Biggest 'Modern Day' Friend

Couldn't agree more, Aprilrose. That is what I find scary about my love of dystopian fiction. It's imminent, with global warming catastrophes.

God, YES Elegran! Contraception. Most of us would have achieved very little in life if we were annually pregnant.

We were very poor. We lived in two up 2 down, coal fire, no fridge, outside toilet, no bath. All properties condemned around us but not our row. When they knocked them down our house filled with rats and mice. The worst for me as I mentioned earlier was discovering at school that slum housing was 'graded' and it was pointed out to me numerous times that I lived in the lowest of them all.

aprilrose I would ask how old you are too!!

I can remember my mother doing the weekly wash in a dolly tub using a wooden dolly.
Then she got a washing machine which was heated by gas with a mangle then a twin tub when they came out, and a gas cooker instead of the range.

Elegran my DGP were quite a bit older than yours!

How old are you, Aprilrose? and when were your grandparents born?

I am one of those "WASPI" women, although I have not subscribed to the movement I am affected rather badly by it. My maternal grandparents were both born in 1902. My paternal grandparents were born circa 1877 ( as was my great grand father on my mothers side).

I am old enough to remember a time before womens equality and feminism and young enough to have to still work. I also still have a young child at home ( late pregnancy - child healthy and very normal, a bit intelligent really), so I am a mum too. Not a gran though. But I am your age.

My mother is 92, still living.

In my early teens, I used to visit my grandfather in Ireland and the loo was in a shed a distance away from the house. Water had to be collected and carried from a distance down a lane so one never wasted a drop.

In Scotland, my mother worked full time with a day off a month. She sent laundry to be done elsewhere and hand washed everything else.

We had an indoor bathroom but they could not afford the money to run hot water but when I had a bath I was loathe to get out because it was so cold.

Nowadays I would miss a shower and my washing machine.

I'd put council housing well at the top of the list of essentials

I might have back in the 1970's but I wouldnt anymore. I do not think council housing solves anything until the rules regarding council house allocation get a major overhaul. I worked in the council homeless families unit back in the 1970's when the rules were changed and problems started.

Central heating and an inside toilet with a bath are the best things for me.

We shared a grotty, stinking toilet with two other familes in a tenement building until I was 5 years old. A bath was once a week in a tin bath in front of the coal fire, which burned defective bobbins from the local thread mill.
What I find ironic is that we had a black stone sink with a cold water tap, which my mother hated and I now have a modern black stone sink in my kitchen!
My mother was still getting up at 6am to light a coal fire in her seventies, that was if she could afford a bag of coal on her meagre pension. We often had to pay for the coal, despite being pretty skint ourselves.
After much drama, (she didn't want strangers in her house), we eventually persuaded her to let the council put in central heating and double glazing in her house, after she broke her hip.
She couldn't believe how warm her home was, she had constant hot water and her fuel bills were more than halved.

Gt aunt, 1890 -1989 , never quite made 100, lived through so many changes. No planes, very few cars, no TV or phones, washing machines or any of the things we take for granted.Her DC were born in the 1920s. We lived in the same street for a few years and frequently called. She had hardly changed a thing in her house since she moved in, in 1912. She had a phone but still no washing machine - her sister did all her washing. She had an early gas cooker.

For me the washing machine is the single most important invention but then again the computer, the car etc.

My SiL knitted pilchers for all her babies and her DGC. She would have no plastic near their precious bottoms.

You are not quite my age, Aprilrose, by twenty years or so. My childbearing days were definitely over at 53, almost thirty years ago.

I still think providing council housing was the biggest single contributor to living improvements. Renting privately led inevitably to occupying the worst housing stock unless you were either rich enough to pay well or lucky enough to find someone who didn't need (or want) to make a profit on their property.

What has happened to council housing since their inception is another thing.

but I am your age
aprilrose my dad was born before your grandparents.
My great-aunt was born in the early 1850s. She was born overseas and came here on a sailing ship, probably steerage.

Modern day friend
I would say washing machine.

Surely advances in running water, indoor lavatories etc are essential progress?

