lone-
term problem of a post-war economy was better tackled in Birmingham than in
many other areas. The presence of plentiful loaal capital, of skilled

labour and of managerial experience attracted new industries to Birmingham
which more than balanced the decline of the old.
Metal was still the major preoccupation of the region and in the 1931
census 37.1% of all those concerned with industry, trade and commerce in the
city were concerned with metal trades in some capacity. The decline in
some of the old metal trades like nail making was offset by the increase in
the new lighter metal industries. Norman Tiptaft, a prominent local
politician in the 30's claimed that the real key to Birmingham's continued
prosperity and its leadership of the national revival in employment in 1931
was its industrial diversity. 'Birmingham is essentially the home of the
small manufacturer ', he wrote, 'It has fifteen hundred trades, as distinct
from the Lancashire cotton towns, where the sole product is just cotton and
nothing else.' The dominant industrial concerns were the GEC
established at Witton in 19O1 which placed Birmingham well in the vanguard of
electrical engineering; Cadbury's which by 1939 was employing over 10,000;
- 64 -
the Austin works at Longbridge which by 1939 were employing over 17,000 and
the M & B Breweries established in 1898. Other important areas were
carton-making, mattresses, paint, plastics, baskets and dry cleaning.
Although he is right to stress the importance of diversity, Tintaft
overlooks the shift to new products and new forms of production which was
taking place in Birmingham between the wars and which was probably the crucial
factor in maintaining her industrial pre-eminance. The major expansion was
in the new electrical industries. It was marked by a tendency to
amalgamation and the unified control of companies, the increasing
specialisation of plants, the development of flow production and a revolution
in management, together with a relatively rapid rate of technical advance and
some de-skilling. By the 30 fs many of the Birmingham factories were
employing thousands and some of them were sited away from the old industrial
areas - for example, Cadbury's and the Austin. All the new industries were
catering for the individual well-being of the consumer and they usually
relied on mass advertising.
The willingness of new firms to settle in Birmingham was a recognition
of the special advantages which the city seemed to offer. Between 1934-7
there was a marked movement of population into the city and the surrounding
(8)
area and the increas of population was the highest in the country. The
motto of the city was 'Forward1 and its keynote, as described in John 0*
London's Weekly in 1925 was 'modernism.... Birmingham is young, virile,
(9)
thriving, hustling'. There are powerful echoes here of Chamberlain's
Birmingham in the 1870 's and 80 's. L.W. Faulkner, the manager of the
city's information bureau described Birmingham as the 'outstanding example

of a city planned for industry'. In a publicity handout he wrote, 'She does
not promise the tripper the joys he is led to expect by the "nods and becks
and wreathed smiles" which blaze from the myriad array of holiday nosters ,
but she is vitally concerned with the visitor who prefers to see. history in
the making, to witness with his own eyes the C20 being hammered into shape
in great forges, to behold and understand a city where every nerve strains
eagerly forward beyond the forefront of progress and industrial
achievement.' J.B. Priestley in English Journey offered a less
favourable impression of his journey in a tram from the city centre - 'In two
minutes its civic dignity, its metropolitan airs had vanished; all it offered
me mile after mile, was a parade of mean dinginess... there was nothing ....
to light up a man's mind for one single instant. I loathed the whole lone;
array of shops, with their nasty bits of meat, their cou?;h mixtures, their
- 65 -
"Racing Specials11 , their sticky cheap furniture, their fly-blown pastry,

their coupons and sales and lies and dreariness and ugliness. *
The structure of Birmingham industry was clearly demarcated according

to its historical development. The inner ring consisted of small
specialised workshops which had been long established - making for example,
needles, locks, jewellery and guns. The middle ring was mainly developed
between 1860-1910 and included food, transport components, paint and metal.
All the factories and workshops were conveniently placed for road, rail and
canal. The outer ring marked 20th century development with the large new
factories, some 3-5 miles from the city centre and with room to expand. On
the south west were Cadbury's and Austin, on the north side GEC, Fort Dunlop,
Cinncinnatti, the new aeroplane factories and many other large concerns. The
(12)
population of the city in 1938 was estimated at well over one million.
The inner ring was still the most densely populated with a high proportion of
old, single and widowed people. One seventh of the city's housing was in
the inner ring. The middle ring provided two sevenths of the housing,
mostly built before 1914. The outer ring by 1938 provided four-sevenths,
much of which had been built since 1920.
The new housing estates built on the outer ring of Birmingham and
throughout the country were all characterised by their spaciousness. They
were, commented Glass, 'designed not to draw people together, but rather to
divide them from each other'. There was a good deal of comment in the
1920 's and 30 's on the social problems associated with the new housing. In
Birmingham the problem about the lack of community facilities was recognised
quite early on but very little was done about it. The Kingstanding estate,
which was as large as Shrewsbury had only one church and one hall in the
1930's. Shrewsbury had 30 churches, 15 church halls and parish rooms, 5

