Memories by Meriel Bloor ne Monsell
Lesbian-Friendly Bar, Unnamed, Digbeth, 1950s
Meriel mentions a rough Irish pub at the top of Digbeth, near to where Selfridges is now. She said women were not supposed to go into bars alone or in twos in those days, but she went to this pub, and women were in there quite happily in quite large ...
Kardomah Cafe in the 1950s
A group of students, mostly gay and gay friendly met at the KardomahCafé on New Street on Saturday mornings. “It was strange, it was before coffee bars and cappuccino, they came later. It was a large room with tables laid out, like a cafeteria, not a...
Pansy
Meriel reports that her aunt referred to her gay godfather as a ‘pansy’, which was the terminology at the time. “I think gay people were known and accepted at the time as friends, but it was all hush hush and (heterosexual) people had a surreptitious...
Trocadero mid-1950s
In the 1950s a group of artists and writers used to meet in the Trocadero, it had a number of bars stretching between Temple Street and Bennetts Hill, and you could walk right through from one street to the other. “We used to meet in the back on the ...
Outrageous Imperial
"My friend took me to the Imperial Hotel Bar “He said ‘I will show you what a gay pub is really like, we don’t want to go in the Troc(adero)’. The bar was predominantly gay and the men used to ‘camp it up’ in there. The first time I went I was the on...
George Melly was open at the Old Crown, 1950s
The Old Crown in Digbeth used to have jazz nights upstairs during the 1950s. Meriel recalls “I remember people saying ‘you must go to this one, this guy called George Melly is coming’ and he was beginning to make a name for himself in London. He came...