Easier to be OS in the olden days?

[Deleted User]

Indeed life was pretty tough for a lot of people, but reading through the posts one thing that stands out the most is the sense of security that most children had. Not money, or fancy clothes, or the latest gadget, but the comfort of clothes that were warmed on the fire guard, and if you were lucky a hot water bottle to warm the flannellette sheets when you dived across the room to jump into bed quick as the lino was always freezing:)
I too remember the cold of the winters, with no central heating or warm radiators in the bathroom.The fact I can have a hot shower in a warm bathroom daily to me is fantastic.I get up in a bedroom with a carpet on the floor and can go from room to room and not feel cold .

I was lucky that I had a good, if strict upbringing and a Mum who loved and cared for her children.She could be stern and strict along with my Dad who was even stricter than her,but my two brothers and I were shaped by our parents and our values and outlook were devised by them.

I too taught my children to knit,read and enjoy the great outdoors. Foraging is still something I do for blackberries etc with my grandchildren over 60 years later. Even on holiday this year we picked apples from the tree in the garden of the holiday house and had crumbles and my DD caught fish that we ate when out fishing with her sons .
I can remember lots of the good things, and also the not so good. The cold winter of 1947 when everyone in the country froze and had very little coal.Having coats put across the foot of your bed to keep warm(My late Dads army coat was great for that:)
But I also remember the fun things like my late brother making me a dolls house from orange box wood and finding me a sad looking doll on a bomb site that had only one arm,leg and eye and was covered in dirt.But once washed was loved by me for a long time (My Mum hated it as she probably knew what had happened to the original owner) but I knitted clothes for my poor Molly -the Dolly and she was looked after very well:)

Sunday school outings that you could only go on if you had a perfect attendance at Sunday school.Playing on bomb sites and rooting for 'treasures' My Mum hated us doing that so as children we tried to keep quiet about what we were up to.
I thought I was in heaven one Christmas as I got in my presents a 'magic ' painting set,a 500 piece jigsaw AND a book with a cut out doll on the back with lots of cut out outfits.One little girl in my primary school was better off than the rest of us and seemed to get all of the annuals on the market in January she would bring them into school and rent them out at a penny per week to those who hadn't read them.(probably ended up running her own business as she was very entreprenurial for an 8 year old)I loved the classic books from Woolworths that were 2/6 each and used to ask for them as birthday presents. We had a saving stamp scheme at school and every week you brought in 6d and bought a stamp and it went into your book I remember it had a picture of Prince Charles on the stamp.

I can also remember my Mum almost in tears because a blonde lady called Ruth was hung for killing her boyfriend and she said it was a great British injustice and the judges should be ashamed.

I certainly never ever had a choice on what I was going to wear or how often I had to wear it. Clothes were nearly always recycled from something else, and especially woollens were re-knitted. I only remember one jumper my late Mum knitted that I didn't like and it was a striped brown and yellow one I didn't mind the yellow but hated the brown stripes .I think it was because she hadn't enough yellow wool and used some of the brown from one of my brothers school jumpers. She even knitted socks for the boys, and by 10 I could also turn a heel and knit them myself .
The smell of the white cleaning stuff put onto summer plimsolles or white shoes bring back memories of waiting for them to dry when they were left on the window sill. Smells I think are quite evocotive to memories .The worst was the smell of tripe being cooked and I hated the stuff but had to eat it as it was eat it up or else in our house. Rationing certainly made you a lot less fussy than todays kids.
My Mums co-op no. was 170983 and it was drilled into ones head from a young age I think I was taught it before my home address :):)

Christmas was making paper chains bought in 3d packets from Woolworths , and chinese lanterns from a sheet of Christmassy paper left over from the previous year and carefully ironed.

We usually had a chicken from one that we kept.My Dad killed it and Mum would draw its innards and then my middle brother and I would pluck its feathers off and Mum would go over the stubble with a candle to make sure it was all clean before cooking it .We were never allowed to treat the chickens as pets as we knew after awhile they would end up as Christmas dinner.Even the feathers were kept and reused in pillows.Todays children may have lots more things financially but I don't envy them at all, and for all the hardships that there was post war I still think I had a more happier childhood than many of todays children.But saying that I love life today and the comforts that I have my late Mum would have never imagined

newthrift

I have been reading this thread for the past few days and I could sit and listen to you all telling me about the good and the bad of growing up post war / OS it's so interesting. I think there are lessons that could be learnt and brought forward but I think everyone appreciates much of the technology to make life a little easier at times. I was born in 1991 but I still remember having a coal fire that worked the radiators and an immersion until we got a log burner and oil Central heating when I was 13/14. I know children now don't play out as much as even I did and they have much more technology at a young age than I ever did which I think is a shame. The obesity issue I would say also stems back to kids not playing out so much and in adults the easy access to carp foods and the constant snacking on rubbish. I love to cook from scratch and have proper meals, we have some easy foods now and again, but as a whole I cook from scratch for me and my OH. A lot of our friends and peers when you speak to them don't have the abilities /knowledge and it's a shame.

old-fashioned-girl

mardatha wrote: »

The book is "All Quiet on the Home Front" by Richard Van Emden and Steve Humphries

I am reading Jambusters by Julie Summers at the moment. It is all about what the WI did during WW2 and it is fascinating!

lostinrates

JackieO wrote: »

Indeed life was pretty tough for a lot of people, but reading through the posts one thing that stands out the most is the sense of security that most children had. .....
I was lucky that I had a good, if strict upbringing and a Mum who loved and cared for her children.She could be stern and strict along with my Dad who was even stricter than her,but my two brothers and I were shaped by our parents and our values and outlook were devised by them.

