Kids 50 years after these pictures were taken? I’m still one cheque away from losing everything
photo of him as boy (ringed). Sister Claire is seen above as a tot, and now Moss Side, Manchester. There was no bathroom or hot water, and the eight kids had to wash in the kitchen sink.
Hedges wrote: “Moss Side was in an abandoned and desolate state. The house was a horrifying place.”
Paul Pryde, who was six and still lives in Manchester, recalled: “Looking at it now, it’s grim but we never gave it a second thought then. We were poor, but so was everyone else around us.”
When questioned if life had changed much for him, Paul replied grimly: “No. The difference is I am working and I can eat better than I did back then. But losing a pay cheque could change that drastically.”
Last Christmas Paul needed a charity handout to get by. He added: “You have no idea how that made me feel.”
In Whitechapel, East London, Hedges snapped the Rump family in a damp basement flat – again, in 1969.
Hedges noted: “The flat really was a hole, a cave, oppressive and restrictive to both mind and body.”
Claire Evans, now 53, and her brother Michael Rump, now 58, lived there with their parents and four siblings.
Breaking down as she looks at the pictures, Claire said: “When you look at it now, you think, was that really us? I can’t understand why anybody would want to bring kids to a place like that.”
Claire had a dummy until the age of six – partly, she thinks, to keep her hunger at bay. She and two siblings slept in the same bed because the family could not afford to heat the flat.
One of her brothers, Peter, had a hole in his heart and Shelter’s intervention – which helped to relocate the family to Peterborough – was a lifechanging event.
Claire, who now works in a bookies shop in Birmingham, said: “Life tends to make you hard, doesn’t it? I think the bonds were close because we had nothing but each other.
“We ended up with a house and a garden but nobody was better off than we were because we knew where we’d come from.”
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Older brother Michael, a forklift driver living in Dagenham, East London, added: “Obviously I am still angry about it. I used to come home from school and for dinner would be a tin of rice or something.
“It brings back bad memories, but good ones too. I was over the moon when I got my first wage as I could afford things I had to steal before.”
Hedges also visited the Newlove family in Bradford in 1969.
Colin was one of six siblings who slept in one room – the youngest in a drawer. He said: “I hated school. I hated living there. I used to have anger problems, causing trouble, getting into fights and nicking stuff.
“But as I got older I realised it wasn’t right. I got myself an apprenticeship, joined the Army and just worked.
“I am driven because I don’t want to go back to what I had… nothing.”
Two of his sisters stayed in Bradford, while a brother moved to Merseyside. But Colin added: “They’re still living in the same conditions – in council properties that are run-down.”
Shelter warns that while the slums have disappeared, a more insidious housing crisis has taken their place.
This Christmas more than 120,000 children in Britain will wake up in temporary accommodation.
Campbell Robb, Shelter’s chief executive, said: “We’ve made progress but not enough has changed.
“We are once again facing a housing crisis and we must all pull together to fix it.” He added: “In 50 years’ time we cannot be repeating this same, heart-breaking story.”
Slum Britain: 50 years on, Tuesday December 6, Channel 5, 10pm