(Mary) Elizabeth Witty

AElizabeth was very houseproud but she expected her daughters to all the work. There was a big basement living kitchen in the house in Leighton Lane where everybody went. When looking after children Elizabeth sat on a chair there and they played round her. There was a witch’s ball hanging in the window of the kitchen which can be seen at basement level in the photographs and when they went to Leeds on holiday from Birmingham, Jack and Enid used to run up the road looking for the ball.  Elizabeth was an excellent needlewoman and made all her daughters’ clothes.  She was also an alcholic. Jack Houghton went to the off sales at the hotel on the corner with a jug to fetch her beer and her daughter Edith remembers finding bottles hidden everywhere about the house.

Edith went to work when her husband Walter was first ill, shortly after they married, to pay the rent and her mother looked after the children but it got too much and she and Walt had to move in with Andrew and Elizabeth. When Walt was ill for a year in Selly Oak and Edith had no money coming in her dad used to send her some. Elizabeth didn’t like it when Walter gave her the look. She seems to have been a nervous sort of woman who kept to the house.  She refused to emigrate to Canada when Andrew wanted to.