So which one is that? 
Itâs them Brummies. Theyâm the forrinners. Us Black Country bods am strung in the yarm un thick in the yed accordinâ ter them. 
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If you were born in the âproperâ Black Country and spoke with the area dialect then your speech would be impenetrable to outsiders ⊠
I should know - I worked with hundreds of men from the Black Country during the late 1960âs UK North Sea Gas Conversion project in the Midlands. The employing company was William Press & Son, based in Kingswinford, Staffs. Myself and other well-educated young men, all from Warwickshire, were employed as âcrew clerksâ to handle the paperwork and radio communications of the conversion teams - we were in effect, âtranslatorsâ ⊠
I think Angela Raynerâs mother was bipolar, so maybe that affected her?
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That is the biggest excuse for everything .
Loads of people are bi polar / depressed etc and it doesnât stop them from learning to read and write .
My late mother in law was born in 1923 and was a very intelligent girl. She passed an exam to go to a really good school but her parents couldnât afford to send her there.
I would say they were some very intelligent people in the early 1900âs but there was no money for them to pursue a better education.
They could read and write though .
I mean it doesnât take years and years to learn to read and write
I was bred and raised in Bilston, almost slap bang in the middle of the Black Country. Before I made serious attempts to change my speech (after I left the UK to work in Rome) you could have been my translator. The easy bit was losing the dialect, the hardest part by far is losing the accent. I still havenât fully, but having lived in Italy for 14 years, near London for 14 years, then Worcester for 8 years before moving to the wilds and woolly wastes of Staffordshire, you might be forgiven for not being able to actually identify my roots without me putting my real accent back on.
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No excuse ⊠her mother was ill, then her sister died, then her mother became ill and died, then she became ill, suffering from mumps, whooping cough, diphtheria and scarlet fever. Luckily, she avoided the polio, rickets and TB outbreaks which affected many other children.
I agree. My was a similar age as yours - 1921 in her case. Her schoolwork was first class and her handwriting was copperplate perfect. She took up nursing and was a SRN.
The men tried their best to be understood but, AFAIK, at that time, the Black Country dialect was more like âAnglo-Saxonâ than the âQueenâs Englishâ ⊠
What era are you talking about ?
Her mother was a BABY BOOMER .
We are many of us baby bloomers we didnât catch all those diseases because there was this thing called VACCINATION.
I assume you have never been to Lancashire if you think people lived like those in your photo .
Indeed, my father acquired a better education by joining the Royal Navy and rising from stoker to CPO.
The man speaks the truth AFAIK. Iâve always been led to believe the same. I have a book of plays, written in BC dialect, specially for a local school that my g/father gave me decades ago. In the back is a glossary of words and phrases and their meanings in Qâs English 
There are many words listed that can only have come from Anglo-Saxon times.
If Rayner is 42 her mother is probaby in her sixties .
She wasnât at school in the dark ages .
These days, it isnât to do with intelligence. Itâs more to do with the opportunities money gives you and who you rub shoulders with.
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The photograph of The Pryde Family was taken in Moss Side, Manchester by Nick Hedge in the 1960âs. I used it, purely for illustrative purposes.
Maybe, the woman was just a âFickoâ?
You wouldnât get a proper example of life then as not many poor people had a camera!!