When as a youngster I used to hang around the coffee bars in Balsall Heath and there were more than enough of those. Most of these coffee bars were frequented by the business girls of the area, I always found them easy to get on with and they were very generous to the young people who used those places.
I knew most of them by name, and as I have said before, one or two had boyfriends but not many of them had pimps now I'm not saying none on them did, but not many. The other thing I noticed was not many of them were Birmingham girls and most of them came from up north from Leeds and Bradford.
At that time there was very little complaint from the residents of the area about the girls working practises because most of the girls picked up their clients in the coffee bars and went back to their houses with them. It was only later when most of the coffee bars closed and the police drove the girls off the street when places like Cheddar Rd came into their own.