Voices of Postwar England

Jean Eagles was born in Liverpool in 1946 and lived in Myrtle House, a tenement block of flats, in the inner city. In the following excerpt she details a common experience for many people, the close proximity of her extended family:

Length of audio clip: 1 min 57 secs.

Jean: But, yeah, as I say, growing up in the tenements and, you know, like years ago everyone was sort of the same weren’t they. I never ever thought there was rich people, I always thought everyone was poor and it’s only as you get old and you listen to people go, we went on holiday, we had this, we had a garden I think, god there must have been rich people. You know because we certainly weren’t, you know. So…

Hilary: What was Myrtle House like?

Jean: There was, how many? Twenty-three, so there was four storeys of twenty-three, there was no number thirteen cos that was unlucky, they never ever had a thirteen and we lived in fifteen D and my auntie lived in fourteen D, and we also had an auntie that lived in twelve C. But my mum, well we called her mam we didn’t call her mum, me mam’s sister, two sisters and a brother lived next door to us. But then they all moved from Myrtle House to Minto Street in Kensington so they all sort of still kept together you know as sisters and that.

Hilary: When did they make that move (talk over) from Myrtle House to Minto Street?

Jean: When the tennies were getting knocked down, it was compulsory, they had to move, yeah […]

Hilary: Can I take you back a bit and ask, I mean, you kind of explained that, you know, a lot of her sisters and her brother were kind of living in Myrtle House, where had they lived before? Where had your mum and her family grown up?

Jean: Well they all, most of them from the tennies, all moved up from Scotland Road, Christian Street, you know they all sort of lived there, and then umm just, I think it was after the war it was all tennies weren’t it, I can’t remember, and they all moved up, so they were all like neighbours you know from down Christian Street way. Like that’s where my dad came from round that way, Scotland Road, Gerrard Gardens, one of the, one of my aunties lived in Gerrard Gardens.