Jack Taylor . . . I was born at Ventnor House, Wood Road, Codsall, which is the first of the tall houses before the Shrubbery. I was born in the front room in March 1918, not long before the end of the First World War. I was born into a house where there was no electricity and no sewage, but we were privileged to have a septic pit, so we were a little bit better off than the people in the road who had to use pails.     In Wood Road every Friday night the 'pan' man would come to empty the pails. The houses had an outside lavatory, with a wooden seat. There was a hole in the seat with the pan underneath. When they emptied the pans they put some disinfectant inside and then put them back under the seat. They were then emptied into larger pans on a horse-drawn dray. On Friday night we were never allowed out because the 'pan' man was coming.     The Richards family were responsible for doing all of this work. They used to live at the Stock-ings Farm (as distinct from Stockings House). This is the farm where Mike Burton now has his riding stables. At the time when I was a boy it was a farm and they had all the land around The Stockings. The sewage was taken there and spread out onto the fields around the farm. That went on until the deep sewer came into the village.     The sewers were built by a firm called Withers, from Bilston. This is where the name Withers Road in Bilbrook comes from. The man responsible made so much money from building the sewers that he became a builder afterwards, building most of the houses in Bilbrook. When the sewers were laid they were very deep, and of course they were installed without any mechanical help. It was all done by shovel, spade and pick. As a small boy I remember watching these men digging the sewers. They used to mark a stretch out, making sure they marked exactly the stretch they had to dig, and the section another group had to dig, so no-one worked on another man's part. In this way they went on, road by road, right through the village. This would have been about 1925 to 1927. It obviously took a very long time to complete the whole of the village.     At that time they had a night watchman, who had his night watchman's box with a brazier in front of it. It was his job to put  all the red lights into position at night and clean the lamps during the day. He was there all night to make sure that no-one interfered with the workings. A pumping station was built in Moatbrook Lane near to Wood Road, presumably to pump the sewage up the hill.     There was no electric light; most of the houses had gas. There were gas brackets in all of the rooms, including the bedrooms. We had a gas chandelier in the lounge. That was switched on by a pump contraption by the door. We had an early radio. My elder brother had one of those children's kits to build a crystal set. There were earphones with it  and a piece of wire that you moved up and down the crystal to see if you could hear anything. You picked up any sound then you told everyone to come and listen. The "cat's whisker" they were called.     The early radios were run by accumulators. They were filled with acid and you had to take them to Harveys to be recharged. They looked like little glass jars, filled with the acid, with handles to carry them. Inside were partitions lined with lead. When you picked them up you could hear the acid slopping around inside. It wasn't very long before they became electric – I suppose that was when the electricity came into the village.    When the electricity was put into the houses we had two little pin sockets, not the three pin ones that we have today. There was no earth connection in at that time. When they wired Ventnor House the wires were not sunk into the plaster they just put the wiring straight down the walls. It took a long time to connect everyone and either the landlord or the home owner had to pay for the install-ation, so not everyone could afford to have electricity. Externally at first they used overhead wires. These have since been replaced by underground cables. There was no street lighting at all. It was wonderful when the electricity came because it wasn't long before we had street lights. It was black

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