Did some research and there were quite a number of workhouses set up all over Manchester in that period, the frightening official response to being poor or disadvantaged in any way. Crumpsall workhouse closed as late as 1930, so those women were likely to have been remnants which makes that scene in my mind all the more sad. But Crumpsall wasn't all bad, it was like a little village that seemed to be on the edge of Manchester probably because our streets were surrounded by open tracts of disused farmland and it still seemed rural, but really it wasn't that far from the city centre. As it was post-war, there was an air of optimism, that things would be different. We kids were free to wander all over the show and congregated in the streets playing street games like 'farmer farmer may I cross your golden river', or swinging from the Victorian lamp posts until it got dark; and one by one, mothers would come to the door and call each child in for the night. We had an insurance man who came by bike; he sold door to door, wearing bicycle clips on his trousers and a long gaberdine coat, standing there making entries into a little black book. Who could have forecast the internet and shopping on line? A rag and bone man would give goldfish for 'rags' and he and his horse and cart would travel down the cobbled back alley ways or 'entries'. Dandelion and Burdock was delivered in stone bottles and coal was dumped in our backyard. It wasn't so long ago but so pre-technology, and very human.
