An extract from Mr Rochford's letter
Early in 1995, Ray Rochford of Salford, Greater Manchester responded to a call in the local press for 1930s cinemagoers to get in touch with Cinema Culture in 1930s Britain, sending a long letter about his childhood in the Hanky Park district of Salford. Born in 1925, Mr Rochford left school at fourteen and went to work as a bobbin boy in a local cotton mill; later in life he worked in the building industry. In his letter he describes Hanky Park, the "largest concentration of slums in Europe", as home to numerous neighbourhood cinemas, painting a picture of cheap entertainments enjoyed in the face of poverty and deprivation. Each cinema, he says, attracted its own loyal local clientele, many of whom claimed particular seats as their own. He describes the "Dickensian" manager of one cinema, and the social class "apartheid" of the seating arrangements in that establishment. He contends that, because most historians are middle class, the history of cinema audiences and the value of cinema as "the opium of hope" for the working class has "never been explored in great depth". Later in 1995, Mr Rochford took part in CCINTB’s postal questionnaire survey.