If I'm being frivolous, I put soft toilet paper high up on my list of modern 'friends'.
When we were young, we could have done with double glazing which had never been heard of. It cut out the worst of the traffic noise; keeps the heat in and the cold wind out; saves on fuel bills as well. As does my thick layer of loft insulation.

Ooo central heating for sure

I remember running to get my clothes then running back with them to dress under my blankets. And tap water coming out ICE COLD

But then again I never get blase about how lucky we are to have fresh drinking water staight out of taps

Oh yes annodomini how I hated that slippery hard toilet paper. My parents thought it was more hygienic than the soft tissue - why ?

Aprilrose my parents were born in 1896 and my father fought in WW1 Hard to believe isn't it .

You are not quite my age, Aprilrose, by twenty years or so. My childbearing days were definitely over at 53, almost thirty years ago

I come from a family of women who successfully gave birth late in life , although in earlier days nothing was thought of it. Both sides of my family seem to be able to reproduce well into their fifties - me included. However, I did find myself up against the prejudice of menopause even though I didnt get to menopause until I was over 60. Thats another story.

My paternal grandmother gave birth to my dad in her mid fifties. My dad was healthy and intelligent ( born in 1923) he won the county scholarship to grammar school . It was the only one awarded by the county back then - if you wanted to go to grammar school , you paid. That was the making of my dad in many ways. He was called up in WW2 but when he came out he joined the Civil Service and moved up the ladder as it were.

But his family all had brains. One of my cousins left for the USA to work for NASA ( metallurgy degree - he worked on producing the metals that made the space ship that went to the moon) and became a professor and wrote books too.

He was around 10 years older than me. I am used to knowing that families can be widespread generationally. My paternal grandparents having been the same age as my maternal great grandfather.

My mother was never a slouch either. her father was a rail worker ( had been a canal boatman when he was a boy. His dad went to war in WW1 and never came back, leaving my grandfather to look after and bring up his siblings ( his mother died in childbirth). He had a hard life ( lived until he was nearly 100) but he kept his family out of the workhouse - as he always said. His biggest fear was the workhouse for them all. His brother was only 10 years older than my mother and he is still with us.

Of non-tangible things, then education, for girls particularly, must be top of the list. My mum’s stopped at the age of 17, when she was taken out of school to look after her ailing mother. Her father left school at either 12 or 14. Both were/are highly intelligent and who knows what they might have achieved, had they been able to continue their education?

My paternal GP’s were born in the 1860’s. I imagine simply having a roof over their heads and something to eat were major achievements. My grandmother was born and raised in South Africa, which must have been challenging. The family history groups I am in speak of terrible swathes of illness that swept through communities, carrying off the children especially. My GP’s died when my father was very young, more than 40 years before I was born.

Like others here, my childhood memories consists of being cold all winter, the ice on the windows, chapped legs from wearing wellingtons. We always had a loo and bathroom, though.

People say its a bad thing but: Health & Safety at work.

The industries Ive worked in were awfully dangerous in lots of ways. People say "well we survived" but not everyone did. At leadt not unscathed. I think its a good thing that youre not expected to put yourself at unnecessary personal risk just to keep food on the table..

notanan I remember that too!
But who washed your nice clean clothes and did they have a washing machine?

I've done more than my share of handwashing but I still say central heating.

Would rather do handwashing in a warm house than use a washing machine in a cold one!

Leaving household appliances aside, I would say that advances in medicines, vaccinations and antibiotics.

And clean drinking water.
Many people died from typhoid and cholera in this country and it was within the memory of many of our great-grandparents or even grandparents.

I hate washing by hand!! Although I have done a fair bit over the years as I didn't have a washing machine for a longish period and had the DC then.

And clean drinking water.
Thats gotta be no 1 on the "serious" list doesn't it? Without it the rest doesnt matter..

I thought the move from single glazing to double was amazing at the time but with hind sight it correlated with us getting central heating! However I in relatively recent years lived in an old single glazed property WITH central heating and it was snug so I think I gave the glazing credit for the coziness that went along with our first PROPER central heating (we had solid fuel central heating before that!)

I remember having that secondary glazing fitted.