How did people leave home at 15…

I lived in Islington in a basement flat in the seventies. Two doors down the house was owned by a notorious landlord who was so abusive to the tenants that the council bought him out. They offered the house ( four story Georgian house in a garden square) for £15,000 to a couple who were living there but they turned it down as they didn’t want to take on a mortgage. The houses in that square go for £4 million plus. I do wonder if the young couple ever think “if only”.

I left home at 17 in 1971 and moved to London. Spent one night at my sister's house in Battersea, and then rented a bedsit close by in Clapham. Got a job as a runner in the film business in Soho. Great days. My friends soon followed. They worked retail in the big department stores like Barkers in Ken High Street, Dickens and Jones and so on. You could literally walk out of a job on the Friday and walk into a new one on the Monday.

Being on the dole as a young person or in the university holidays would probably have worked as a univeral basic income?

Work experience was much easier to come by too. These days most schools put a week aside for the year 10's but lots of pupils don't get a place. Schools don't help organised it, local councils and large employers don't have a scheme to support it in out town.

I knew people in Islington and Stoke Newington in the late 70s. They lived in big houses that were squats or bed sits. They'll be millionaires' houses now.

Fascinating thread. On the subject of gentrification, I remember in 1980 hearing a woman talking about a house she'd been to look at in what she'd been told was a rapidly up and coming area, but she had her doubts about it as it all seemed very grotty. She and her husband and children were in a small but decent terrraced house in West London and looking for somewhere bigger. I often wonder if they took the risk, because if they did they would have cleaned up.

It was Islington.

Also, I grew up in an age where children were seen and not heard. You were desperate to be an adult to have some autonomy.

Absolutely, if you watch the film "!0 Rillington Place" about serial killer John Christie, it was filmed in Notting Hill, just before a large demolition programme in the 1970s

Rillington place, demolished in '72 was a typical street in Notting Hill of 3 storey victorian terraced houses, let and sub let as slums, there were large factory premises that were by that period derelict.

I grew up in London in the 80s, and as a kid we played in derelict warehouses that are now prime location real estate. Its changed a lot!!

Rose-tinted spectacles, I fear.

Road deaths were much higher, including children and pedestrians.

Child abuse was rife, and was brushed under the carpet.

The Flying Squad was corrupt, and cosily in bed with organised crime. Racist violence was common, even in green buses carrying groups of cops.

In the 1970's it was possible, and "normal" for a young couple on average earnings to buy a house, though, and for a bright school leaver to get a "job for life" in a decent company with a pension and the probability of long term promotion.

Her birthday is in November, so my point still stands if she was in the UK - which she apparently wasn't.

Me too. I worked for some holidays but no need to rely on parents.

My mum moved to London from a small village at 15 as an apprentice in a niche industry for a high end business. Bespoke/in magazines/known service provider to the queen. Indeed mum worked on something for the queen. This was in the 60s. It was just how things were then I think.

I did this. My mum had a 'once you're 16, you're out' rule, and my sister had already gone to London (we're from near Hull), and was living in a grotty flatshare in Crouch End, so when I was 15, I moved in with her and her boyfriend. Got an interview within a few days, and worked full time in a supermarket near Baker Street tube station. This was 1985. For the next few years it was super easy to find jobs. I remember working in Tesco in Hounslow in 1989, having an argument with the manager, walking out, down the street, and found another job within the hour!

@LeedsLoiner I'd forgotten that people could do that. I had friends who claimed unemployment during the holidays. I worked in a pub during the holidays and remember telling my father that I'd probably be better off claiming unemployment and he went berserk!!! Had completely forgotten that. And so many think that benefits are too generous nowadays!!!!! 😂

Sali Hughes also did this, moved to London at 15, and managed to get a job assisting a makeup artist. I think she initially slept on a friend’s floor ? Not sure though.

DH was born in '62 and left school aged 15 in '77. He wasn't expelled.

MF lived in Ireland, where 15 was the legal age to leave school, and moved to London when her dad died early. Maybe she was at private school, and had to leave and get a job when he died? She's done well for herself regardless and I think she should be proud of that!

That rule changed half way through my course.

Yes. My sister had an August birthday and left at 15 in 1973.

A friend of mine worked "in the City" and the staff mortgage rate was 1/2% (half a percent) they used it as a way of keeping staff tied to the company.

You were allowed to leave school at the start of the term in which you turned 16 in the early/mid 80’s. Several girls in my year did that - I could never fathom why they left literally weeks before their O Level exams, but I remember our Head Girl did - was pregnant and getting married that summer too. 🤯

When I attended university in the early 1980's during the vacations I could claim unemployment benefit and housing benefit to cover the rent on my student house.

In 1978 there were 1.5 million unemployed. Schemes like yts and tops helped people into work. The 70s ended very differently to how it started and was different to 1964.

Yes, I was exaggerating for a mildly comic effect.

My mum worked in a bank and had so many stories like this. The manager would come back from lunch completely wasted and they’d have to barricade his office to keep him away from customers.

however, she did get a staff discount on her mortgage 😱

it’s like the brink mat gold being laundered through a random bank branch in Swindon or wherever because bank staff had no responsibility for finding out where your money came from (I don’t think they noticed in until he’d paid in £10m or something 😭)

Jobs in investment banks, 100k+ salaries and the London of today are not aspirations for everyone. Besides which, investment banks bleed an economy. They do not operate for the general good of the people

Interesting thread. Another important difference is that 16-18s could access unemployment benefits until 1988 and these were higher thro 70s & 80s relative to COL. So there was a better financial safety net for young people leaving home because they weren't considered their parents' responsibility. I was born early 60s and remember a culture during 80s of people who wanted to be in a band, or 'opt out', living in squats on benefits. The flip side of this though was much higher unemployment levels (double digits) in the 80s and real hopelessness about the future for working class youngsters in areas where industry was decimated during the Thatcher years.

Experiences of young people differed then as much as they do now according to class, religion, family, culture... and my memories are coloured by my own experiences, but I think teens were lower down the pecking order then than they are now. The Victorian 'seen and not heard' had gone but we were still expected to sort ourselves out rather than rely on parents or expect that they would always put our needs before theirs. It wasn't simply that we were expected to be adults, nor that parents were selfish. They partly saw their role as teaching us our place in the social order and indulging young adults was seen as not good for them or for society. My experience of independence was a funny mix of being expected to cross minor roads to run errands from reception age but then having a 10pm curfew when I had a boyfriend at 17. I'm not sure either was ideal preparation for adulthood, tho I enjoyed the first much more than the second.