50s thrift compared to now.

seraphina

If you can, read "Family Britain" by David Kynaston - it's a real insight into 1950's Britain. Austerity Britain, which he wrote about the post-ware 1940's is also excellent.

You wouldn't catch me wanting to go back for all the tea in China - if you think housing is bad now, you hear what it was like then! The unions may have got the 9-5 working day and 5 day week for men, but certainly most women were working non-stop 7 days a week - no washing machines, dishwashers etc to do anything.

Justamum

Itismehonest wrote: »

Children most definitely didn't call adults by their first names as it would have been considered rude,

I must be very old-fashioned because I still think it's rude. Adults don't automatically assume they can call me by my first name, so I don't see why a child should assume they can.

ubamother

Sadly Justamum, many adults in official positions these days assume they can. I had an appointment at the tax office a few years ago, and the tax officer who entered the room initially called me by my first name, which irritated me highly. In that position I always feel that it's a little bit of patronising officialdom too far - and done in that cringey 'I'm official therefore more important than you' way if you know what I mean. She didn't do it twice! My binmen, doctor, greengrocer and butcher use my first name - but then I use their first names so it's an equal relationship.

In more social circles I'm more than happy to be be introduced to new people by my first name - I think it's warmer and friendlier - and after many years of marriage I still think when I'm called Mrs.... by my peers that they're talking to my mother-in-law.

OberonSH

I collect old household management books, and in the main they're 30's-50s. I notice the sheer amount of meals a woman was expected to produce from an incredibly small range of foods, and sometimes I look in my cupboards and cringe than I can't think of anything to cook for tea! Sometimes I feel like using the meal planners from the 30's for a week and see where it would get me!

thriftwizard

Teachers used to get our attention by throwing the blackboard rubber or a piece of chalk and a lot of us were very adept at ducking

ButterflyBrain, I think you & I may have gone to the same school! Also from 1958 here, and from where I'm standing there were lots of things that were better then, and plenty of things that weren't too. I'm sure our diet was better, if not as varied, especially for those of us brought up in or near the countryside, or who had an allotmenteer in their family. As kids we played outside all the time when the sun was shining; in summer I'd set off on my bike after breakfast, with a packet of sandwiches & an apple, and wouldn't see my parents again until teatime, and they didn't worry as all the kids in the road (about 8 of us, usually) were off adventuring together! No health & safety back then; I'm surprised we all made it through childhood as we were surrounded by bomb sites & spent quite a lot of time scrambling round them as they weren't too well fenced off, when we weren't on the local giant allotment site (old plague pits, actually, built over long ago now) where the old boys had a lot of time for us & actually taught us a lot if we helped them. And we did help people, back then, and people also helped us, when someone fell off their bike. In winter, we played board games, made stuff, practised our instruments (I think everyone I knew played some instrument, at least up until 11) and read. I don't remember being too cold although I do remember picking the ice off the inside of my bedroom window; we weren't at all well-off but we did live in a big house in a "good" neighbourhood (which went with my Dad's job) which we couldn't afford to heat! But we had woollies (Mum knitted most of them, and made all my dresses - she's still knitting now, at 86, but stopped sewing after she got an electric machine) and hot water bottles & blankets & eiderdowns, handed down from wealthier relatives but perfectly effective.
You didn't get packed off back to school within 3 days of falling sick; 6 weeks quarantine was probably far to long, (mind you, I had a friend who was made deaf by measles, one who was brain-damaged from Scarlet Fever and one who nearly died of septicaemia after getting a splinter under her fingernail) but I think we rush kids back far too soon now, before they've had a chance to recover properly from nasty illnesses.
But yes, there was a lot swept under the carpets, and as a whole, society was extremely conformist & very unkind to people who didn't or couldn't conform. Early pregnancy was a huge stigma, not just for the young mother (and her family) but also for the poor baby, if she got to keep it. And there were plenty of people who were just plain worn out from drudgery too.
I do "vintage" and make part of my living, such as it is, from people's nostalgia, but I quite often get comments from older people like, "thank heaven we don't have to do things like that any more!" Mostly sewing & knitting, but also cooking from scratch & preserving; seems that when you had to do it, it wasn't as much fun...

THIRZAH

I was born in 1955 so can just remember the late 1950s.
We were certainly expected to address all adults except for family as Mr or Mrs-the only exceptions were a few close family friends whom we called "Auntie" or "Uncle". Any "cheek" like calling an adult by their christian name would have been reported to our parents. My grandmother called women that she had known for most of her life Mrs or Miss. I remember going to my first WI meeting in about 1970 and a great debate as to whether members should be referred to as Mrs John Smith or Mrs Mary Smith.

We had very few clothes and wore them more than once before they were washed.DH was at boarding school and he was allowed two changes of underwear and two clean shirts a week!

Food was fairly simple. We always had meat or fish with veg for our main meal. Rice was for puddings and the only pasta around was macaroni-and that was for puddings too.Everything was home made except for bread.My mother and her friends looked down on women who bought cakes.

If the weather was fine we were expected to play outside all day. There wasn't much daytime TV except for Watch with Mother .

We did have a weeks holiday each year usually self-catering on the east coast. My mother or grandmother always knitted us a new cardigan for our holidays-we needed them.We'd set off early in the morning with a weeks veg and cakes on the floor of the back of the car-the boot was quite small.We might have one meal out while we were on holiday.My grandfather would give us half a crown to spend and sometime would give my mother a bit of extra money so that if we did have a meal out we children could have roast chicken-the most expensive thing on the menu then!

Angel_Jenny

This is so fascinating to read!!

I have just ordered the books by David Kynaston as they sound like my sort of thing!

I go to a WI too and it is a lot more informal that I was expecting. I am forever being told that I am old fashioned or from another time though.

