Jim was born on the 17th February, 1902 at 2 Gate Street, Saltley. He was one of five children born to John Thomas Kirby (General labourer) and his wife Syntyche the daughter of Thomas Frederick Orton.

Jim grew up living at 14 Crawford Street. and later on at 5 Shirley Terrace Cranberry St. He went to Bloomsbury School. (Boys Department) and left at the age of 14 on the 17th February 1916.

     

           

 

  

He joined the Army (Royal Tank Corps) on the 26th June 1919 and served for 6 years 9 months. 4 years and 10 months of which he was stationed in India. When he was discharged on the 31st March 1926 he was classed as a Blacksmith Class 3.
After leaving the army in 1926 and returning home to Gt. Britain Jim found the  country at the start of the depression, there were already signs of discontent amongst the poor who were getting poorer as work was short for them. Jim could only get a job as a navvy digging the road up. One day after going to the dentist to have a bad tooth taken out he called into the ‘White Horse’ pub on the corner of Long Acre and Holborn Hill for a drink (rum) to ease the pain.

Ethel Parry was serving behind the bar and Jim took a fancy to her and so called back again on the night and asked her if he could walk her home. Ethel lived up Charlotte Place which was a row of terraced back houses up an entry in Long Acre.

 
Around 1927-28 Jim was given a job to help concrete a driveway for the newly formed firm of F. W. Evans Bakelite Moulders in Long Acre, Nechells. The founder Mr. Frederick Evans liked Jim and asked him if he would like to stay on and do odd jobs for him, Jim said yes.

Jim and Ethel got married on the 6th December, 1930 and lived in lodgings in Saltley. They were living in Saltley when their daughter Kathleen was born.

 
In 1939 Mr. Evans bought some land adjacent to his factory, a new 7,500 sq. ft. building was erected and Jim was given the job of stoker on the boiler which produced the steam to work the moulding presses.

Around 1940 Mr. Evans bought several houses in Long Acre and offered to rent Jim one. The family moved into number 289 and later into 295 where their son John was born.

                                                                                                 In the early 1960’s when all of the moulding presses at Evans’s were electrically heated the boiler was dismantled and Jim worked on a machine that pressed the loose moulding powder into pellets which the moulders then pre-heated to cut down the cooking time in the moulds. He did this job until he retired aged 65 in 1967.

In 1963 F. W. Evans knocked down the houses 287 to 297 in Long Acre that are adjacent to the factory for building land and the Kirby’s are moved across the road to number 69 Chattaway Street.  (Evans’s had 2 of the houses they owned in Chattaway Street converted into flats. The downstairs rooms became 2 separate flats for a man and a woman and the 6 bedrooms upstairs were converted into a flat for Jim, Ethel and son John.

With the inner city redevelopment of the 1960-70’s most of Nechells including Chattaway Street is knocked down and the people re-housed. In 1975 Ethel and Jim move into a council owned bungalow – 58 Wyrley Way, Erdington.

In the last few years of his life Jim suffered from chronic leukaemia and eventually died in Dudley Road Hospital aged 89 on the 20th December, 1991 with a pulmonary embolism.