other halls and 2 public libraries. In 1930 the City Council agreed to
build an experimental centre at Kingstanding but the plan was dropped because
of retrenchment. Voluntary organisations such as the Birmingham Council for
Community Associations tried to fill the gap by first organising centres and
then co-operating with the council. In 1936 the first council community
(14)
centre was opened on the Billesley Farm Estate.
The emphasis on space in the Birmingham estates was partly inspired by
the Bournville development. Unfortunately, the Bournville policy without
adequate money did not look the same - the leafy roads and variagated styles
of Bournville housing became considerably less attractive when done on the
cheap. fIn winter1, commented one critic, 'the estates are colder than the
- 66 -
concentrated living quarters in the older districts, and not uncommonly the
tenants on the windswept roads and shopping centres compare their new homes
(15) '
to Siberia. 'v ' Mrs. Smith, who has lived in Billesley, one of the
earliest municipal estates, since the 20 fs told me that when the tramway was
extended there the conductors used to call out 'Siberia* at the terminus.
Little attempt was made to co-ordinate housing and factory development and
many people worked far away from home. It was estimated in 1936 that the
{ 16)
average family spent £9 per year on fares. Mr. Newey, who lived in
Billesley, travelled on three different buses to Castle Bromwich every day.
There are few work links between people in the new areas - even in an area
like Northfield built up around Longbridge only 3,000 of the 17,000 work
force lived in the area - the rest had to travel there and complex transport
arrangement had to be made. Attempts were made to provide entertainment
in the new areas - for example the cinemas and the new style pubs built by
Mitchell and Butler on the outer ring but neither venture did much to
encourage community life. The houses themselves on the new estates are
variations on the theme of three up and three down. The normal pattern is to
have two rooms and a scullery downstairs and three bedrooms and a bathroom
upstairs. The 20 fs houses usually had a gas range, whereas those built in
the 30 's had gas cookers in from the beginning. The council offered such
items as cookers on hire purchase terms. All the houses have gardens.
Those on the private estate tend to be semi-detached, those on the council
estates are often terraces of about eight houses.
Housing policy inevitably reflects the dominant ideas in the society

about the home and family. The kinds of houses which were seen as desirable
in the immediate post-war period were a smaller and cheaper version of the
already existing suburban developments. They assumed the centrality of the

nuclear family and that building should be for that social unit. This
provides us with a concrete example of the way in which ideological pressures

and perspectives inform both government policy and the building industry.
2. The Family.
The experience of married women in Birmingham in the 20 fs and 30 \s was,

therefore, partially structured by the kinds of houses available, the kinds
of communities within which these existed, and the employment possibilities
in the area. But the experience of domesticity was also crucially
determined by the dominant notions about home and family in the period.
Ideas about the place of wonen in the home are not constant. Since the
development of industrial capitalism the ideology of domesticity - which
- 67 -
could at its simplest be described as the view that a woman's place is in
the home - has been a key component of the national culture. That ideology
mystifies both the class and the sexual divisions which have been crucial
elements in the social relations of capitalist production. The
expropriation of the woman9 s demastic labour in the home and the fact that
it is only paid for indirectly by the wage is hidden by the ideological
assumption of the split between the private and the public sphere and the
relegation of the woman to the latter. It becomes natural that women
should stay at home and that if they do work it should be defined as a
secondary occupation.
The 1920 vs and 30 9s was a period which saw the emergence of a new ideal
of the family - incorporating many aspects of an earlier ideal but also
having new elements. One of the expressions of that changing ideal was
reflected in the sharp decline in family size in the 1920's. Between
1900-09 33% of married women had small families, meaning one or two children.
Between 1920-29 46% had small families, and between 1930-39 51% had small
families. The trend towards fewer children was noticeable in all classes,
but whereas in an earlier period it had been led by working class women in
the cotton towns, it was now strongest among the professional and salaried
groups. Branson and Heineman describe the lower middle class as in the
vanguard of the control of the size of familiees in the 1930' s. Clerical
workers had the lowest birth rate. At the same time there was very little
increase in the numbers of married women working. In 1921 8.9% of married
women were 'gainfully employed' and in 1931 10.7%. Furthermore, in the
1920 's nearly 30% of single women of working age were not 'gainfully
(18)
employed'. In other words they were either looking after aged parents
or brothers or other relatives. It was taken for granted that married
women would not work unless there were some special reason such as the
husband's illness or unemployment. It was clearly an extremely important
symbol for men that their wives should not work. Women themselves did not
usually want to work. In their own homes they could establish their own
work patterns and routines and they might have leisure for family and social
life.
A second important element in a changing view of home and family was the
shift which was taking place in capitalist production to a much greater stress
on domestic consumption rather than on production for export. The last
decades of the C19 saw the expansion of factory food production and home
furnishings. This process was much accelerated in the post-war period with
- 68 -
the move into electrical products, for example. The working class woman at
home became a more important consumer than she had been. The inter-war years
saw the development of advertising on a large scale which was crucially

connected with this increasing Interest in investment in home consumption
directed industries. A typical woman's magazine of the period would be
advertising such items as synthetic fabrics, hair and beauty preparations,
items of gas and electrical equipment and prepared foods of various kinds.
All of these represented work which had previously been done in the home.
The changed situation of the woman in the home and the fact that her life
was not dominated by child-bearing, meant that there was more space for a
new ideal of close family life. One element of this ideal was the
importance of motherhood to the survival of the nation; this found
expression in the influential work of Marie S topes. Despite her progressive
attitude towards birth control, her view of motherhood was at times amazingly
similar to the Victorian 'angel in the house'; similarly, her notion of the
home reflected the Victorian ideal of the hom* *s haven: 'True marriage is
(19)
essentially an escape from the herd into the seclusion of the lair."
Marie S topes' ideas were further popularised in magazines and books such
as The Motherhood Book. Apart from proclaiming that: 'Happy, healthy

