Skip to main content
Skip to main navigation
Skip to talk navigation

Active discussions

Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Saved Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

Flip

1 2 3

AIBU?

To ask your help for a character's occuption (late 1950s) for my novel?

60 replies

Pushpins40 · 22/07/2018 08:08

I'm stuck. It's a minor point but I'm on the upteenth draft of this effing novel with a deadline looming. Google isn't helping, so I wondered if Mumsnet would?

A man, London, 1958, needs a fairly dull office job. Something that would be quite well paid. I thought accountant but I'm not sure I want something professional. I thought managing a department in a refrigeration company (which I thought might be growing post war). But my tired brain is addled.

Any suggestions welcome! Thanks so much.

OP posts:

Report

SoShinySoChrome · 22/07/2018 08:10

Shipping clerk.

FirstTimePetitioner · 22/07/2018 08:11

Office manager?

SunnySomer · 22/07/2018 08:12

Civil servant

wellBeehivedWoman · 22/07/2018 08:13

Law clerk?

BMW6 · 22/07/2018 08:13

Ditto Civil Servant. HMRC specifically (as I was for 34 years)

Pushpins40 · 22/07/2018 08:15

He's late forties by then - would shipping clerk be the right sort of job for a family man who went to university and who, now, has a daughter at university?

OP posts:

Pushpins40 · 22/07/2018 08:16

HMRC sounds good. Can you please tell me more? Would it have been a decent income? Were the offices in the city?

OP posts:

CasperGutman · 22/07/2018 08:19

Well, he certainly wouldn't have worked at HMRC in the 1950s. The Inland Revenue, or Customs and Excise, on the other hand... (although the latter probably conjures too exciting an image for your purposes!).

bookgirl1982 · 22/07/2018 08:19

At that time weren't HMRC based in Somerset House?

Basta · 22/07/2018 08:20

Working for a newspaper (but not a journalist)? Copy editor or something?

Slartybartfast · 22/07/2018 08:21

secretary?

agedknees · 22/07/2018 08:21

Insurance clerk/manager. Bank manager like mr mannering in dads army?

NicoAndTheNiners · 22/07/2018 08:22

I think someone who went to university back then would have a better job than a clerk.....such a small number of people went to uni then compared to now. Office manager of some sort? Civil service would be good.

Efferlunt · 22/07/2018 08:23

My DH’s DGF was a HMRC civil servant around that time. Think he was sort of middling but sent his kids to private schools and ended up with a OBE which I think was fairly standard in those days provided you kept your head down and did a okay job for 40 years.

Frouby · 22/07/2018 08:24

Assistant bank manager. Office manager in some kind of industry, coal or steel. Something in actuaries?

BikeRunSki · 22/07/2018 08:25

If your character has gone to university, then surely he would be professional? This was kind of the point of university in the 1950s, when only a small percentage of people went.

Warehouse/Factory manager.

CasperGutman · 22/07/2018 08:25

If he's 48 in 1958 (say) then he went to university around 1928. This puts him in a small minority of the most able (and privileged) students. He should have a good, professional career unless there's some back story we don't know that prevented this expectation being met.

He could still be a civil servant at the Inland Revenue, but should be expected to be pretty senior (someone with more knowledge of civil service ranks at the time could suggest exactly what level he would be at).

BikeRunSki · 22/07/2018 08:27

Caspar has said what I was trying today, but better, and has thought through the timeline better!

grasspigeons · 22/07/2018 08:29

insurance

PaulRuddislush · 22/07/2018 08:36

Office/bank manager type jobs wouldn't have necessitated a university education. I would have expected someone with a degree in the 1920s to be an MP, doctor, barrister or research scientist.

TressiliansStone · 22/07/2018 08:37

Accountant in your fictional refrigeration company? One of my family was an in-house accountant for a big manufacturer in 1958.

But do you need it to be in "the city"? You'd need to look at likely locations, but I think London still had a lot of manufacturing then. Eg at the Hoover Building in Perivale.

Pushpins40 · 22/07/2018 08:39

You are all BRILLIANT. Thank you for doing my thinking for me.

What does pretty senior CS at the Inland Revenue entail? What might he spend his time doing? Need some meat on the bones, as it were.

OP posts:

Don’t want to miss threads like this?

Weekly

Sign up to our weekly round up and get all the best threads sent straight to your inbox!

Email address

Log in to update your newsletter preferences.

You've subscribed!

TressiliansStone · 22/07/2018 08:39

And my family member did indeed have a university degree and some of his children were doing university degrees right about 1958.

Pushpins40 · 22/07/2018 08:40

No, it doesn't hve to be the city. I've got a scene which I can change.

Tressilan, what sort of big manufacturer was your family member an accountant at? And was this person 'comfortable' as a result?

OP posts:

Pushpins40 · 22/07/2018 08:41

Tressilans - how funny! Almost exact. Excellent. xx

OP posts:

Flip

1 2 3

Please create an account

To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.