The Girl from Hockley: Growing up in working class Birmingham

Born into the industrial slums of Birmingham in 1903, Kathleen Dayus became a legend in her own time. She vividly recalls her Edwardian childhood and her life as a young munitions worker during the war, marriage, and life below the poverty line in the 1920s. Early widowhood and the Depression forced her to relinquish her children to Dr. Barnado's homes until, eight long years later, she could afford a home for them again. Her autobiography is a testament to the indomitable spirit, humor and verve that characterized her life. Her extraordinary memory for the sights, sounds, and smells of her youth, her marvelous sense of the comic, and her spirited refusal to do anything but live life to the fullest, make her life one of the most compelling stories of our time.