motherhood is the most joyous experience in the world', this magazine also
sought to encourage the participation of fathers in family life. In the
post-war period too, the work of Freud caused increasing attention to be paid
to child-care. The period is one when more responsibility is being taken by
the state for child-rearing, because it is seen as so important. Child
welfare clinics, free milk, the expansion of maternity hospitals, are all
aspects of the trend. Increasing child-centredness was probably also
connected with the dramatic fall in the rate of infant mortality which was
taking place.
Thus, without altering the social and economic subordination of women,

patriarchal ideology successfully adapted itself to the new small family.
The concept of motherhood had been expanded to fill the space.
A further element in this adaptation was the movement for scientific
home management and child-care. The combination of the need to cut down
domestic labours (felt most keenly during the war by the middle class faced
with a shortage of domestic servants) with the movement for scientific
management in society as a whole which had been spearheaded by the new
- 69 -
industries, resulted in more emphasis on rational home management.
Mrs. Peel, a woman with much experience in home management wrote of the
immediate post-war period -
'About that time various people worked out interesting charts which
showed how much unnecessary walking, reaching up and stooping down
ill-planned houses entailed, and the Daily Mail, by means of the
Ideal Home Exhibition, did much to educate the public by showing
them well-planned houses and the latest apparatus, with the result
that today many new working- and middle-class houses are admirably
planned and fitted, and it is beginning to be realised that it is
not only labour which is paid for in direct wages, but also the
labour of the woman in the house, which is paid for indirectly by
the wage received by her husband, that is of importance to the nation.
Indeed, it is of more importance to the nation than the labour of any
other persons, for the wife must produce and tend the next generation
at the same time that she fulfills her exacting task of cleaning,
cooking and washing.' (21)
Setting Up the Study.
My interviews set out to explore how a group of married women

experienced their lives on the housing estates in Birmingham in the 20' s and
30 's. Changes in the structure of industry in Birmingham, the rapid
development of new housing estates and new bourgeois ideals of home and
family, all seemed to be factors which might be shifting the ways in which
domesticity was experienced. In so far as there is any writing on the
lives of women on the new estates it is confined to assertions of their
loneliness in face of being cut off from their families and communities.
These assertions are not backed up by any evidence and it seemed that talking
to women who lived through that period would reveal a good deal about
domestic life that would otherwise remain hidden. As has often been pointed
out, oral evidence is particularly useful for the so-called 'private sphere'.
It is also useful for local studies. I was esnecially Interested in seeing
how the attitudes of the respondents related to what has been described as
the dominant ideology of domesticity. In retrospect it is clear that ray
questionnaire could have been directed more towards raising questions about
the mediations of cultural influences.
The questionnaire was related to seven major areas - the respondent's
childhood and experience before marriage, her husband and his work, her home
during the 20's and 30' s, her ideas about housework, her children, decision
making within the family and her overall feelings about that nhase of her
life. I used the questionnaire to provide a basic structure but as I became
more familiar with it I used it more flexibly. On the whole I found that I
- 70 -
was able to cover most areas but I did find difficulty in one or two
interviews in asking what were extremely personal questions - in one case, for
example, the husband was there throughout and I found that this definitely
affected the way in which the more intimate areas were dealt with. In
retrospect 9 I think I probably tried to cover too much in the questionnaire
but I'm not sure about this as I wanted to get a general picture too of the
position of housewife and mother. I made my contacts through the churches,
a Keep Fit class for the over SO's, the Visiting Service to Old People and
the Labour Party. My age range turned out to be quite wide - from Mrs.
Barrett born in 1885 to Mrs. Folet and Mrs. Wates born in 1913. This was not
intentional but turned out to raise interesting points.
Evaluating the Evidence.
There are various points about the interviews which need to be taken
into account when evaluating the evidence. First and foremost seven of the
eleven women interviewed are widows - some quite recently widowed - and five
of them live alone. I was asking them to talk about a period of their life
which was almost bound to be affected by nostalgia. It is the phase of
their lives when they were running a home and bringing up a family, always
busy with no time to spare. Of the 4 whose husbands are still alive 2 are
clearly enjoying their retirement and the companionship of their husbands

enormously and this may well predispose them to romanticise the past and run
it into the present. Mrs. Folet fs husband is ill and her interview is
punctuated with sadness and regret about this and a feeling of loss for the
good days they had together. All those interviewed are old - in a society
which has little respect for age, and values youth and productivity.
Furthermore, they were all amazed to be interviewed about the home and family
since it has not traditionally been seen as of historical significance.
A second difficulty arose with the oldest in the sample. Mrs. Barrett,
for example, who is 91 had problems of demarcating periods and mixed up
different phases of her life. This was clarified for me by her daughter, who
was also there, but otherwise I would not have known. It is obviously
problematic to ask a woman who was bringing up children between 1913-35 to
distinguish between the different periods but I did try to do this. On

other occasions when I asked about husbands helping in the house respondents
would say how much they help now or have done since retirement and I was not
always sure how to judge their comments on the earlier years in that context.
The fact of who was present at the interview clearly affected the material
- 71 -
which came up. In my interview with Mrs. Gardiner her husband was there
throughout and it was out of the question to ask him to leave - at one point
she went out to make a cup of tea and though he offered to do it she
insisted that she would and that she had 'had her say9. I had the impression
that her account of her marriage, which I thinv would have been positive in
any circumstances , was particularly so because he was there. That
interpretation f however, relies on my sense of the interview. Clearly there

