Hello List, When my grandfather Josiah Bushell (a coal dealer / wharfman) died in 1909 aged 33, my grandmother Elizabeth was left with three children under five.Relatives either couldn't or wouldn't help her, so to make ends meet, at first she took in "plain sewing" - we still have the card she put in her window to advertise this. Then she turned to shopkeeping, first setting up fish and chip shops in, I believe, Darlaston Rd.,Dale St. and Union St., Wednesbury and then running a newsagents in Hobs Road. When they were old enough, my father Josiah Bushell and his brother Bill joined their mother in the newsagency but were semi professional footballers at the same time. Eventually Bill Bushell turned professional and played for Leicester City - unlike modern footballers, he had to supplement his income by also being an insurance agent. In the 1930s, having heard that new housing estates were to be built on the southern part of Wednesbury, my parents bought a piece of land in Park Lane, Wednesbury and had a shop with living accommodation attached built. They traded there as newsagents and grocers under the name of Bushell's Stores for the next twenty five years. My husband's greaat grandmother Mary Ann Garnham was also left a widow in her midforties with several children to feed. Her younger sons were sent to the Princess Alice Orphanage at Sutton Coldfield and like my grandmother she then opened a shop - a draper's at Great Bridge. By all accounts both these women became rather fierce old ladies but then after such hard lives perhaps that's not surprising. Annette