WAHP-Housing
The immigrants had varied experiences of work and finding somewhere to live. The housing situation was difficult. Immigrants had to share overcrowded accommodation especially when the men were here on their own. People who worked shifts sometimes shared beds with one working whilst another was at home sleeping.
Q. Describe the type of accommodation you lived in Mr. Ashraf?
“ Yes I lived in first as I told you before that this worse experience in lodging because then you are just I mean not treated fairly and the houses were damp cold and the facilities were not quite good and there was no bath. The toilets were outside the house and so I first made gave priority to myself. That I mean if you want to live I must have my own accommodation. So I bought a house within two years because the job was available though the I mean the mortgage loan was through the bank and bank charged very high rate at that time and the building society were very reluctant to advance loan to the immigrant. So anyhow I bought the house and kept lodger and made some money. So I sold that house and bought my own house and after council was very generous they believe that gave us grant it was old house renovated and I improve it and sold that house. And then bought this present house from the sale of proceed of that house which is the present house where I lived. “
Q. When you first came here you said you shared a house with a few people. Can you remember how many of you lived in the house?
“ It varied from fifteen plus onward really I was in house which was sort of quite large. Old Victorian built on house and that had about six, seven bedrooms, each room was occupied by at least two to three people. In addition to that I think there were more people living. The system they used to have in terms of sharing out accommodation was that those that are sort of shift work, those who working in the day time and those who working in the night time. So the bed and rooms was constantly occupied so when day workers were out there, people from the night shift have their sleep. When they go to work, the others coming. So its kind of taking it in turn really and it was sort of quite, sort of congested but I suppose the good thing of the that time was that because you were sort of new to this country and didn't know many people so that was your main sort of social support really like you sort of met people, have a chit chat share your experience and things like that. “
The full transcriptions are available from Walsall Archives.