is always a subjective element in historical interpretation but the
importance of that element in a personal interview, which relies on

establishing a degree of trust between interviewer and respondent and an
account of which can only partly be given on tape, does raise particular
problems.
On another occasion I interviewed two women, who have lived opposite

each other for about 50 years together. In some instances this meant that
they jogged each other's memories, and recalled material which might otherwise
have been missed - for example, a discussion about how the women in the area
tended to keep away from the policemen's wives. At the same time it was
impossible to cover all that I could have done in individual interviews.
The personality type of the respondent clearly affects the material as well.
Several people with whom I was put in contact refused to be interviewed.
Presumably those who agreed are those who feel fairly confident about talking
about their lives and presenting themselves in a reasonably confident way to
the world outside. Within that the more extrovert took more initiative in
the interview, as did Mrs. Barrett, while I played a more structuring role
with the less extrovert, for example, Mrs. Wates.
Finally, my sample is not based either on a statistical sampling or on
a quota sample. It is only a pilot project!
The Interviews
Perhaps the most important point which the interviews make is to
demonstrate the power of the ideology of domesticity in n neriod when fenale
labour was not needed but women were needed as consumers in the home.
Almost all the women interviewed gave a positive account of their exnerience
of domesticity in the period and little dissatisfaction was remembered. Of
course, that has to be understood in the context of a situation where the
kinds of jobs available for women were unattractive and there was little
reason why they should want to work unless they had to. However, there were
- 72 -
some tensions and ambiguities in the accounts given, as one would expect.
These tensions are partly related to the structure of the interview and the
degree to which the respondent sees herself as giving an account. Thus, for
example, on tape Mrs, Cooling did not want to record statements about her
husband which were critical. She presented a very positive nicture of her
married life - she did not appear to mind at all that her husband had a very
full life outside the home and was away and out a great deal. Over tea,
however, when she no longer felt that she was being interviewed, she started
to tell roe what a difficult man he was to live with in many ways, how he
expected her to understand what he wanted without her ever saying it and how
her daughter still expects to be serviced in the same way. When directly
asked she could not make those comments. It was only in the context of a
less structured exchange that those feelings surfaced.
But ambiguities such as these do not only arise because of the situation
of being interviewed - they also point to contradictions which are
experienced within the ideological framework. An example of this arose in
the interview with Mrs. Barrett at which her daughter Mrs. Harrison was also
present. Mrs. Harrison, again over tea when the tape was turned off, told
roe that she felt so put down by her father that she once asked her mother
whether she was adopted since he treated her brothers so differently. She
describes on the tape how she felt discriminated against as a girl because
her father would not pay for her to be a hairdresser when that was what she
had wanted. She says he told her that he would have paid for a boy.
Nevertheless, she also steadfastly asserts on tape that her parents left her
free to decide on her own career. She is formally committed to the

individualist ethos of free choice herself, and to her parents1 formal
espousal of it. That makes her unwilling to fully face the logic of her
father's position. In reality, she had no free choice - she was doubly
discriminated against both on the grounds of her class and her sex but the
commitment to the notion of free choice remains very powerful. The whole
subject of her father's treatment of her was clearly emotive and she tries to
get her mother's support for her account as to what hannened .
As Ann Oakley points out it is very difficult for a woman to be negative
about her role as wife and mother since that is the way in which society
judges her as a woman. This pressure on women to be 'good wives and mothers'
and never to feel rejectinc towards their children or fed up with housework
did seem to be operational in the interviews. Because a major aspect of the
woman's role is to be loving and caring it is very difficult to express
- 73 -
negative feelings without appearing not to be va proper woman* . Mrs. Wates

for the major part of our talk presented a very positive account of her
experience at home with the children in the late 30* s and of her husband's
involvement with the two boys. Then, towards the end she started talking
about how little he saw then, how much he was away (this was then accentuated
by long hours during the war) and how fed up she sometimes was when they were
ill. On one occasion she left home, got to the end of the road, and then
came back. The point about this incident is that it expresses feelings of
frustration and loneliness which are probably an everyday occurrence in some
form or another for mothers with small children. But such feelings have not
had social recognition and consequently it is hard for them to be articulated.
The material in the interviews on attitudes to married women working
provides a powerful example of the degree to which attitudes are structured
within an ideological framework. All the women interviewed, with the
exception of Mrs. Cooling who was married to a teacher and had herself been
a pupil teacher, were working class both in terms of their family background
and their class position in the 20fs and 30' s. The accompanying table gives
a breakdown of their parents, their husbands and their own occupational
histories. The most significant change which seems to have taken place in
terms of work patterns is that five of the respondents' mothers worked outside
the home whereas only one of the respondents worked full-time and one had a
part-time job. All the women except one had worked before marriage - Mrs.
Barrett had been needed in the home to help her mother with a large family.
Three of the women had been domestic servants, three had worked in factories,
one had been a shop assistant, one a barmaid, one had worked in a warehouse
and one had been a pupil teacher. Virtually all the women stressed that
their husbands disapproved of married women working. Mrs. Smith worked in
a shoe factory before her marriage and then left her job, her family and her
friends in Northampton to come to Birmingham where her husband was a policeman.
Until she had a child she was terribly lonely and would have liked to have had
a job. She missed the factory -
'I missed the company, the girls, the laughter, the singing.
I only knew one person in Birmingham. . .1 used to walk up to
Sparkbrook and see my husband on point duty - e^ve him a sweet.,
then come back... I would have loved to have gone to work but
my husband said the day you go to work is the day I stop at
home so that was that. ..I had hours to waste when I could have
been doing something useful. ..He wanted to take care of me, he
undertook to take care of me.'
The 'taking care' is being interpreted in terms of the man's definition; Mrs.
Smith could have argued that sinee she wanted to work the best way to have
- 74 -
taken care of her would have been to agree. Mrs. Newey would have liked to
have gone on working too. On one occasion she worked for a few mornings to
fill in for her sister-in-law who was ill but she did not dare to tell her
husband. He was adamant against her working -
•He said if you go to work I stop your money. It wasn't

