WW2 women not allowed to have bank accounts in their own name?

[CheeryTulip]

I just heard this as a side fact in a lecture about something else on Youtube. The speaker said his grandmother wasn't allowed a bank account in her own name -& how times have changed. Is this true? What happened if you were single? I'm now wondering about my own grannies...

In 1977 I wasn't even allowed to rent a TV
without my husband's signature on the contract.

Yes, if I remember correctly women were able to have post office savings accounts and other similar deposit accounts which didn’t require credit facilities. It was the crucial ability to lend credit / provide cheque facilities etc. on a current account that was particularly the issue.

But then, I had to get my father to act as guarantor for my first adult current account in the early nineties, because it came with a student overdraft. It wasn’t that I needed legal permission to open one per se; but I needed a parental or other adult guarantor for the credit facility. Don’t know if that’s still the case for young adults now!

My grandma was born in 1929 and, to my knowledge, she never had a bank account. I found this out when she was telling me about how she got a scam caller telling her that her account had been compromised and she told them to stop being ridiculous as she didn't even have an account. She used to get her pension at the post office I think. I miss her.

@Kinsters yes state pensions and other benefits (giros) were paid cash via the Post Office.
Pensions were paid on a Thursday I used to walk passed the PO going to school and they'd be a queue outside waiting on it opening.

Now that I think about it I'm not even sure if my Granny had a bank account. 🤔 Everything she had was cash. Although I'd think my Granddad must have had at one point.

Credit was much more difficult to obtain than it is now for both men and women. Bank loans were down to the Branch Manager it was his decision if you got credit or not (and probably a black mark against him if you defaulted)

My DM worked in retail in the 1960’s they weren’t allowed to use first names. Had to be Mr Mrs orMiss. Even in the staff canteen or at the staff Christmas party.

I think society was just much more formal.
I remember listening to a man on the radio who'd had guide dogs since the 60's and something they ask was "whats changed ?" He replied when he has his first dog training he worked with the same man for a week and it was all Mr Smith, Mr Jones, even he said it was nonsense.

I remember businesses where the top bosses were always Mr. I dodged calling my boss by a name forever. It just didn't seem right to say Mr but David seemed too informal.

My Grandmother worked in the Civil Service, and when she married my Grandfather she to leave. Married woman were not allowed to work in the Civil Service. Both are still alive, womans rights are in their infancy.

my dad died in 1987, and my mum had never had a bank account of her own, or a joint account. She had always been a signatory on his account. It got frozen for months until probate was done.

I got married in 1998 and got back to work after my honeymoon to find that work had changed my surname to my spouse’s surname without asking.

When I opened a bank account here in the 1980s my father (who had an account at the bank, NatWest), had to 'introduce' me to the manager. I was 24.

I was buying drinks at the bar in 1976 and I was only 17! Was very embarrassing when my dad took me to the village pub on my 18th as he wasn't aware I'd convinced them I already was a year before.

I remember my mum being really angry that she had been turned down for HP on a coffee table she really wanted. She had been told that she needed a male guarantor. When she said she was divorced and her father was dead they told her "just get any man, pull one in off the street it doesn't matter who it is".
It really stuck with me. Must have been about 1977 so probably illegal as well.
She was also angry that her friend who was a headmistress of a special needs school had been refused a mortgage on the grounds of her sex.
I remember women's independent taxation coming in and the new marital rape laws and that some men were aghast that they had lost the right to rape their wives.

I don't think that's right. My mother-in-law went to work at the Post Office Savings Bank (now National Savings) when she left school. She got married in her early 30s and had to leave her job - 1953. It definitely wasn't her choice as she immediately got another job in an office in the City, which she left when she was pregnant. She was able to go back to the Civil Service in the 1970s when they had a recruitment drive targeting women like her, former employees who were keen to return part-time.

My mum was a primary school teacher. She was able to carry on with her job on marriage (1960) but gave up when pregnant with me. Very like Errol's mother, she went back to work (floating supply, part-time, called in as and when needed) on the request of the headteacher at the primary school I attended, after he'd come into class and asked us if any of our mothers were teachers. My brother was still under school age, but the headteacher must have been absolutely desperate for staff, so he said my mum could bring my brother along! This would have been around 1968.

