Coventry Carnivals / Godiva Processions

Just noticed this photo and post Yanster. 1970 was the year that a large contingent of Skinheads decided to join the Carnival!

Yes it was called the Hospital Saturday Fund because Coventry have long been paid wages on a Friday, thus allowing mother on a Saturday morning to sort out the money. Gave the kids a tanner to go and pay the fund at someone’s house, who opened his front door to receive payments, marked a small book, took your money. This went on throughout my childhood and teen age until 1945 when NHS started. During the 1920/30s people dare not report illness unless really dangerous, most of us went through small illnesses without so much as a bottle of medicine. I think the fund had a limit to what it would pay a family at the beginning, just simply not affordable. Someone started that fund and the yearly carnivals that boosted its funds. Now my dad was a fanatic at carnivals, entered us everywhere, regardless, so we would be sent to Sunday School on a week night, listen to the story of some poor sod getting pelted to death with stones somewhere, then walk in the carnival on Saturday and get pelted with coins for hours - my sister did get cut on the cheek one time, very frightening for a small boy. And the money did come raining down from upstairs windows, over the heads of the crowds, all directions. But the idea never left me - steeped in tradition, I ran everywhere raising money for charity. Those early days of the carnivals, coloured rosettes to be won, hundreds of individual classes, not many lorry floats, mainly bikes and prams done up in fancy dress. A real day in the calendar, people knew how to make a real day off it. Post copied from topic Coventry & Warwickshire Hospital Saturday Fund on 3rd Jul 2020 12:34 pm

PS. The Memorial Park would get packed, stalls, coconut shies, bands drilling, clowns tumbling, small helter-skelters - a day of fun. The birds in the aviary put on two stones (wee bit of exageration), the clapping as judges handed out rosettes. You didn't need to go to bed at night, you could have slept on the clothes line.

Kaga, when I first read your post, I thought "that can't be right, in those days -never!" I thought you said "gave the kids a tenner". Must be my eyes getting older. I used to love the annual Coventry carnival when I was a kid. It would not be allowed now, with elf 'n safety. Chucking the old pennies at the floats. And let's face it, little kids can be right little b... devils. And the not so little ones. Many of those huge copper coins were not gently tossed to land safely on the floor of the lorry, but were deliberately hurled at the people with as much force as possible. Could have blinded someone, it could have. And the ones that missed the lorry - a mad scramble by all the kids as we ran into the road to pick them up. Imagine that happening today. No barriers in the old days. It was assumed everyone had common sense, working on the principle that if you don't want to get killed, you don't run under the wheels of a lorry. As a little girl, my mum used to earn the odd copper by doing "errands" for neighbours. One was taking an item to "uncle's", aka the pawnbroker. The other one was taking a piece of paper or envelope with a note and some money, i.e. a bet, to someone's house.