Elocution lesssons in the seventies. Did you?

Should have been pestilential prison and not sentimental.
Old age and time withers the mind.

From The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan. I grew up on G&S and married someone who sang it. DH played many parts, including the handsome hero (shock) in the Mikado.

There was a black boot black and a white boot black...

can`t recall the rest...

I chose dance lessons rather than elocution, but a lot of girls in my class in a small private school in the 1950s chose elocution or had it chosen for them by their parents.

My parents were of the opinion that between them they and my school could teach us to speak properly, but they wanted me to move gracefully, so chose ballet lessons for me.

I passed the 13+ which took me to secretarial college. We learned shorthand, typewriting, commerce, accountancy, maths, English and geography. In addition each day we had an hour on elocution. “To be a secretary you needed to speak properly”. We learned how to breathe, project and enunciate saying things like - “Buy a big, blue, bulb bowl for Barbara. Donald dug deep on a dark night, and The little laughing lady liked lime and lemon”.

My father came over from Ireland in the late 40s/ early 50s and quickly lost his Cork accent. I was born in Essex and was never allowed to lapse into an Essex accent. (Think Lorraine Chase, and Luton Airport.) I never took elecution lessons, but have a received pronunciation accent, despite living in Yorkshire for over 30 years.

I did in mid-60s - was called ‘Speech and Drama’, I remember having to read a passage from Peter Pan. I now have a ‘non accent’ and get told I ‘talk posh’ - have got used to it over the years. However DGD - nearly 4 - and becoming Mancunian from nursery told me ‘Gangan you don’t talk properly’ - wonder what my parents would say to their, apparent, waste of money!!

I think there were two distinct schools of elocution lessons in my youth.

The one I did was not about “speaking differently” and getting rid of accents it was more about annunciation and reading with meaning, intonation etc. My friend (who went to a different school) had the “my father’s car is a jaguar” sort but mine was much more like M0nica’s and involved lots of Shakespeare, Dickens, poetry reading and so on.

I never had any rhymes to learn (my friend did and I have to admit it sounded ridiculous) but we learned poems, practiced sight reading and we also looked at verse structure and things such as monothongs and diphthongs.

I went to evening classes to try to iron out my London accent a little. To no avail. The men at work roared at 'Fathers Car is a Jaguar', and said that with my accent it should be 'My bruvver 'Orace drives a Morris'!

Not elocution, but deportment! In the 1960s I went to a girls' grammar school in North London. I remember lessons walking round the gym with beanbags on my head to train us to walk straight and upright "with pride" - also told to imagine we had an invisible string attached to our breastbone and to stand as if we were suspended by that. Also taught to get out of cars elegantly - feet and knees together and swing them out, holding onto the handle above the car door. I still do this :-) We were not allowed to wear patent shoes - boys/men would look at them and see the reflection of our knickers. Not sure whether to laugh at that or accept its wisdom .....

We had elocution in Junior School in the Fifties. I can remember saying Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper, and other real tongue twisters. I think it might help some children today as they can struggle to pronounce words properly. We also had to memorise poems, songs and passages from the bible which I still recall today.

No such thing here, although we did recite poetry. I think it was more as a lesson on memorization than elocution.

As for accents, I remember meeting one English family here as a teenager and being amazed that they all had different accents. I guess the kids were all quite far apart in age, and they had moved around the country before moving to Canada. The eldest brother sounded quite cockney, the middle sister sounded posh, and the youngest son had a mixed nondescript, slight British accent.

Growstuff,I remember the centipede verse too!

Elocution lessons. Nah! Born in The Borough, London SE1. However, when I started my career, I soon realised that the class system in London was alive and well. So I adapted my accent to suit. Now I've almost retired, I don't care and am proud of my cockney accent and my cockney heritage.

Like myself Evie64 and having to adapt your accent to suit who you maybe talking to was always on the agenda for me.
My cousins or family would be around me sometimes when I went on the phone to someone and without thinking I changed my accent, my cousin was laughing her head off and asked me if that was my posh voice? I then got the standing family joke and would be asked to put on the posh voice. Its many years since moving out of London now and the cockney accent has gone (more or less) but one cousin still asks me to do my posh voice.

I had elocution at school as a child but also in the late 50s when training to be a physiotherapist. This was so that we could stand in front of a class of patients and be clearly heard.

Fathers car is a Jaguar and Pa drives rather fast.

I was living in Norfolk and we had lessons. We had to learn a poem of our choice and then present it to the class. Our teacher was extremely strict as well but it did me good.

When I was at secondary school - late 1940s - we all had a geordie accent. Some stronger than others.
Our english teacher tried to give us some elocution lessons but she wasn't very successful.
I'll never forget group reading of Macbeth, for O level, in the 5th form, Act 2 scene 3 when the murder is found and Lady Macbeth says "What, in our house?"
One lad (I remember his name) chipped in with
"Wot - in wor hoose?"
Even our teacher smiled.

Thank you so much for all these posts; they brought back happy memories of my childhood.
Most respondents to this thread reminisce about lessons in the 50s and 60s. I had elocution lessons in their twilight days of the early to mid 80s from the excellent Miss Spain. The school, in SE London, had recently converted to private from the phased-out direct grant system but had held on to its socially aspirational mindset, a mindset embodied at the time by Margaret Thatcher’s carefully manufactured image. This is what I think elocution lessons were all about.
People, nowadays, might say that my parents were ‘snobby’ to put me through the lessons but I think they were realists and that there was a greater honesty then as to what was required to be successful. Nothing’s changed today - the likes of Boris Johnson are still running the country and controlling the lion’s share of the well-paid employment opportunities. As in the past, the upper echelons are most likely to give those opportunities to people they feel share their values or, at least, aspire to them; a cut-glass accent is an important part of this, I think. I’m not, for one minute, saying that this is right - it clearly isn’t. I just feel that it’s the way things are.
Sorry - I hope that didn’t sound too preachy. On a lighter note, I don’t think anyone’s mentioned ‘The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain’. Did anyone else have to recite vowels at the start of every lesson? A (as on ‘hay’), E (as in ‘tea’), I (‘sty’), O (‘oh’), U (‘ruin’). I found the latter particularly amusing, not able at the time to understand how ‘u’ could be ‘oo’.

Jo90 spot on. In the UK people are still judged as soon as they start speaking. I lived in France for many years and I asked a neighbour if it was the same in France. She was puzzled by the implication of a person's social standing being estimated by their accent. She said that she could pick out a person's region from their accent, but nothing about their social class.

I do remember going to elocution lessons, which were given by my friend's mother at her home.

I remember repeating Sally's black cat, sat on the mat, over and over and over.

But I don't remember the lessons going on for very long, and I definitely didn't do recitals.

Only the "posh" girls at my school took elocution lessons, so not me!

I recite nursery rhymes with my younger minded children to teach them how to enunciate slowly and clearly, they really enjoy it as a game and are fascinated by watching my mouth move and trying to copy.

I still remember the poems I had to recite in the 50s. Can’t remember what I cooked for dinner last night though.

A school friend had elocution lessons but I never did.
The first time I heard my recorded voice, I was shocked and tried hard to make gentle changes but dont think its made much difference.
Though I like many, have a special 'telephone' voice..... for short conversations only as I cant keep it going for too long .