@etulosba it was much later than 1946 in the civil service. I actually have a original document with terms and conditions for civil service careers in the late 50s and the women leaving on marriage (and the payments made to her) are detailed.

Also the diplomatic service had the leave on marriage later than the home civil service.

My granny had to give up athletics when she got married. She was British champion several times (running & speed walking) and was due to race in the Olympics but it was cancelled due to the war by the time it resumed although she was still at the peak of fitness she couldn't race because she had married my grandad.

When I got married in 1997, we went to the bank to add my husband to my account so that his salary could be paid into it. All the bills came out my account so it was just easier to do it that way. The bank changed the account but said that it now had to have He's name first, even though the account had been in my name for 15years! He was the man and bank accounts had to be Mr. and Mrs...
I was utterly outraged.

@Phlewf, some single women certainly did live alone, often - if they weren’t at all well off, in what used to be called ‘bedsits’ - probably just one room in a house of similar, sharing a bathroom, but with some means of cooking on a gas ring, or a Baby Belling (mini cooker).
There are plenty of novels set decades ago describing such arrangements.

As for your own money, even in the 60s I still remember my (working) mother’s fury after ringing HMRC about a rebate due to her, only to be told, ‘This isn’t your money - it’s your husband’s.’

I remember listening to a podcast on R4 about a rather fancy block of flats in Glasgow that was built… I’m thinking pre WW2 build for single professional ladies. Yellow something?

Marriage bars in education depended on the LEA - some got rid of them fairly early, but others went on till the '60s. My married grandmother taught at a grammar school in the '50s and '60s, and was fondly remembered by women I've met who were taught by her (always a surprise to me - she could be terrifying!) In the civil service, it depended which department and when, but their last marriage bar ended 1973.

Leaving on pregnancy was usually de facto, if not in your contract, because there was no maternity leave. And it was expected, so there was a lot of social pressure, even with employers who would allow women to stay.

Banks still seem to struggle with the concept of not being Mrs Husbandsname if you marry. Bank employee seemed to think there was an error that my bank card just says Emma Bearhug, with no title. I pointed out I had specifically requested it, as no title is my preference. I can't have a bank account with no title, though, just the card.

Jeepers, thanks everyone for reading my post very literally. My point was being a single independent woman wasn’t a thing in the cultural sense. Yes windows and “old maids” existed. I meant at no point was the world set up for Jane Blogs who has finished school, got a job and wants to move out of her family home. The very rich could buy a house. Poorer is was more of a needs must rather than the “normal” set up. The whole thing was misogynistic bullshit, many many women managed the family money and kept things afloat before they could have bank account.

it was much later than 1946 in the civil service.

@Flapjacker48 It couldn’t have been that much later as both my (married) grandmothers were civil servants in the 1950s.

Multiple internet sources support the October 1946 abolishment. Could it be that the option of leaving on marriage, with the associated payments, was continued after 1946? Also, the bar continued to 1973 for the Foreign Service.

Example sources….

history.blog.gov.uk/2015/05/26/a-perfect-nuisance-the-history-of-women-in-the-civil-service/

www.civilservant.org.uk/women-history.html

Interesting Hansard excerpt on the subject…

api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1946/jul/25/civil-service-marriage-bar

If you read the article it was the "house rules" of one particular bar in Fleet Street that women couldn't be served at the bar. It wasn't the law of the land.

I had to introduce my parents to NatWest in 1983 as I had an account at the branch where they wanted to open one, before that they'd just had a TSB savings account. The mortgage was paid every 6 months to a man who came round to collect the money. I needed a current account to pay my student grant into.

The thing about the women being served at the bar wasn’t to do with the law - it was because El Vino's, the notoriously sexist Fleet Street watering hole, wasn’t abiding by the Sex Discrimination Act (which had been passed in 1975). They'd imposed their own absurd 'house rules', but it wasn’t the law that women couldn’t be served at the bar.

Epic cross-post with NotDavidTennant