Description:One elderly resident of Kingstanding Estate in east Birmingham recalled that as tenants gradually began to settle into their new lives they also started to manage their money better and got better dressed.<small><sup>1</sup></small> In poorer households this might have meant cutbacks in other areas. A social study carried out at Kingstanding during 1938-1939 noted some families over-furnished their homes with unnecessary extras ‘to improve the standard of comfort or “respectability” in a family, and it is often this quite laudable ambition which leads people to incur heavy weekly instalment debts’.<small><sup>2</sup></small>
Council houses at Weoley Castle were often fitted with modern kitchen appliances like <a href="http://www.search.suburbanbirmingham.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=1482"> hot water boilers</a> and<a href="http://www.search.suburbanbirmingham.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=1486"> gas ovens</a> as standard. Mick Hinton described his first impressions of the Triplex oven and ‘ultra-modern fireplace’ in their new house at Danesbury Road, Kingstanding: ‘I mean we’d really arrived on the scene. It was a wonder we didn’t open it up to the public to see’.<small><sup>3</sup></small> New kitchen and bathroom appliances also consumed more gas, electricity and water than in the slums, adding to the cost of household bills.
In many interviews, working-class people comment on their love of music and dancing. Many youngsters who moved to new estates could play a musical instrument, and would form small groups, often finding an audience at the popular dances organised by the new community organisations.<small><sup>4</sup></small> At this time, the home was also becoming the main focus of working-class leisure activity.<small><sup>5</sup></small> New appliances were increasingly found in working-class lounges as they were manufactured more cheaply.
This gramophone is fairly typical of the period, comprising a wooden case with metal hinges, its lid opening to reveal a turntable with green cover and white steel arm. They were often alluringly marketed in advertisements in the popular press as essential lifestyle options, the hire-purchase system allowing working-class families to pay in instalments. In some homes domestic debt became unmanageable, the modern, consumerist ethos did not necessarily making working-class lives any easier, and possessing such items could work against such families when times were hard. Margaret Smith of the Stonehouse Estate near Weoley Castle noted when her father was unemployed the Means Test officials who visited the house cut the family’s benefits when they saw a gramophone and two Caruso records, cutting their benefits to 22s 6d per week.<small><sup>6</sup></small>
<font color="#666633"><small><sup>1</sup>Interview with Fred and Doreen Heath, 1999, City Sound Archive [BM&AG: R1283-1284]
<sup>2</sup> Nutrition and size of family. Report on a new housing estate-1939. Prepared for the Birmingham Social Survey Committee, by M.S. Soutar, E.H. Wilkins and P. Sargant Florence, (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1939), pp.39-40; Meller, Helen, Kingstanding and Villeurbanne in 1934: the tale of two housing estates in Birmingham and Lyons (Chapter 6), European cities 1890-1930s: history, culture and the built environment (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2001), p.241-2
<sup>3</sup> Interview with Mick Hinton, 1999, City Sound Archive [BM&AG: R1281-1282]
<sup>4</sup> Ibid., passim
<sup>5</sup> Meller, op. cit., 242
<sup>6</sup> Some memories of a Northfield woman by Margaret Smith, Carl Chinn Archive [BA&H: MS 1907/7/10] p.8</font></small>