When I was born........

To (slightly mis)quote Terry Pritchett - the essentials of the good life are good plumbing and dentistry. I’m delighted with improvements since the 1950s. Shallow baths are now hot showers. Mr Brutal Monster Dentist is now sensitive efficient professional.

As it is nearly a hundred years since I was born things have changed tremendously since then.
I do think my childhood was much happier than a child of the same circumstances today.
My father was quite wealthy on £15 a week. Only in the poorest families did the wife go out to work. In fact my mother employed a woman to do the “rough work”. Scrubbing the floors etc. Mum was always playing with us making dolls clothes and furniture for the dolls house.
I was still playing with dolls when I was fourteen not thinking of boys like todays teenagers.
We did like turning the mangle on wash days and we had an electric iron plugged into the light socket. But everything had to be damped down before ironing. No manmade fabrics.
Meals were more simple. No foreign food.
There were only two of us in my school whose fathers owned cars.
A completely different world from today.

Luckygirl DH's grandmother told me that she remembered when motor cars first appeared on the roads and a man with a flag walked ahead of it to warn people.

You were well ofm Bijou!

I remember having to damp down the ironing for my mother. A bowl of clean water, dip your fingers in and flick your fingers at the dried clothes, then roll them before ironing them.
I'd forgotten that.

Well when I were a lass we lived in one tiny bedroom, all 140 of us huddled in a corner cos the floor would give way. We all shared one cup of ditch water, but then hooray we got moved to a pothole in middle of road! ?
(Monty Python sketch)

)

I remember when we got our first fridge, must have been around 1963/4. It had a small ice box and Mum got some ice lolly moulds and we froze orange squash to make lollies- ooh, the excitement!
I can't remember when we first got a TV but I remember loving 'Watch with Mother'- Andy Pandy, the Woodentops, Bill and Ben- in the late 50's. We could only afford a B & W TV when we first married in 1975, but a friend of my parents owned a TV rental shop. He asked us if we would 'look after' a colour TV set over Christmas, in case there was a break-in. We were delighted, but of course we couldn't bear to send it back afterwards, so rented it from him in the new year. Very clever marketing, I realise now!
What astounds me most now is being able to shop online- to browse different outlets, compare prices, read what other people think of it, tap a few keys and have it delivered the next day!

The only person I knew to have izal toilet paper was my ex MIL I remember being absolutely disgusted with it and wouldn’t use the loo there! My memory is like many others here having a tin bath (front of fire every Thursday!) an outside loo and icicles in the winter inside the window as well as outside. I don’t have many good memories of grammar school most of the teachers ruled with an iron fist, looking back they were very Victorian in attitude. My DP’s were wonderful though and I miss them both every day even though they died in the early/mid eighties.

1944. My Dad was away in the war. I slept in a drawer for several week. Mam and I were living with my Grandma. No bathroom, toilet down the garden. No one had a car in those days in our village. Except the doctor. My Grandpa was a miner. He had a bath in a tin bath in the kitchen. I remember scrubbing his back.

I slept in a drawer too Bevan. Happy daze!

I remember telling my grandkids when they were little about babies sleeping in a drawer in the “old days”

One of them pondered over the image a while longer than the other.
Then eventually piped up “was it not really scary at night after their mummy shut the drawer and went to bed?

Yes the daze was when I tried to sit up in said drawer

My children were stunned to learn we had no central heating, phone, fridge or freezer, car, fitted carpets, or TV. Their faces were a study. We did have a bathroom of sorts; a large pale green bath (very pretty) with a cold tap, and a big electric boiler next to it that heated the water. This had to be tipped in the bath a bucketful at a time. Our first home had no central heating, fitted kitchen, or freezer, and our first car didn't arrive for about four years.

I was born two years after the war and lived in a house that had no electricity and no running water. The loo and the bath tub (which was also used for washing clothes) were in an "Outhouse". Cooking was done on the fire or the "range ovens". There was a Gas Lamp for light in the evenings, and candles to take upstairs to bed. Outside was a Pump house, with a hand pump to get water - and boy was it delicious (it was Spring Water and icy cold, even in summer)! To use the boiler for Washing clothes, or yourself - you made a fire underneath the boiler (a brick structure with a metal dome inside) and poured water in. When it was hot enough for the desired purpose, you raked the fire out and used the hot water. The alternative for smaller amounts of water, was to put a metal pail on the fire and wait for that to boil! I thought it was a luxury when we moved to a house with a tin bath that could be used indoors!

When I was young I heard talk of the war and always thought of it as being a very long time ago.
Many years later, I suddenly realised that I was born only 7 years after the end of WW2.

