Betty, May & Zillah at 4 Tyne Court, Sutton Coldfield February 1992
We are looking at old family photos* and the recording starts with May recalling a photo of Pop (their father, Joseph Walter Deasington) walking jauntily along at Boscombe in Bournemouth. She reveals that during that holiday Zillah had a fling with an airman “– a very posh one, too!”
There follow various memories of family holidays, including ones in Rhyl and Blackpool where the whole family came. Betty sings a risqué song of the time “Charlie, take it away” and they remember Teddy Brown and his wife who were with them in Blackpool.
Rene Highfield came along too and met an Italian man. May was about 14 then so this would have been around … (Ah, I realise I don’t have May’s birth and death dates).
At one point mother shows me a photo, blood she says, of herself, Kath, Frank, May paddling in the sea at Rhyl with Jack with very blonde hair and Tony. Unfortunately, I don’t have that one, nor the one of Pop on the tennis court which is referred to. Others taken at the farm which include Vera I do have scans of. I show them my family tree – hand drawn of course –and the name Vera Glover comes up. Her mother was a next-door neighbour of Nana’s mother (i.e. Zilla Eardley). Tunstall is mentioned again. Vera Glover, who had poor health, left Zillah Ford a bit of money in her will. Her husband was Geoff Glover.
They start talking about Zilla (née Eardley) their grandmother and how she and William Goodfellow moved house a lot. Instead of re-decorating she would rent another house without telling her husband. When they got old, Pop brought them from the Potteries to live with him and Nana and the children. Betty says that there were 16 in the house at that time. Their mother sent her washing out. Mother recalls her grandmother Zilla’s sister, Mary. Zilla senior lost all her boys in childbirth, which was probably why when Bernard was born she made a great fuss of him. Their brother Joey, the first born, died at 18 months. This part of the recording is very good. Auntie Gertie emigrated to Canada first and then went to the US but her husband was British. Aunts Ada and Gertie and Vera were all school teachers.
About one hour in the aunts get distracted and start talking about Christmas trees.
Pop’s mother was called Elizabeth. Betty was named after her. Elizabeth senior died in 1912. The Goodfellows were rather gentle people. William had been a foreman at a brickworks. Pop’s father wasn’t so nice, apparently – he was rather bossy. Then there were Jenny (or Ginny) and May, Pop’s aunts. They are unsure how Jenny’s name was spelt (I’ve since discovered her actual names were Sarah Jane). They talk about the different addresses where they lived. The story of aunt Jenny/Ginny and the Saturday penny comes up. She married someone called Rook. There was only one child, which died. Betty talks about Grahame taking her to see the old family house – Pop’s parents’ house, that is – in Newcastle under Lyme. She says it was a proper miner’s cottage. They think that Nana was born and raised in Burslem. According to Betty, their grandfather, i.e. Pop’s father (also called Joseph), was a miner. When she was young Nana trained to be a milliner. But she was rather a mother’s girl so she stayed at home with grandma Goodfellow. They say she was good at dressing a plain hat, and good at handicrafts generally. In 1926 everyone was still at home. They used to have a proper breakfast every day with bacon and egg. Pop would make Sunday breakfast for the family. In the recording I’m trying to imagine out loud how breakfasts and early mornings would have been with up to 16 people in the house. They say that Connie helped to bath the little ones. And Zillah says her job was to fill the coal buckets. One of them says that her parents met when Pop saw Nana standing at a doorway on the tram somewhere in the Potteries. Later, when Pop met her mother Zilla she couldn’t understand his speech, which was very fast, and she said to Nana, “Well, he’s either an Irishman or a foreigner.” At that first meeting, Pop was wearing a fancy patterned waist coat. They recall he liked to wear expensive clothes. He was an electrical engineer of sorts at this stage. He worked on the Newcastle line, the first electrified line. May is surprisingly knowledgeable about this. He drove the first tram car in Newcastle. Zillah says, “I’m going to make another cup of tea”. Then there is a conversation about photographs taken somewhere in the country, perhaps Bayton, with Kath, Vera Glover and the farmer called Jack Meredith.
I ask about the religious faith on Grandma Zilla’s side (they were Methodists or Baptists).
At this point, Tricia returns. She talks about her sister Jodie’s foster children.
They show Tricia the photos taken on that day at the farm with Kath, Vera, etc wearing the patterned trouser suits.
*I have scans of these photos and Pam may have the originals