‘We held his funeral the week before Christmas’
James (Jimmy) Craig was 34 and Bill was 27 at the time of the Birmingham pub bombings, they both worked at a car factory in the Ward End area of the city.
It was the only job James ever had but his real love was football, something which he used to play twice on the weekend, before and after his Sunday lunch.
Bill said that despite not being able to read or write and suffering from a speech impediment, his older brother was very popular and had a big group of friends.
Both brothers were unmarried at the time but got on very well whilst living with their parents in Ward End.
Jimmy couldn’t read or write but a few days earlier a letter had arrived for him from a lady from Cornwall, arranging to meet him in town for a date that Thursday night.
Bill says had that letter never arrived then his brother wouldn’t have be in the Tavern in the Town that night.
On the night that it happened, Jimmy headed out at 6.30pm, presumably to meet his date but didn’t say where he was going.
Younger brother Bill had also gone out that night to a local pub in Ward End but only heard about what had happened in the city centre on his way home.
He went to bed not thinking anything of it but when he woke up on the Friday morning and went to wake his older brother he wasn’t there.
Continuing the search after work, he headed into town to see if he could find his brother.
He was directed towards the general hospital and asked a nurse whether there was anyone there who was aged 34, with a beard but the nurse replied “well it’s no good asking me that because some of them have got no faces.”
He continued his search for Jimmy, even walking past the Tavern in the Town where people were clearing away the rubble from the night before.
Bill walked all the way to a second hospital in Bath Row before he finally got an answer, after waiting over an hour to find out if the person lying in a bed was his brother.
Bill visited his brother twice a day until he was told by a doctor that “he had no chance.”
The pub bombings happened on the 21st November, he passed away on Monday 9 December.
“It’s terribly sad, all these people just went out for a drink on a Thursday night.”
Bill says he could never bring himself to visit the girl from Cornwall who had been with Jimmy in the pub, she was also in hospital for about three weeks but she survived.
The funeral was held a week before Christmas. His parents didn’t attend because they were suffering from depression.
Bill says he doesn’t talk about his brother with his family but he continues to go to the inquests in the search for the truth about what happened to James that night.