How did people leave home at 15…

Accents can easily be adopted to be fair @PigletJohn my own grandmother moved to London at 18 (when coming of age was 21) dropped her strong Durham accent and learnt shorthand before working as a secretary, moving out during the war to Cornwall as a Nanny. Grew up as the daughter of grocers and sister of miners

Definitely social attitudes. Most young people didn't go to university back then but after O levels went to technical college to learn a skill (with me it was shorthand and typing...on a manual typewriter 😄) or just got a job. A handful of my friends did stay on for A levels and uni but usually their parents had been. I along with a lot of other young women got married early and had children in my 20s.
I do think parents were not as overprotective back then as they are now either!
I think some aspects of life were better back then, a slower pace of life for one thing, and people seemed to be nicer to each other. I think that may have been because we were still a post war generation and I think people are less selfish in times of war. I may be wrong!
I think I missed out though, on Uni and having fun. I did end up going in my 40s but it wasn't the same experience! I also think that young women have much higher standards than we did back then, being more financially independent and not having to rely on a man!

DM left home and went to live with a distant relative in London at 16 (1960s), after a couple of years she moved on to Rome…

Its true that youngsters these days seem more mollycoddled than back in the 70s. No being ferried around in parents cars, we walked or got the bus. Going into pubs at 15, as long as you looked old enough and gave a convincing date of birth you were in. Most of us had holiday/weekend jobs so had money to spend.
I will say though that the country was safer back then, very few cars, no maniacs speeding on the roads. Drugs were rarely heard of, apart from the occasional unfortunate who had died of an overdose.
People generally obeyed the law, the incentive to do that was the threat of Borstal, and few were crazy enough to end up in there. On the other side though, was lack of safeguarding children, any adult could give you a slap around the face if they decided you needed one, tell your parents and they would shrug and tell you that you probably deserved it...
So it was good and bad in equal measure, I would say

Oh wow! The evenings we sat on her bed darning the pointe shoes. Then out clubbing. Yes the basement! Well you’ll be jealous to know my mum used to cook her individual hotpots on a Sunday which I’d drive over to put in the freezer on a Monday after work - parking right outside 🤣
It is a great thread.

14 was my first job, I think it was fine but was v lucky with my employers even tho they were a small mom and pop style place

My mum moved out at 15, got a job (I think a telephonist ) and rented a bedroom in a house and saved for her own flat. My dad did a trade qualification and worked from 15 living with men he worked with. They got married and bought a house at 20. That was late 60’s.
i moved out at 17 and had a live in job. My Dsis didn’t move out until 23 and my mum was unimpressed! (Mid 90’s)
my DDs moved out at 24 and 23 when they bought their own houses. I had no intention of rushing them.

My Dd moved out at 17, 7 years ago.
She moved into the flat her bf shared with his brother, and a year later they got their own flat where they still live.

As a PP said I agree we might start to see more Rising Damp and Man About The House-type rental arrangements where the landlord lives in

Oh and there was alot of lying about your age - ie omitting to tell people - documents were not checked walking into jobs, jobs were paid cash in little brown envelopes with your hrs and the calculations on the front and that was if you were official etc. The creative industries like music were also even more lax

From a position of ignorance, and knowing nothing about her early life, I would guess from her accent that she did not grow up in poverty.

Perhaps daddy lent a hand.

In the old days, there were lots of jobs for unskilled young people in cities. I used to get holiday jobs with no difficulty, and be paid around the same as anyone else. I bought a motorbike at 16 and a car at 19 on student jobs.

In the 70s, 15 year old were definitely treated more as adults than as kids. It wasn't that many years earlier when kids could leave school at 12 or 14. My gran got a job (by accident!) At 14 in the 1940s.

Great thread.
Re Mariella Frostrup, Julie Burchill and the others who tell a good tale, I expect there was a bit more to it than arriving in London and becoming a feted person immediately. Maybe they had a friend or relative and slept on the sofa for a couple of weeks while they tried to find a job. They're probably missing out some of the story, like the shop jobs and toilets mentioned by others on the thread, and just highlighting the bits they prefer to remember and would like us to know. They may have done their glamorous jobs as a sort of side hustle a couple of days per week whilst working shifts as a typist the rest of the time. What they clearly had was self-confidence, good looks, youthful energy, drive and ambition etc to tide them along, plus maybe a push factor driving them away from home.
@Ithinkofawittyusernamethenforgetit In the late 80s I also had a friend who was a ballet dancer living at the YWCA hostel opposite the British Museum and I used to sleep on the floor next to a pile of their blood-stained pointe shoe tights. Maybe we passed each other on the way to their delicious cook-outs in the basement kitchen, of one pea each.

