Bob and May Whitehouse

Bob and May Whitehouse are a retired couple who used to be youth workers at Ancoats Lads’ Club. We heard about them through the head teacher at Ancoats Nursery, Palmerston Street. We wanted to interview them for Have Your Say, so they could tell us some of their memories of the area. They have lived in Ancoats for sixty one years!

We met with Bob and May one afternoon in Ancoats Nursery. We asked them when they had met each other. May told us, “We were in this nursery as children. That would be 1936/37. I met Bob again at The Roundhouse. At the time, it was a youth club. A lot of clubs in those days used to be Lads’ Clubs only, but The Roundhouse was mixed. A very good club it was! As the name suggests, it was a big round building. I believe it was a church in earlier times. Priests used to hide in tunnels which ran underneath it!”

We asked about life in the 1930’s and wondered how they spent their leisure time and whether there was much money to spend.

Bob remembered, “There used to be a picture house next door to Ancoats Nursery called the Palmerston. Everyone called it ‘the Palmy’ for short. My gran used to work there taking tickets. She used to let me in for nothing.”

We commented on Bob’s good fortune. It must have been many a child’s dream to get in the picture house for free. Bob also told us “My gran owned stables nearby. My grand-dad used to have trotting horses. He’d come down Palmerston Street on a sulky!” (A sulky is a small cart with a very low seat at the back. They use them nowadays for training horses).

One time, Bob’s grand-dad owed a man £5. He opened the oxo tin which he kept his money in, and about £200 was swept away by the wind! People were picking it up on the street. This was in the late thirties when £1 was a week’s wages! Times when, if you didn’t work, you just didn’t have money.

“This area has always been tough,” Bob told us. “The police walked about in two’s and three’s.”

We asked Bob and May how they had first got involved in youth work. May told us, “Years ago when we started at the Lads’ Club, we did it voluntary. Everyone did. Later, we got paid. I was the only woman at the club, when I was behind the bar serving crisps and drinks.”

Then her face clouded. “I got paid five shillings. The men got seven and six!” Things haven’t changed.

Ancoats Lads’ Club started in 1897. As was usual in those days, rich local businessmen, or mill owners started these clubs and kept them going for a good many years, sometimes over more than one generation.
It was 1962 before the girls club got started. “In fact,” May told us triumphantly, “my daughter was actually born in our flat, on the club premises! It was still strictly a Lads’ Club at the time!”

We thanked Bob and May for their time and said goodbye to them.