considered really right for a woman to go to work.1
Mrs. Barrett did some paid domestic work during the First World War and she
also did some outwork to eke out her separation allowance but her husband was
terribly shocked when he came back and she never worked again. Mrs.
Wilkinson was anxious to point out that the job she did helping at dinner in
a primary school was only possible because her daughter was at grammar
school and it did not interfere with her family life. Initially on marriage
she had been glad to leave Cadbury's though she had liked working there -
'He (my husband) didn't want me to go on working. I thought

that was lovely. I used to go and visit my friends... I
thought it was a grand life.'
She found that she loved staying at home and being a housewife.
Clearly for Mrs. Wilkinson staying at home was a much more attractive
alternative than going out to work. The kinds of jobs available must have
been an important factor in this. Both Mrs. Barrett and Mrs. Cadle were
severely disappointed in that they were not able to have the careers they
would have chosen. In both cases it was because the families did not have
enough money to consider letting them stay on at school. Mrs. Barrett had
wanted to go into the Post Office but she had to stay at home and help her
mother instead. Mrs. Cadle wanted to be a nurse and has gone on wanting it
all her life. She believes that if she could have trained as a nurse she
would never have got married.
'I wanted to be the sister of a ward. I could always imagine

myself as the sister of a ward. Its the one thing I've wanted,
I've never wanted anything else... I just couldn't settle after
that. I'd just got that in my mind. I thought some day I will
go but I never had the chance. You had to sign up and you had to
have a certain education.'
After working in various jobs before her marriage to a man considerably older
than herself, she did not much enjoy being at home with children. Her
husband was working nights and she found it lonely. She then had to take up
a full-time factory job because her husband was a chronic bronchitic. She
had to work to support the family but she also told me that she worked in
order to keep her children at grammar schools, so that thev would not suffer
from the same disanoointment that she had suffered. At another noint she
said that she worked sr that she could buy a niano for them. She made no
- 75 -
apology for working although she was an unusual phenomenon in the
neighbourhood, and kept up an organised routine for work and home. Her
husband was at home but was not willing to help very much -
'All my weekends were washing, ironing and getting ready for

the next week sort of thing. I never laid off.
He'd cook, used to do all the cooking, always used to cook
the dinner on Sundays. ..he taught me a lot of cooking. (He
had learnt during the war).. .He wouldn't clean and he wouldn't
wash... he'd put it on the line. ..If it wasn't done it was left
till I could do it, I never bothered him. If I asked he'd do
it but I wouldn't ask him, I knew he didn't like doing it.'
Nearly all the women came from large families. Of their mothers who had
not worked, one had twelve children, one had nine children and only one as
few as two children. Of the women interviewed, on the other hand, the
largest family was six (Mrs. Wilkins) and most had two. From about the
1890 's the movement in better off working class families was towards a
smaller family and no work for the women after marriage. This sample are
clearly no exception. Several of the women used methods of birth control and
amongst the younger ones the second world war was often an important factor
in family size.
Given the smaller family and no work outside the home the imoortant
thing for most of the women was an emphasis on a good family life. Again,
the emphasis in the dominant ideology on the quality of mothering and the
importance of home consumption can perhaps be seen reflected in the interview

material. Mrs. Gardiner had worked as a domestic servant before marriage and
she was delighted to be able to stay at home. She described how the most
important thing for her was that she should keep her husband happy - she had
no children but she made a very full life for herself looking after family
and neighbours. She had looked forward to having her own home whilst in
service and never had any ambitions for a different kind of life -
'I've always been happy in my home, of course, I wasn't

ambitious, I was perfectly happy if I could be at home...
I was always at home when my husband came home for a meal ,
I was always there, everything was always ready and I think
that's what brought us the happiness. . .When he came home,
there was always a meal, there was always a fire, he was
always looked after.'
Mrs. Gardiner's objective subordination to her husband's work and nolitics,
for he was very active in the Union and the Labour Party, are quite clear in
the interview - she organised her life around him - but she does not annear
to experience any resentment at all about this. The woman's snhere is the
home, her main tasks loving and caring and those definitions are held to.
Mrs. Folet similarly stresses how staying at home and caring for her husband
- 76 -
and children was more important to her than earning extra money. Caring is
counterposed to money - 'I've lived more for people than for money1, she says
at one point, and at another y 'people have always mattered most'.
Many of the women interviewed clearly had an ideal of family life which
included the involvement of the father with home and children.
'Togetherness' was a constant motif for some. There is considerable evidence
in the Essex Archive that this involvement of the father in the family had
been spreading from the end of the C19. Mr. Bridgewater helped a great deal
in the house and he would help when he came home from work so that they could
then sit down together.
'We used to do things in turns. If we were decorating we'd