I dont know TBH.I mean I get that it was easier then to get a job and small bedsit.However MF is a smart cookie ,and was probably "in the right place at the right time kind of thing" She probably got noticed and got ahead .My cousin was accepted to the FO ,and worked abroad for many years.She had left School at 15 with no formal qualifications at all! Her hubby was similar .Both had attended good private schools .I think rents then were lower too.My Cousin lived in a shared house ,and I was horrified when she said she shared a bathroom with some others.The young guy on the landing strolled around in his underwear! I was only about 17 then!

I left home at 16 (which was 55 years ago!). At first I lived in a bedsit in my home town and then (still 16) moved to London where I worked in a department store, Bourne & Hollingsworth at the 'wrong' end of Oxford St, which had a hostel for its female staff in Gower Street, Bloomsbury, which was only a short walk away from the store. Living there was fantastic.

Have to say I know my DD wants to stay there after college and we can't do the whole subbing thing going forward so going to be interesting.

Even today there are ways and means - lots of sofa surfing, staying in third (teeny bedrooms for extra rent for people leasing (unofficially of course)) there are also a few dormitory style hostels which are cheap. There is also schemes like guardianships for community living. Rentals are brutal in London with students paying over 1k for a room in a flat in not great areas. Very few at less than that.

Yes I agree, I probably should’ve said dangers that we perceive now.

I left home at the start of my O levels, dossing with friends because I refused to comply with the "my house my rules" conditions set by my dad.
Missed all the morning exams, and only passed the ones were both parts of the exam were set in the afternoon. I got a data entry job at the head office of a large building firm, £10/week with a load of married ladies earing "pin money" and blokes in white coats getting paid a load more for doing the computer stuff after we'd transmitted all the paper data to punch cards.

Lured away by Kwik Save offering £30/week to memorise their prices each morning and work a check out desk, quit 3 weeks later when the cleaner didn't turn up and the male manager ordered me to go and clean the filthy toilets. Told him to do it himself and walked out without a backwards glance.

Got a job as a trainee manageress at Debenhams the next day, and moved into lodgings with a lovely old lady in Cheetham Hill. Two years later I was bored and set off to an au-pair job in Greece on the magic bus.

The only time I was asked about qualifications was when I turned up in Debenhams asking if they had any vacancies, and the manager of one of their shop in shop ladies clothing departments asked me if I had any qualifications. When I told her I had 3 o levels she offered me a post as trainee manageress, without ever asking to see any proof of my English O levels and needlework qualification.

Life was very different back then. Society was very different. DH left home at 15 and lived in what then was called a squat, which was full of people with jobs who worked and was worlds apart from what we would call a squat these days.

My mother moved away from home to work when she was 14, quite a bit before the 70s though. You had to grow up quick and earn your living, parents couldn't afford to support children once they were capable of working, particularly when there were lots of younger siblings. Only the lucky few carried on in education past 14, later compulsory education went up to 15. I remember boys complaining bitterly that they would have to stay in school until they were 15. They wanted to get a job and start earning at 14 like their older siblings and parents had.

When your grandfather left school is not really relevant to Mariella Frostrup who was born in 1962.

It was still easy to leave home young in the 90s.
I left home at 16 and lived in rented rooms or bedsits.
It was easier to rent somewhere. No guarantors necessary. Easy to get work and also easier to get housing benefit

Yeah my 20 year old nephew is bumming around at home with no plan, or even any motivation to get out and crack on with life. He and his mum seem to find the idea that he would move out into anything but his own flat inconceivable. It's bizarre to me, I couldn't wait to get out and live my own life, and living in shared digs was part of the fun.

Mariella Frostrup was born in the same year as me and was one of the older ones in her school year. She would have started secondary school in September 1974 and the earliest she could have left legally would be June 1979. By which time she would be approaching 17. No one was allowed to leave school (unless expelled) before they had completed 5 years of secondary school.

Perhaps she went to private school and bunked off? Whatever, it's hardly something to be proud of.