Walter Houghton

W e don’t know how Edith and Walter met but once they had he spent as much, if not more, time at the Barkers than his own home.  I suspect there was a great difference in levels of comfort and homeliness between the two and there were five women to look after him at the Barkers – Andrew would have been away at the war.  Edith did not realise the age difference between them (2y 5m) until her friends accused her of cradle snatching.  Walter never wore and overcoat and Edith looked after him from the moment she met him.  They married on 27th December 1920 when he was 19 and she 22, not 23 and 24 as it says on the marriage certificate.  They lived with the Barkers to start with – all of them together with Hilda’s husband and two year old son – in the 5 roomed 15 Leighton Lane.  They later had a little house of their own in the road next to the place where they washed the milk bottles which worried Edith because she thought it might wake baby Jack but he slept through.  The Austin Motor Company advertised in all the northern papers at the end of the twenties for skilled craftsmen and Walt got a job there.  He lodged in Selly Oak to start with, with a very nice lady who said if he’d like to bring his wife and family down to see if they liked it, they could stay with her as well.  Just before they set off Jack cut his hair and it was such a mess that his mother had to cut it very short to tidy it up.  She told him to keep his hat on on the train and told Enid not to ask to take her hat off as Jack would want to do so as well.  She did and so he did and announced to the other people in the carriage in a broad Yorkshire accent that his mother did not want him to take his hat off because he had an awful head.  People, of course, thought that his hair had been cut because of lice or disease and poor Edith had to try and convince them otherwise.

Walt had had long periods off work when Andrew would help the family with money.  He had major surgery in Selly Oak which involved collapsing a lung and inserting a drain in the other.  He was in hospital for almost a year during which time Sally and Albert used to come down at weekends to look after the children while Edith went to visit him in hospital.  Edith went some way to repaying this when Sally’s eldest son contracted the meningitis that took his sight and eventually killed him.

Walt’s health was better after the operation but to save him standing in the wet and cold waiting for the tram after work the family moved to Rubery which was much closer.  They rented a private house in Cliff Rock Road to begin with but later moved to 219 a council house as the rent was much cheaper.  Walter also bought an Austin 7 to get to work and back in.  Everything was geared to keeping him at work.  Very rural Rubery was  a huge culture shock to a family from Leeds.  They had all liked Selly Oak -Jack said it was the happiest time of his life with the canal and railway to play on and he and Edith used to go to the cinema in Stirchley while Enid was at school.  He talked his father into keeping bees in Rubery to give him an interest.

When Walter died -the day after his son-in-law Ben Clarke managed to get him into hospital and only after he had made sure that his son Jack dangerously ill in the same hospital after major operations, was going to pull through – the surgeon who had done his operation all those years before said he had never expected him to survive so long.

When Walter died, Edith took in lodgers to make ends meet.  She had a couple of lady schoolteachers.  In 1953 she married Harold Seaman also a sheet metal worker though not as gifted as Walter who they had known  slightly in Leeds -he worked in the next shop to Walter at one time – and who, with his wife, had also moved to work at the Austin.

Walter had chest problems from birth – living in a cold, damp, back to back can’t have helped.  He had bouts of illness throughout his life but while they were living in Selly Oak he had