About the Book

The second part of Kathleen Hann's autobiography, "Still Telling It As It Was", sees us through her early married life in the Black Country from 1951 to her move to Telford in 1969. With her husband Peter, just demobbed, they face financial hardship due to low wages and high housing costs. Bringing up three children at the time, Kathleen shows her love, care, mettle and great skills with "make do and mend" which have been passed on by her mother.

Unwittingly renting a room to a prostitute and her pimp, buying a war bombed house, and getting a failing public house back on its feet are just a few of the trials and tribulations which Kathleen and Peter face in this story. Tales of terribly hard physical labour for both of them, which left permanent physical and mental scars, are retold with chilling accuracy.

The progress of her son's major illness is also described with great passion and dignity, especially considering the way she was treated by the some of the medical profession at the time.

There are lighter notes though : the DIY chimney sweeping saga, the Golden Child who stuffed her knickers down the drains, and Kathleen's own very short fuse to an exploding temper – these all bring very different and sometimes highly amusing insights into this very closely knit and loving family.

A vital document for any social historian, or a grippingly real story of hardship in the Black Country of the 1950s and 60s, this book is a prime candidate for anyone's must read list.

About the Author

Kathleen Hann was born in the heart of the Black Country in 1930. Married to Peter in 1951, they lived though a time of hardship with their three children in the 1950s and 60s, until their move to Telford in 1969. She has always loved reading and writing, but as a child did not even have such simplicities as a sheet of paper and a pencil to write her stories with. Kathleen's loving nature, her skills with what she calls "make do and mend", and her great passion for her family have brought her though those hard times - times which have left an indelible mark upon her.

Today in her seventies, she sits at her computer looking out over her adopted county of Shropshire, and writes away the pain and injustices of the past. Her family has now spread down through four generations, but every single member of that family is fully aware of their own family social history, thanks to Kathleen's writings.

When her two daughters obtained their degrees in later life, Kathleen took a more active interest in writing. She was further spurred on by a "highly educated middle class" lady historian, who's coldly statistical version of working class history so angered her that she decided to put the story straight. Kathleen Hann has written from the heart, and we can understand only too easily that she has seen more than her fair share of worry and despair. She is still not afraid to relate the harsh truths about her life, and of those around her.

Kathleen Hann, age 20 ish.

Excerpts :

Page 20 : "Babies"

At that time most woman had their babies at home, but because we were quite crowded I was allowed to go into a maternity home. After I had been in labour for several hours, my sister ran three streets to the nearest phone box to call for an ambulance. I don't know the reason why, but no-one was allowed to come into the ambulance with me. I remember how my Mom held my hand as she came right to the door of the ambulance with me, I climbed the steps then she finally had to let go and the door was then slammed shut in her face. There was no attendant, only the driver, and I was completely alone and trembling with fear.

I was also very worried about my Mom not being able to have any information, because I knew how much she would worry. It was a very long and terrifying three mile journey for me to the Portland House maternity home at Wednesbury.

I was taken into a room and examined, and told that it would be some hours before the baby was born. I was left alone in that room for what seemed to be forever. Every so often a nurse would put her head around the door to see if I was alright.

Finally after I had been there for twelve hours and when the baby was about to be born some one shoved the gas and air under my nose, the midwife came and my beautiful baby daughter was born.

She weighed seven pounds, had very dark hair and she was (and still is) the image of Peter. In the space of a few hours I had gone from being a very scared ignorant young girl to a mother (a natural mother, or as my daughters would now say, an Earth mother). I was full of love for my baby, and as I held her close to me it immediately felt that was the way it was always meant to be.

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Page 43 : "That Stove"

Mom, my aunts and my sister, all gave us bits and pieces. My aunt had thrown an old gas stove down the bottom of her garden and it had been left there to rust for more than five years. In fact, it had settled down into the ground and was almost covered with weeds growing on the outside and there were even weeds growing in the inside of the oven.

Now, even I find it incredible to believe the great extent which we had to go through, and the awful difficulties we had, to try to live decently throughout those terrible times. We had no financial help from any quarter, but somehow we managed to retrieve that stove from the garden, clear out the weeds and take it to Mom's house, where she spent many days cleaning it.

Goodness only knows what she used to clean it. I know that she used a lot of elbow grease and had very sore fingers, but it finally came up looking good - my Mom was an expert at “make do and mend”. By that time I had learned a great deal from her, and was not very far behind her in the coping stakes, and I think this was our very best effort, and by far our greatest ever achievement. I believe that even if my Mom and I had our hands tied behind our backs, and standing on our heads, we could both have achieved a first class degree in economics - that is if we had been given the chance.

