Memories by Gill Coffin
No idea how to find anyone like me
Gill: "I’m Gill. I’m 63. I was born in Ilford, then in Essex, now East London. I came to Birmingham in 1962 to go to university and I’ve been here for most of the years since. I had identified myself as lesbian when I was 18 but was completely unable...
A marriage of convenience
Gill and Betty both moved to Birmingham around the same time, around 1975. Gill: “There was a lesbian group that met at The Wellington Pub on Bristol Street which I went to only once. It was run, quite dominated, by an older lesbian who lived up in S...
Sociable crowd at the Greyhound in 1975
Gill: “Very fortunately, though he didn’t know it, my husband had decided he would have the children on Tuesday evenings, so that left me free to go to The Greyhound (laughter). It had just started, around 1975; and you (Betty) were going to The Grey...
'Private parties' for lesbians at the Greyhound
G: “The Greyhound in Holloway Head must have just opened (around 1975) because I can remember Den and Sharon who’d founded it. Basically, they’d gone round all the pubs in Birmingham to find somewhere that would take a women only group, which would h...
Lesbians were 'woman-identified' in the 70s
Gill and Betty said they were both identifying with the Women's Liberation Movement in the mid 1970s. B: “There was some sort of crossover then; for a while there used to be things like women's discos, where you would get lesbians going but also stra...
Dress codes in the late 1970s
In the mid to late 1970s, Gill and Betty note that there was more mixing between lesbian and heterosexual feminists but that there was a dress code which helped identify their sexual identity: G: “I used to notice the way in which the straight women...
Once was enough at the Grosvenor
Betty: “I think I went to The Grosvenor House Hotel once, I think once was enough”. Gill: “I couldn’t really afford it actually. It was quite expensive and I was on a student grant at the time”....
All happening at the Gay Centre, Digbeth, 1977
The Gay Community Centre in Bordesley Street was set up not long after the time that Gill and Betty moved to Birmingham (1975) Gill: “Somebody secured the premises on the corner of Bordesley Street and Allison Street and people put a lot of effort i...
Lesbians' attitudes to children
Betty: “In Birmingham I don’t think boy children was an issue, like in London. I remember noticing when I moved up from London to Birmingham that in London there were things like the Women’s Arts Alliance which wouldn’t even allow newborn boys in bec...
Gay Centre too noisy for the neighbours
G: “The neighbours complained that there was too much noise (at the Gay Community Centre), and I think Birmingham City Council eventually decided it could no longer be run in the way that it had been run in those premises. (I don’t even know if we h...
Never as happy in Gay Centre number two - '84+
After the first Gay Community Centre had to close in 1978, the committee continued to meet, ultimately finding an alternative location for a Lesbian and Gay Community Centre, in Aston, in 1984.Gill: “A lot of work went into finding somewhere else, an...
Meetings at the Women's Centre, mid-70s
Gill: “We were also marginally involved in the Women’s Liberation Movement, who had rented a house on Brighton Road and it was used as a Women's Centre until Birmingham City Council got wind that this house was being used as something that it shouldn...
Switchboard stickers in the medical books
Betty: “I was on Switchboard; Switchboard had some women on, more men, including Helen Rose, Anna, Anne Bromwich, and a couple of others; we managed to keep West Midlands Switchboard fairly balanced for a while and we used to quite often have a woman...
Locked in at the Old Mo
Gill: “The Old Moseley Arms on Tindal Street. The room we used was dominated by the pool table, you were round the edge of the pool players. There were lock ins.”...
Babysitting blues
Gill: “I was less involved in other stuff. Partly because I’d got two children and one of them had disabilities and I was also firstly studying and then working. I had babysitting issues and a hostile husband who wasn’t going to approve of me going o...
Long time on and off before pairing up
Gill: “We’d known each other since we first met at a lesbian conference in Bristol in 1975, I went there from Aberystwyth.” (Where Gill was living at that time). Betty: “And that is the conference of which my abiding memory is...
Joining the Quakers
Gill and Betty were both Quakers since they were in their late teens, long before they got together. Gill: “I joined the Quakers because my parents were both pacifists, my father was a conscientious objector but they were Church of England and I foun...
Quakers positive about homosexuality in 1960s
Betty: “In recent years there have been points where I have thought that there would be almost no way of going to worship anywhere else because there is almost nowhere else where my lesbianism would be as comfortably accepted. The book ‘Towards a Qua...
Quaker Lesbian and Gay Fellowship
Gill and Betty are both Quakers. B: “Quakers, as a religious body, are accepting of lesbian and gay couples, and the Quaker Lesbian and Gay Fellowship is what is known as a listed group so that there are various small interest groups that nonet...
Our Quaker Friends cherished us
Gill and Betty are both Quakers.Gill: “In the mid ‘90s when we (their Quaker meeting) had some discussions around sexuality at a discussion group, they were really very keen that Betty and I should have a proper commitment ceremony…”Betty: “…and we d...
Discrete about our sexuality in Sparkhill
Gill and Betty live in Sparkhill, a predominantly Muslim area. GILL : “Initially we were living in two houses, for a time I moved into Betty’s because her children were quite young and then when we decided that the children really should fend for the...
They shouted at Dory Previn
Betty: “I remember going to a Cris Williamson concert. And a whole bunch of the Holloway crowd of lesbians went to hear Dory Previn. We were on the right hand side of the upstairs balcony and I remember being embarrassed because a woman who went off ...
Chaos and hostility at the WLM Conference, 1978
Betty: “Women’s Liberation Conferences at that point were annual conferences, the last one, was in Birmingham in 1978, at a school in Ladywood. Different women’s and lesbian groups took responsibility for certain things. The Socialist feminists were ...
Birmingham activists just changed hats, 1970s
Betty: “In the ‘70’s, the Gay Community Centre started, but also the Peace Centre, and GLF (Gay Liberation Front). Around that time a mixture of gay and lesbian people including Pete Kirby and Helen Rose put on a musical starting with the song “There...
Lots happening for lesbians in the 1980s
Betty ‘Henrietta's Out’ (after Henrietta the Engine in Thomas the Tank Engine) had a logo with this train on it that somebody created. Catherine M was involved, the moving light in that was Liz Davidge.” Gill: “This was back around the same time as w...
Council staff group met in the basement 1990
“I recall going to a couple of meetings of Birmingham City Council Lesbian and Gay Staff Support Group in the 80s or early 90s (pre 1995), in the basement of Louisa Ryland House. It felt a bit marginalised because it met after work and people were qu...
Setting up LGB staff group in Staffordshire in 03
“I then went to work for Staffordshire County Council in '95. Very much to everyone’s surprise, Staffordshire police had quite a thriving lesbian and gay group and it was after talking to them I set up Staffordshire County Council's Lesbian and Gay S...
Training the registrar's team 2005
“When they were introducing the Civil Partnership Act (2005) the registration service came to talk to us (the LGB staff group at Staffordshire County Council) about how they should advertise, what sort of leaflets they should prepare and so on. We ha...