Person:Mary Field (29)

Dee's story of the Two Mollies: Now the two Mollies story. This dates back before the first world war when my father-in-law was about 6 or 7 years old (before he moved house), and my granddad Len was about 7 or 8 years old. About 1906/7. Molly Hawkeswood as she was then, told Teddy (Edwin, my father in law) and Dominic, her sons, to go to bed at nine and she would be back soon and their granny would put then to bed, as she and her daughter Florrie were going to visit Aunt Molly (Polly) as she had heard one of the children was ill and she wanted to see if she needed help. (Next day his sister told him what happened.) When she got to Aunt Molly’s (Polly) there was all straw scattered over the cobbles. Worried she started to hurry to Aunt Polly’s with Florrie in tow. (My Granddads part story now follows) Molly and Florrie burst in through the door asking, how bad is it they just heard one of the children was ill. Calm down, said Polly, its not for us, the straw been laid down for a neighbour who has brain fever up the street, and is too bad to be taken to the hospital, and her child only had a bad cold on the chest and was nearly recovered. Calmly Polly carried on making her two meat and potato pies and apple pies and put the kettle on for tea for Molly and Florrie. My granddad Len was seated on a cracket by the fire (a wooden stool) and Nanny (Mrs Clifford, Harriet Clifford) was knitting socks in a Windsor armchair. Just when she was finishing up, making the pies and clearing up and they were supping tea, Florrie Seal came home from work saying four men had come out the pub at the end of the street squaring up for a fight and making a noise. The women were incensed at this lack of respect (can’t they see the straw there?) They took up arms, Polly with her rolling pin, Molly with a heavy cast iron frying pan (kept by the hearth hung up there so not to rust). Little Florrie Hawkeswood took up a broad bladed carving knife (used to cut up the meat and afterwards to trim pastry) and off they set to chastise the men. They managed to frighten or shame the men into going down Summer Lane away from the house where the sick man lay. But still they wanted to fight .By now the street was full of silent neighbours and workers who been to get their wages at the pub, it being pay day. They were paid fortnightly in those days. And these arguing men were three of these and their foreman, all drunk as lords. So Molly said if you want to fight, Irish Rules, strip off. So they did, and then she changed the rules, she waded in with the frying pan whacking them hard, I give you what for no respect for the dying, no respect, I will teach you, and so both ladies belted them and they try to run down the Summer Lane but the crowds stopped them. Up Summer Lane came four policemen on patrol two each side of the street in this rough tough neighbourhood. On hearing the racket (noise), by now there was one, they saw the crowds and ran for the Sergeant, by the time he got the cop shop door open the ladies were there with the naked men, frogmarched, jack naked, no shoes or boots, no underwear except for the foreman who had long johns on. The Sergeant had no choice but to lock them up until the crowds had gone, or until the men were stone cold sober. Their things were handed over to the police except for the foreman’s brown shoes. When managing a baker’s shop in Perry Barr I found out what happened to those shoes. Tommy Hill’s father was out of work, his mother in the crowd saw those shoes and knew her son needed to have a pair for a job interview and took them, hiding them in fold of the apron with her shawl drawn around her when she picked up the foreman’s clothes to carry them to the cop shop, hiding them on the way. Irish rules are this-: You strip off to not get torn or ripped or bloody any good clothes and boots, and shoes were taken off because often feet were also used, no kicking or holding a man in a unmentionable spot between the legs, otherwise anything goes. When Keith’s father was told the stories no mention was made about nakedness, but he knew what Irish rules meant and the story is so well know by Summer Lane it is often repeated the in the pubs around Birmingham and in the Irish club in Birmingham. In the 1960’s I was retold the story by one of the regulars there. His description bears repeating. They were two feisty women, good looking too, Irish Molly (her parents were Irish) who looked like a witch or houlie with her blonde hair and blue eyes but dark looks that could freeze a soul or a man in his tracks and sober a drunk with the look, and a right hook that could knock you out if you said a word untowards, and the older pretty Molly (Polly Seal) with the look of an angel with her blonde hair and sky blue eyes, as if butter could melt in those sweet lips, that she only had to ask with her winning ways, and you would doing anything, just for her to look your way and smile. After the fracas when they would go down the Lane, folk would lift their caps outta respect for the ladies. I didn’t tell him I was her great granddaughter, and little then did I know, I would marry Irish Molly’s grandson. The cop shop was really a shop taken over by the police as a station with the cells in the cellar and cage or jails cell like in the cowboy films on the ground floor because of the drunks in Newtown toward the end of the 1800s. The straw was laid on the cobbled stone roads so the traffic noise was less, horses and iron-ringed wheels make an awful din (noise), they still had some of those wheels then. I’ve used some Brummy words hope you follow my meanings.