Nostalgia by Robert Heaven

I WONDER how many readers can remember the time before "strollers” or fold-up gadgets for transporting babies; a time when babies had coach-built perambulators with spoked wheels and inflatable tyres?

They do still make these but I can’t remember the last time I saw one up the Market Place or in someone’s garden containing a baby being “aired”.

I do remember though back in the 1960s when heavy duty Silver-Cross prams were pushed to town and back bearing babies and shopping, the babies tucked under the cover and the shopping crammed underneath on a metal tray.

Some prams were double-ended, presumably for twins with a hood at each end. I never saw one for triplets but then I don’t recall there ever being any triplets in Ciren.

Prams had many uses and were used for more just moving babies. It was current thought that babies benefited from sleeping outside in the fresh air prams provided protection from the elements and babies were put out in all weathers; wrapped up according to the season beneath sturdy hoods and covers.

Back then the only perceived danger to leaving a baby outside in a pram, was from cats which alarmists suggesting would curl up and sleep on the baby and suffocate it.

I can find no record anywhere of this ever actually happening, but for purveyors of cat alarms and protection nets at the time, it certainly did happen.

On the Beeches where I grew up, I remember prams were often used to transport things such as logs of firewood and sometimes even bags of coal - not with the baby in them of course but after when the babies no longer needed them and had moved onto push chairs.

After a time family prams were dismantled and the wheels recycled to form "push carts".

Some prams were used for racing in the Carnival events.