It is so interesting to read the experiences of people who actually lived in those years. It tends to be an era that gets romanticised so much but there was a lot of struggle and hard work going on.

meanmarie

I was born in 1945 and remember the 50s well....we had rationing here for things like tea, sugar, butter although not as severe as in the UK, I still have some of my parents ration books...my father gave up sugar in his tea when I was born so that I could have it....would anybody think of giving sugar to a baby now?

I remember the knitted swimsuit too, it was blue and my older cousins laughed themselves sick when it filled with water and stretched to my knees....I died of embarassment!

We didn't have a tv until mid-60s, or a fridge and my mother refused to have a washing machine until late 80s as she considered that they didn't wash clothes properly. We did have indoor plumbing almost as far back as I can remember....done by my father so probably didn't cost much.

I was an only child until my brother was born in 1953 and we were considered quite odd in the village....2 children families were a rarity in Ireland then.

Nobody had much money and their expectations were not huge, people were not resentful of what others had ( mostly, the Irish can begrudge for the world!), crime was not as common, was reading in the paper to-day that in 1956 in Ireland there were 2 murders.....unfortunately not like that to-day.

Would hate to give up my washing machine, dishwasher, central heating, tv and my beloved pc, but do think that there was a more relaxed atmosphere prevailing....but then you can't have everything, can you

Marie

Loanranger

Hmm, anyone who has romantic notions of the 1950s should live for a week without central heating in the winter, without double glazing, and live with unheated bedrooms and bathroom. Ice on the inside of the bedroom window is not nice. Live with lino and a square of carpet in the middle of the room.

Live without thick stretchy tights and instead wear lisle stockings with suspenders. Live without a fridge and instead have a meat safe in the pantry with a cold slab and live with a 9 inch TV in black and white. Live with a gas boiler for the washing and a mangle along with a washing line in the garden. The sheets freeze on the line in the winter, BTW, and are as stiff as boards, not easy or pleasant to bring indoors in that state. Live with coal fires and the need to get down on hands and knees to empty the ash can and clean and lay the fire.
Live without a telephone. Live without a car.
The 50s were not an easy time for anyone, I remember the polio epidemic and a child in my road caught it. She was in an iron lung to breathe for her. We kids in the road were terrified of catching it. I had rickets as a child and wore leg irons. Rickets is caused by malnutrition.
Yes, we had home cooked food cooked from scratch and plenty of fresh air out playing marbles in the gutter and running free in the park but our mothers had no reliable form of contraception except condoms, pre-pill era, so lived in fear of another mouth to feed or maybe a back street abortion.
Yes, I can sew and knit and cook from scratch but I don't hanker after the 50s.
No thanks, much prefer the 21st century. I too love my home comforts and most of all enjoy being warm in winter! When you've been cold for months on end then you really appreciate being in a centrally heated house without draughts.

meritaten

I was born in 1954 in the south wales valleys in a very nice village. Where I lived wasnt endless rows of back to back terraces of three up - two down. we lived in a semi! doesnt mean we werent poor - my granch earned very little money as a lorry driver for the local butchery. my dad was a miner and we lived with nan and granch until we got a council house when I was ten. again a semi and nicely located - The village was actually a bit of a social experiment called the 'garden village'. its still nice today.
I can remember having a bath in the tin bath in front of the fire! How mum would be paranoid we would catch a cold if the room wasnt warm enough - so the side of the tin bath near the fire got hot enough to burn your fingers!
I once fell into the fire and badly burned my hand - and the 'hot poultices' my mum and dad applied every day onto that burn! I used to scream the house down! I would have been about four then - just came out of hospital after a fifteen month stay because I had TB! (my nan put a stop to the hot poultices after a couple of days - she really layed the law down apparently - couldnt see how burning me again would heal a burn! - loved my nan, she was barely literate yet was full of intelligence).
I never thought of myself as poor or well off - but my mum was a bu99er if I played with someone she considered 'beneath' her. one friend was illegitimate - and mum went absolutely ape!!!!! when I told her I had gone to her house! Slapped me hard round the face and banned me from going again! mum definately thought she was a 'cut above' but I really dont know why!!!!!!! she was
nan was more understanding and often covered (lied) for me!

as for thrift - I remember my mum and nan doing a 'daily' shop - very little was stored in the pantry - just the basics of Flour, Sugar, Tea, Butter, and tinned goods. though as my nan was famed for her Welsh cakes she must have kept dried fruit in!
Fresh foods were bought daily from the grocers, greengrocers and butchers - fish was a rare sight and normally bought from the chippy!
Furniture was a 'once in a lifetime' purchase and was from a local shop which sold quality furniture - but allowed one to pay weekly and when the goods were paid for they were delivered!

We didnt go on 'holiday' - we went on 'daily coach trips' I got very tired of those - I didnt see the point of spending three or four hours on a coach to have two or three hours at a beach in England and then travel another three or four hours on a coach home............mum loved it - and insisted we all came with her! I preferred to stay with nan and often managed it by becoming 'sickly' the night before!

nan used to tell mum that the amount she paid for the 'trips' we could spend a week away - mum wouldnt listen of course - she loved the coach trips.

mum disliked cooking - and had about ten meals perfected! her idea of breakfast was cornflakes or a mug of drinking chocolate! god knows where she got the idea that drinking chocolate was adequate nutrition - but as I wouldnt eat cornflakes (I hated them until I got pregant - then I craved them covered in sugar) she used to force the chocolate down me!
Like many kids in the fifties I had a messed up upbringing - but, if we ignore the sheer stupidity and mindless hyprocracy - there WERE moral values which are relevant today! like helping your nieghbours and NOT wasting food, money and resources!