strip the walls together, we'd do it, and as one left off, if
he went to work, I'd carry on. . .He helped with everything...
washing up, he'd either wash or wipe, after he'd been to work,
so we could sit down together.'
'Being together', said Mrs. Bridgewater, always came first and they
loved to go on family outings with their daughter. Once their daughter was
born they decided to stop going out as a couple and this seems to have been
a common pattern. Mr^.Wates was very good with the children at nights,
Mr. Folet would look after the children and even change their nappies. Mr.
Wilkinson looked after the garden and the allotment and they went out cycling
together with their daughter. Mrs. and Mr. Smith loved setting up their new
house together and he made all the furniture. In contrast with this
co-operative model virtually none of the fathers of any of the women had ever
helped at all. There is a great emphasis throughout on the benefits of home

life. Mrs. Wilkins contrasts the happiness of her married life with the
patriarchal domination of her childhood and her mother's whole life by an

ill-tempered 'gaffer'. Mrs. Newey and Mrs. Smith had both been living in
furnished rooms before they got their new houses and were absolutely thrilled
with them. Domesticity clearly had real benefits for many of these women
and suburban life was much to be thankful for after the overcrowded conditions
of the inner ring or a farm labourer's cottage.
I was interested in trying to find out how the women learnt to be
wives and mothers. To what extent were they influenced by the new ideas
about mothercraft and home management? In most cases their mothers were
described as the major influence on their style of housewifery. This

coincides with the findings in Ann Oakley's work and with the evidence from
the Essex Archive. All of them had helped in the home as children - some
more and some less. Mrs. Barrett had taken over the effective management of
- 77 -
the house when she left school, Mrs. Gardiner and Mrs. Folet had both learnt
skills in service. Unfortunately these skills were not always useful.
Mrs. Folet was a parlourmaid and consequently when she pot married had no idea
how to cook - she relied entirely on a cookery book and also had to learn how
to look after a whole house rather than cleaning silver and polishing glasses.
Mrs. Gardiner felt that her standards in her own home were established by her
experience in service -
'When you used to have visitors you used to have the spare rooms
to get ready and all the nice things to get out and when I used
to be doing it I used to think to myself when I get married I
want all things nice like that and of course that put that into
me... I made everything, I used to make my sheets, tablecloths,
pillowcases. Then when we had our birthday presents and our
Christmas presents they used to buy you a little fancy thing.. .
a little afternoon tablecloth. . .and, of course, that was always
my best things. I always had my best things all my life, when
I had a visitor come their bedrooms were all put nice, flowers
in the bedroom, I did allthe same sorts of things in a small
way.. .and I was very happy doing it, I like a house and I like
doing things and having things nice.'
Mrs. Wilkins' mother worked full-time so not much 'horeemaking* had gone on in
their house and she had little experience before marriage. However, she said
that apart from a few cookery lessons at school she just picked up what to do.
She was surprised that I should ask, for example, how she learnt to cook.
Cooking is a woman's natural task so it was just absorbed. Housewifery was
not generally introduced in schools until after 1910 so there are variations
in the women's experience. Furthermore, there were probably variations

between town and country on this.
Cookery and sewing seemed to be the activities most enjoyed in the home
and food appeared to play a very important part in some of the households.
Mrs. Barrett and her daughter both talked about the nlace of food in their
family and how important a good meal was. Some of the women had a real
interest in cooking and collected reciDes from women's magazines or had recine
books. Mrs. Smith was so interested in cookery that she did advanced classes
at nightschool and technical school. Mrs. Folet did cake decoration at
nightschool. Those who moved into their homes in the later 20 's and 30 's had
gas stoves when they moved in. The early municipal estate where Mrs. Smith
and Mrs. Newey lived did not have gas when they first arrived. After the
early 20's gas and electricity were usually made available by the council but
often people could not afford it. Mr. Newey regarded electricity as
unnecessary and refused to snend any money on it - Mrs. Newey had to save up
for it from her housekeeping and also got a contribution fron a married
daughter who was living with them.
- 78 -
The women who got married in the 30' s usually had a vacuum and an
electric iron quite soon. Those married in the 20fs had to wait a while.
Most of the women had sewing machines and tried to make their own and the
children's clothes. The majority of the respondents tried to have some sort
of routine for housework - some were clearly nore organised than others.
Those with husbands working nights had serious problems about a routine since
normally their housework would have to be done in the evenings and the
children taken out during the day so that the house would be quiet while the
father was asleep. However, this seemed to be taken as simply something to

be lived with. It became clear how crucial the nature of the husband's work
was to the organisation of the home. The servicing of the breadwinner took
priority and much was centred around that. Mrs. Smith's husband was a
policeman and for years he worked on four hour shifts so that her days were
broken up differently from those of most of the women in the neighbourhood.
Furthermore, he had a different day off each week so that it was impossible
to have a routine -
'You can't do that with a policeman's life, you have a

different day off every week. You couldn't keep to a
routine, when he had a day off you'd go out.'
In spite of husbands helping in the house most of the women were very
clear about domestic work being a woman's job. When asked about children
helping with housework most of those with children of both sexes were quite
explicit about having different expectations for boys and girls. Mrs.
Harrison, Mrs. Barrett's daughter, was anxious to point out that her mother
never expected her to do more than 'little jobs' -

♦Mrs. Barrett. They used to do odd jobs.
Mrs. Harrison. She didn't make slaves of us, not like
some of the children of that age ... we'd do little
jobs... we used to do jobs to get our picture money...
in those days you used to have to clean all your cutlery,
we used to do that, just various small jobs, she never
asked us to do a floor or anything like that... just small
jobs.
Q. Did you expect Audrey to help more than the boys?

