bilsat
As I was born in the late 40's all my personal memories are of the same period as you, anything I know of prior to that are memories that have been related to me or I have read them somewhere.
Our house in nechells was of a two up and one down design. When we first moved in there were 4 of us, my sister, my brother, my mother and myself. We had one electric light downstaitrs, one electric light upstairs and one gaslight. In the scullery an area of about 3ft x 5ft there was another electric light. This was where we washed ourselves, prepared our food and did most of our laundry all without the benefit of hot water. All our hot water had to be boiled on the tiny little gas stove at the bottom of the stairs in the little 10ft x 10ft living room.
The gas stove was the only improvement made in the 10 years that we lived there. They installed it shortly after we moved in and removed the old cast iron range, Our toilet was up the yard in a bock of five shared by the 10 houses that made up our court. There were also two wash houses (brewhouses), These were used infrequently because of the extra cost of fuel to heat the boiler.
When it came to heating the house or doing the washing in the winter it was no contest. Anyway the washing could always be boiled in a bucket on the gas stove.
In the ten years we lived there, my mother met my stepfather and had two more kids (luckily we moved before she had the last two). That still made a total of 7 of us in that little house. So when my stepfather moved in his 3 sisters from Ireland, I was on the way back to my grandmothers in Balsall Heath. Which at that time compared to Nechells was a wonderland.
And none of this was in the early 20's or 30.s, but in the 50's and 60's.
Phil