I'm just not sure about this. . In my own family there were very regretful happenings the impact of which filtered down generations.

Not every body benefitted from parents who loved each other , though the outside world might never have guessed, nor cared greatly for their children , nor those children benefitting from a sense of security. I wonder even if the 'most' you propose always have or if just ' enough' do to keep thongs ticking over 'well enough'.

mardatha

Human nature and the complexities of family life LIR, those things never change. But happy memories are a comfort all through life eh

lostinrates

mardatha wrote: »

Human nature and the complexities of family life LIR, those things never change. But happy memories are a comfort all through life eh

I think what stands out for the 'victims' in my family is that they had close by extended family who might not have known what was happening but were refuge none the less. Summer holidays might have been spent with them for example, or regular weekly visits where there was time of respite. Many families to day are very much more isolated nuclear units.

kboss2010

OS is still easy to do, it's all just a matter of perspective. Like the original OP said, new pjs every night isn't necessary, buying expensive food isn't necessary, spending money on those "must have" items isn't necessary. It's all a choice. All that's happened now is that keeping up with the Jones' is about what car you drive, what school your kids go to, how many foreign holidays you get as opposed to 50 years ago being what job your husband had or whether you wore hand-me-downs or could afford to make new clothes or whether you could afford to buy that fancy new fridge.

I think people have a tendency to over-romanticise the past. It wasn't all happy families with a mum at home, dad who earned enough to keep the family and happy memories of Christmases and such. It wasn't as acceptable to leave an unhappy home/admit you couldn't afford to feed your family in those days. A lot of people 'got by' but were miserable.

My mum grew up with hardly anything, my grandad didn't earn enough to keep the family and he was never at home (oil worker) so my gran had to work and often went hungry to feed her kids back in the 1960s. I honestly think the only reason my gran stayed was because leaving wasn't an option although she'd never admit it.

Similarly my parents had a very unhappy marriage, I have no memories of them not arguing and they divorced when I was 6. I was probably one of the only kids to have ever been glad that their parents split up but the divorce process was awful and I was stuck in the middle.

I think it's definitely influenced the way I view life as an adult. I never want to get married or have kids or ever rely on someone else for an income because I've mostly just seen what happens when it goes wrong. The women get lumbered with the kids more often than not and I don't want the life my mum or gran had basically working 24/7 effectively living as single parents. I'm happy being in a long-term relationship but marriage to me is a curse that makes you start taking each other for granted and doesn't mean a thing if, to make it last, you have to live your life miserably.

I think people often forget that disposable income didn't really exist back then and compared to wages, most things were expensive. They weren't made for pennies in Taiwan, you had to pay the cost of British labour for everything you bought. A pair of new shoes cost a week's wages. Now you can buy a pair of shoes for a few hours' wages.

It's no harder to save money now than it was then if you sort out your priorities. All we've done in the last 50 years really is traded in handmade clothes, free childcare, free housekeeping and everything else housewives did for free for the opportunity for women to have the choice to not be trapped in that lifestyle and to be paid for their contribution to society. Does this economy suck? Sure, I'm one of the unemployed grads they talk about who can't get a permanent job with a science degree who can't afford the latest 'it' things. But, you know what? Having temporary jobs has allowed me the luxury of being able to weather this unfortunate career gap independently. And, to me, my economic independence is more valuable than anything else I could have gained from living in 1950s Britain.

cavework

Quote
It's no harder to save money now than it was then if you sort out your priorities
Then
quote
I think people often forget that disposable income didn't really exist back then and compared to wages, most things were expensive..
???


I don't see anyone romanticising (SP) the past here.
These are just honest accounts of the way things were.
Go back to the 19th century and look at the poverty and life expectancy of our ancestors.. then go forward to the first 50 years of the 20th century..
In fact go forward until about 1980
Take into account 2 world wars .. no NHS until 1949 ..no welfare benefits and definitely no further education unless you could pay for it..
Your economic independence would not be happening if it wasn't for the past and the people who lived it.

kboss2010

cavework wrote: »

Quote
It's no harder to save money now than it was then if you sort out your priorities
Then
quote
I think people often forget that disposable income didn't really exist back then and compared to wages, most things were expensive..
???


I don't see anyone romanticising (SP) the past here.
These are just honest accounts of the way things were.
Go back to the 19th century and look at the poverty and life expectancy of our ancestors.. then go forward to the first 50 years of the 20th century..
In fact go forward until about 1980
Take into account 2 world wars .. no NHS until 1949 ..no welfare benefits and definitely no further education unless you could pay for it..
Your economic independence would not be happening if it wasn't for the past and the people who lived it.

Exactly. As I said I'm not ungrateful, as life is generally easier now for my generation than the war generations. I'm profoundly grateful I live now as life pre-1970s Britain sounded awful to me. That said, if I'd been born 10 years earlier I'd have a steady job, my own house and not be left jumping between jobs and paying someone else's mortgage so it's better but not as good as the people born in the 1970/early 80s had it. It's all swings and roundabouts with an economy based on (unsustainable) continuous growth.

But saving money is saving money. If you try you can find savings somewhere. I maybe didn't explain the disposable income point very well. There wasn't as much "stuff" to buy nor the expectation of "buying" stuff so people didn't bother and the concept of disposable income changed.

cavework

When were you born?