Mrs. B. Well, I don't think the boys did anything did they?
Mrs. H. That's right.'
Mrs. Cadle also expected her daughters to help, but not her son -
•Well with a boy you give a bit, don't you, and being the
only boy... he wasn't spoilt, but I don't know, there's
something about a boy that's different, most mothers say
this, they seem more loveable than girls somehow, they tend
to cling to mothers more... of course my girls rcot jealous,
they always thought I was making more of him...1
- 79 -
It sounds as if her daughters might have had a case! None of the girls
seem to have been expected to do a great deal of work in the house, however,
it is the 'little jobs1 that set the tone. This is probably connected with
their mothers having more time in the home, having houses that were
relatively easy to run, and having less children to cooe with. Many of the
women wanted their own children to have an easier time than they themselves
had had. The stress is on the child's choosing to 'play* at cooking with
Mummy, for example, rather than being pressed into it. Mrs. Bridgewater
exemplifies this attitude -
•Q, Did you expect her to help?
Mrs. B. Not very much, I let her do what she wanted, say if
she wanted to clean her bedroom. . .if she wanted to help with
the cooking I let her but I never forced her to do anything. ..
you see I was never allowed to go dancing or anything like that
so I used to let her go... My parents were quite Victorian, we
could go to Church but that was it... I was determined I wasn't
going to do that with Diana, and she was a good girl...9
An ideal which stressed mutuality rather than the law of the father can
also be observed in relation to decision making in the family. In some of
the households major decisions were made jointly but in others the husband
continued to make the most important decisions. Mr. Wates, for example,
always decided on house buying. Usually the wife was recognised as having
responsibility for the children, and in most cases there seems to have been
a considerable amount of agreement in relation to discipline. The most
striking exception to this is Mr. Barrett and it is important to note that

their marriage took place in 1906 whereas some of the couples were not
married until the 30* s. Mr. Barrett was of the old school; even the dog
would move from its position by the fire when he came into the room. No
other children were allowed into the house when he was there and no talking
at meals is a family tradition which is still maintained now.
Finally, how did the women experience the new estates on which they were
living. The two women who moved into Birmingham onto new estates without
children both suffered from terrible loneliness which in each case was much
modified by the birth of a child. Mrs. Folet came from service and hated
being in the house all day by herself -
•I missed the girls terribly, I mean there were six of us and

I really missed them terribly. .. I 'd been here a month before
a woman spoke to me and there was a lady at the end house
shouted 'Good Mornine:' when I was hanînn; out ray washing and I
came in and cried...'
Mrs. Smith's problems with filling up her time have already been mentioned.
- 80 -
In both these cases the loneliness was connected to geographical mobility
rather than the nature of the estates. Both women gradually made close
friends in the area and the neighbourhood has provided their social life ever
since. Mrs. Barrett and Mrs. Bridgewater were the only two others without
family immediately nearby. The former never made many friends - she had one
neighbour who she relied on a good deal but for the rest she kept herself to
herself. She related this to the struggle it was for most of the families
in her area to survive at all and the consequent lack of time or energy for
anything else. Mrs. Bridgewater had friendly chats and cups of coffee with
neighbours and relied a good deal on a kindly pretend *auntf but she
classified these relationships as completely different from the closeness she
had with her husband. 'If he was out1, she said, 'I lived for him to come
back*. The other seven women all retained very close connections with their
families and relatives - most of them visited their mothers while they were
alive very regularly, often three or four times a êek or more. Mrs. Wates'
two brothers-in-law both bought houses on the same estate as them in Perry Bar.
Mrs. Wilkins lived with her sister, Mrs. Gardiner lived with her parents.
Several mentioned that the fact that they were nearly all young couples with
children on the new estates made contact very easy. There was a good deal
of tea drinking but not much established in the way of close friendships.
Closeness was reserved for the family. Only Mrs. Newey and Mrs. Gardiner had
regular contacts outside of the family and iramedia*** neighbourhood since they
were both in the Labour Party, explicitly because of their husbands'
involvement. Mrs. Newey discussed in the interview with Mrs. Smith the fact
that she had been connected with the Conservative Women's Group - they both
confirmed that it made absolutely no difference to their friendship. Mrs.
Cadle related her lack of friends to her mobility. She lived on two different
new estates, firstly in the Alum Rock area and then in Kin^standing. This,
combined with her husband's jealousy made it difficult for her to make friends.
After her children had grown up Mrs. Barrett devoted herself to voluntary work
and got involved at county level with the British Legion; nevertheless, she
seemed to sum up the relation of most of the women to the public world when
she said, 'I never knew much of the outside'. It *vas home and family which
provided the boundaries of these women's experience, rather than the new
estates in themselves.
Conclusion
The limitations of this study are obvious - they relate primarily to the
small sample and the breadth of the topic. There is a great deal more
- 81 -
interesting material on the tapes which could have been commented on - for
example, on shopping, money and the welfare clinics. But although many of
the sub-topics could have been treated as topics in themselves I was most
interested in attempting to get a general picture of the home life of married
women on the new estates in the 20* s and 30* s. There is considerable
evidence from the tapes that these women enjoyed a good family life and that
they were able to have higher expectations of it than their parents had had.
This was possible because of smaller families , less financial hardship and
better housing. But this enjoyment must be understood within the existing
ideological structures. The style of life of married women is extremely
restricted - monogamy is assumed, the subordination of women is assumed,

virtually no life outside the home is assumed and no on. A woman's
consciousness is an ideological structure. This means that oral evidence
cannot be read straight - it must be understood within its context which in
this case is the prevailing views of hone and family. We can learn from
written materials the nature of the systematised ideology - oral evidence
gives us some of the tools for finding out how that was lived through.
- 82 -
Footnotes
1. Briggs, A.f History of Birmingham, Vol.2, 1952. Chapter on 'Civic

