Albert Attenborough (b.1917)

My grandmother and grandfather, they come from Loughborough and they settled as a needleworker in Tans needlework factory in Druid Street. My grandfather, he died because he'd eaten some watercress that weren't clean, weren't picked from running water and it'd got some small little bugs on and they got into his blood stream and killed him.

My father got killed in the First World War along with his two brothers, all in the first six months...and my mother was left alone. She, unfortunately, when she was 18, in Sketchley Dye Works - she worked on a brushing machine - and she had the misfortune of having long hair, and she bent down and the teasel brushes...caught her hair and pulled her in, and she tried to save herself and she put her hand on the machine, and a man jumped on the belt and knocked it off, and unfortunately she lost her right arm - they had to amputate her right arm up to there and her other hand was smashed.

Peace Celebrations at Hinckley July 1919

Talk about...fit for heroes to live in after the First World War, she had to scrub door steps in that condition, take washing in, and the washing - she'd get half a crown for when she'd washed it, ironed it, and took it back to the people. Many a person walked by and stopped and looked at her...because she used to scrub the doorstep and wring her floor-cloth out on her stump. She had an artificial arm in the end but you could take the wrist off her hand and put a knife in and carve and all that. In the end she used to go round helping all the blind and everybody, but we had a real hard life.

When I was born in 1917, Mrs. Pilgrim, they lived in Station Road and they were solicitors, and they couldn't have any children and they begged and prayed my mother to let them adopt me but mother wouldn't let them...every year I used to go on my birthday and see Mrs. Pilgrim. She were deaf and I had to shout in a big horn, you see, she were my god-parent...I could have been something if mother had parted with me - I should probably have been a solicitor or something - but fortunately mother wouldn't let us go.

Also in Mansion Street was Jack Wallace and Jim Wallace, now Jack Wallace was a coal merchant and Jim Wallace was a blacksmith and...in Mansion Street was a yard opposite and they used to shoe horses and all sorts of things there. You would stand there and sometimes you'd hold the horses head for him while he shoed it, and he'd get the bellows and pump his fire up and get it and put a red hot shoe on, brand it and then cut round it. Oh yes, real interesting.