We managed to get the stove connected, and although it seems incredible, and even now very hard for me to believe, we were able to get five more years use out of that stove.

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Page 58-60 : "The Prostitute and her Pimp"

We advertised the room, and a very smart young man came to see us. He said that he was married, and didn't want his wife to work, so she would be at home during the day. I was quite happy with that arrangement, although I did wonder why she hadn't come with him to view the room. He was more than happy with the room and we arranged a date for them to move in. I seem to remember that he paid a couple of weeks rent in advance.

We charged two pounds a week for the room, which included gas and electricity and use of the kitchen. As soon as they moved in, I knew that we had made a terrible mistake, and that it would never work. The young man was very pleasant, but his wife, who we later found out wasn't his wife at all, was a very sullen and disagreeable person.

She never spoke to me - she would come downstairs, put the gas on in the oven without cooking anything and then march back upstairs. Maybe she thought that they weren't getting their two pounds worth. Once, she came down into the hall where the baby was just learning to walk a few steps. She accidentally knocked the baby down, BUT when she turned round to see what had been in her way and she saw that it was the baby, she just shrugged her shoulders and walked away without picking up the baby or seeing if she was hurt.

That made me very angry.

I was very protective of my babies, and I had a right go at her. I was quite placid most of the time, until I thought that anyone meant harm to our children. She used to go out every morning and come back just before her “husband” returned from work. It wasn't long before our neighbour had the great pleasure of putting me in the picture, telling me that our so called female lodger was a well known prostitute, and that her so called “husband” had been in jail for being her pimp !

So here was another worry we had to deal with, and one which we could well have done without.

She never attempted to bring anyone back to our house, but even so, when we knew of her “business” we decided that we didn't want either of them anywhere near us, or our babies.

We wanted them out.

I remember that my twenty seventh birthday was on a Saturday. Peter had to work during the morning, but before he went to work he told the “husband” that he wanted them out before he came home at lunch time. The man said that they had no intention of moving, that the law was on their side, and that we were powerless and couldn't do a thing to make them move. Peter told him, law or no law, that he would physically remove them and their belongings if they were still at our house when he came home from work.

I was now pregnant with our third baby, and I was in no state to worry about the lodgers. It seemed to me that I was crying all the time. I was terrified that there would be trouble if they didn't go before Peter returned from work. I stayed in our front room with the babies, too scared to make a move. I really hated any arguments.

I was listening really hard for the least sound of movement, but there was no sound at all, and it seemed that the morning would go on for ever. I was quite sure that they were going to stay put.

Then, about an hour before Peter was due home, I heard them both coming down the stairs, both loaded up with their goods. Neither of them made the slightest attempt to speak to me.

They gave the front door a loud bang as they went out, and it was with great relief as I watched them struggling down the drive loaded up with their goods. I was very glad to see the back of them, even though we couldn't afford to lose the several weeks rent money which they owed us. I believe that, as the law stood then, we would have had great trouble in getting them out, fortunately, it wasn't put to the test.

I waited until Peter came home before venturing into the bedroom they had occupied. However, when we went into the room, we both stood there dumbstruck, looking in complete and utter amazement and dismay at the shambles they had created. Although they had only been in the room for about two months, it was totally and utterly destroyed. It was filthy; there were dozens of empty bottles under the bed. The wallpaper, with which Peter had decorated the room, had been deliberately ruined. The new bed, which had been our very first piece of brand new furniture in our six years of marriage, and which I had chosen, and more importantly which we had saved, planned and paid our hard earned cash for, was now deliberately soiled. It was filthy, absolutely filthy, and it stank.

Peter held me tightly and we both broke down in tears and cried into each other's arms. What an awful way to spend my birthday.

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Text in "About the author" and "About this book" are copyright © David Harris 2005, 2006 and may not be used without prior authorisation.

Both part one, "Tell It As It Was", and part two "Still Telling It As It Was" are available direct from Kathleen. We can accept cheques and postal orders.

PLEASE MAKE CHEQUES/POs OUT TO MRS K. HANN

£10-99 each book, or £20 for the two including post to UK mainland.

Kathleen Hann, 90 Malvern Crescent, Little Dawley, Telford, TF4 3JF.