Developments' •
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid. , p. 305.
5. Ibid., p. 384.
6. Tiptaft, N. , So this is Birmingham, 1974. Introduction.
7. Op. cit. Chapter on 'Work1.
8. Briggs, op. cit., p. 286.
9. John 0' London's Weekly, 24.1.25. Vivian, H., 'The Spirit of Birmingham'.
10. Publisher's Circular, May 1934. Faulkner, L.W. , 'Birmingham; England's

Second City' •
11. Priestley, J.B., English Journey, 1933, p. 85.
12. Briggs, op. cit.
13. Glass, D.V., The Social Background of a Plan, 1938, p. 12.
14. Briggs, op. cit.
15. Bournville Village Trust. When We Build Again. 1941, p. 96.
16. Branson and Heinemann, Britain in the 1930' s, 1971, d.83.
17. Tiptaft, op. cit.
18. Branson, N. , Britain in the 1920' s, 1971, Chanter on 'Women'.
19. Stopes, M. , Marriage in My Time, 1935, n.8.
2C The Motherhood Book, n.n., p. 17.
21. Peel, C.S., Life's Enchanted Cup, 1933, p. 244.
- 83 -
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Oral History Society

Married Women at Home in Birmingham in the 1920's and 1930's

Married Women at Home in Birmingham in the 1920 's and 1930' s,

a concern to try to begin to establish both some of the determinants of the

estates in Birmingham were like in the 1920 fs and 1930 's.

1. Housing and Industry.

Government finance. This emphasis on subsidised municipal housing was

badly affected by the retrenchment of the 1920fs. Neville Chamberlain's

only build where private enterprise wouldn't.

Housing needs were being discussed in Birmingham as early as 1917 and

costs, a low rate of interest, a relatively favourable unemployment rate in

offered by Building Societies which made a point of helping areas which

'Most of the phases in Birmingham's growth can be studied in the

the particular industrial development of the city. On a national scale,

semi-skilled factory production. Between 1914-18 in Birmingham there had

been large-scale conversion of the local industrial structure to war-time

term problem of a post-war economy was better tackled in Birmingham than in

many other areas. The presence of plentiful loaal capital, of skilled

which more than balanced the decline of the old.

the new lighter metal industries. Norman Tiptaft, a prominent local

nothing else.' The dominant industrial concerns were the GEC

established at Witton in 19O1 which placed Birmingham well in the vanguard of

electrical engineering; Cadbury's which by 1939 was employing over 10,000;

the M & B Breweries established in 1898. Other important areas were

carton-making, mattresses, paint, plastics, baskets and dry cleaning.

Although he is right to stress the importance of diversity, Tintaft

factor in maintaining her industrial pre-eminance. The major expansion was

in the new electrical industries. It was marked by a tendency to

amalgamation and the unified control of companies, the increasing

specialisation of plants, the development of flow production and a revolution

in management, together with a relatively rapid rate of technical advance and

some de-skilling. By the 30 fs many of the Birmingham factories were

The willingness of new firms to settle in Birmingham was a recognition

city's information bureau described Birmingham as the 'outstanding example

"Racing Specials11 , their sticky cheap furniture, their fly-blown pastry,

The structure of Birmingham industry was clearly demarcated according

throughout the country were all characterised by their spaciousness. They

1930's. Shrewsbury had 30 churches, 15 church halls and parish rooms, 5

of retrenchment. Voluntary organisations such as the Birmingham Council for

The emphasis on space in the Birmingham estates was partly inspired by

the Bournville development. Unfortunately, the Bournville policy without

arrangement had to be made. Attempts were made to provide entertainment

Housing policy inevitably reflects the dominant ideas in the society

already existing suburban developments. They assumed the centrality of the

provides us with a concrete example of the way in which ideological pressures

The experience of married women in Birmingham in the 20 fs and 30 \s was,

development of industrial capitalism the ideology of domesticity - which

could at its simplest be described as the view that a woman's place is in

relegation of the woman to the latter. It becomes natural that women

should stay at home and that if they do work it should be defined as a

of the family - incorporating many aspects of an earlier ideal but also

reflected in the sharp decline in family size in the 1920's. Between

increase in the numbers of married women working. In 1921 8.9% of married

women were 'gainfully employed' and in 1931 10.7%. Furthermore, in the

husband's illness or unemployment. It was clearly an extremely important

on domestic consumption rather than on production for export. The last

saw the development of advertising on a large scale which was crucially

directed industries. A typical woman's magazine of the period would be

advertising such items as synthetic fabrics, hair and beauty preparations,

importance of motherhood to the survival of the nation; this found

expression in the influential work of Marie S topes. Despite her progressive

as The Motherhood Book. Apart from proclaiming that: 'Happy, healthy

the state for child-rearing, because it is seen as so important. Child