Also, that the war lasted for 6 years. How terrible it must have been to live then, despite cheery stories of all pulling together etc.

Although there has always been a flush toilet in every home I've had, I do sometimes think what a blessing it is to have one and how awful it would be to have to cope without.

Going a little off track and back a couple of generations, my grandmother was always held in awe, having spent a good proportion of her childhood living on her fathers sailing ship, travelling the world. Later she travelled by jet plane. It was the fact that she took all that in her stride that amazed me but, having been born in 1944, I am sure i have lived through even more changes and hardly noticed until it is brought to my notice. I must ask my great grandchildren, when I next see them, if they think the same as I thought about my grandmother.

I lived in a house with no electricity and no running water. The loo, and bath were in the outhouse. The loo was a chemical toilet (with a very large wooden seat) and the bath was a boiler, a brick structure under which you built a fire to heat the water inside a large metal bowl. This was used to wash clothes and people (though not usually at the same time!). At night, we had a freestanding Gas Lamp (powered by Meths, I think!) and candles were used when you needed to go to bed. Water was in the Pump House and had to be pumped by hand into a Bucket or other large container. It was Spring Water, tasted delicious and was always icy cold, even in summer. Food was cooked either on the fire, or in the "range ovens". I thought it was a great thing when we moved to a house where we had a tin bath hung up outside, and could bathe indoors! For years, my Grandmother was afraid that electricity "leaked" if you took out a light bulb. I think she was remembering Gas Lights. I played (alone) on the moors for hours. Walked (alone again) over the same moors - but on a road - two miles to school and back again in the evening. I never thought I was in any danger. Only when I lived in a large town or city did I come across anyone who might have posed a threat or experience theft and mugging. Having lived and worked in a big city for most of my adult life, I now live once again in a fairly isolated village with no shops, pubs or bus service.

It's the glory of hot water whenever I want it that never ceases to astound me.

Plus the fact that I'm sitting here typing on a little flat keyboard and my words are coming up on a screen - I learned to type on a sit-up-and-beg Adler manual machine back in the early 1960s and the changes I've seen via electric typewriters and word processors is incredible.

Agreed gulligranny hot water is a lovely luxury it’s so easy to take for granted. A few days with a broken boiler brings that message home.

What astounds me is that even during the course of our marriage, 43 years, we will now spend the same amount of money on a holiday as we spent on buying our first house.
If you'd told me that then I would have thought you were talking about someone else's life.

On a daily basis I too give thanks for the simple pleasure of a hot shower at the press of a button. Bliss ☺️

Anyone else have a "scullery" in their house? We didn't have a kitchen as such, just a back room with a butler sink, gas cooker, water boiler (no running hot water downstairs) and one of those cabinets with the pull down bit to do any chopping, rolling out of pastry etc. There was a meat safe built into an outside wall with wire to stop the rodents eating it. Milk was kept in a bucket of water on the tiled bit under the bulter sink. Not sure where we kept the cheese and butter though!

I was born twenty years after the end of the second world war and we still had pre-decimal currency. Thankfully, l never had to use it as we went decimal shortly after my sixth birthday. We always lived in modern homes so l always had indoor toilets and bathrooms. We had a black and white TV until l was eleven and my mother had a single tub washing machine and spin dryer then later a twin tub. I was about twelve before we had a freezer and automatic washing machine. I had a happy childhood, lucky enough to have private piano lessons and, later, to learn the violin in school. I was in the brownies then guides and we still had a lot of freedom. Even as a small child l was allowed to play in the field behind the house and down the lane with the "big" children and later my friend and I would cycle all round the Norfolk countryside. We would have been ten.

I wish I had kept the book my parents used to bring me up in 1940...called "The Training of the Child". I gather it was based on rigid four hourly feeding; no picking up between feeds; put out in pram every day regardless of weather; and toilet training from birth!
I'm sure the last was worth the effort with no washing machines or even hot water, but part of the technique was to run water to encourage me, and I still react to running water!

allule I remember my Mum encouraging me to hold my little ones over the sink and running tap for a wee before the fresh nappy went on. And I must admit it did often work.

Your comment about reacting to running water reminded me of a story years ago when those musical potties were around. When the baby wee’d the potty played the tune.

A mother said it had all gone well till an ice cream van started visiting their street playing the same jingles long after the toddler was potty trained!

I think the house we bought in 1964 was around £2500, a new three bedroomed semi. Amazing to think of now.

Ah, the good of days eh Froglady ... but in 1964 when my parents bought their first semi (for a similar price) my mum earned £8 p.w. for full time work on the factory floor. She told me the mortgage was £32 p.m. she and dad thought that was do-able. I daresay his wages did ‘everything else’.
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