Can anyone tell me honestly that back in the 70s they didn't know.....

[Jux]

... that hitting your head badly could result in brain damage? And that hitting your head repeatedly, badly or not, could also result in brain damage?

I was 12 in 1970; it seemed self-evident that head bang could lead to brain damage. Like a punch the lower back could injure something inside (wasn't sure what, mind, v ignorant of biology at the time!).

My uncle was a bare-knuckle fighter who never got dementia - though he was very good at it. My dad on the other hand, was a very good footballer in the 50s and 60s when the old leather balls became very heavy in the rain - he died from complications of Parkinson's disease.

We didn't go to the bank everyday. They closed really early so it was difficult to go to the bank when you worked. What happened was we got paid cash weekly in a paper envelope and that's what we used to see us through the week. I didn't start getting wages paid into the bank until the 1980's.

Makes me think that knocks to the heads have caused issues. Glad you like it, I have found it annoying 😆

I worked at a very large company and the mobile bank came to work, there was always a huge queue on or just after payday

I wasn’t involved in rugby so had no idea, even though I once had concussion and went to A and E, still no idea how bad the results could be , until years later.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I'm probably a similar age to you - born mid 80s. I don't remember old money either. Pre decimalisation makes my head ache.
Old 5ps I think is the oldest money I remember using.

I remember these sort of envelopes for wages (live rurally, DM had part time jobs in little businesses to fit round school hrs)

Late 80s to mid 90s I remember, but I expect things were a bit slower to modernise here than in cities. I remember that everyone used cheques a lot - I even paid the nursery bill by cheque up to 2017! I remember DM sending me shopping as a young teen with a blank cheque (she signed it but didn't fill anything else out) with strict instructions not to lose it! Remember DF 'cashing a cheque' in a shop at a weekend when banks were shut but struggling to find a shop that would let him. (writing a check for say 50 quid to the shop and getting 50 quid cash from the till, but it relied on the shop trusting that the cheque wouldn't bounce - was a popular scam)

I also was paid by handwritten cheque on my first proper job in 2005 ish, that I had to take to the bank to pay in. Crappy boss used to give the cheques out as late into the next month as he could get away with, and always on a Friday too late to get to the bank so he knew it wouldn't be paid in until Monday lunchbreak. Arse.

Oh goodness I remember those paper credit card printers - that used to tear or not print properly! Blood nightmare

I don't think there was any link in the 70s.

Remember there was the information sharing that there is now. No social media, internet, email and no rolling 24 hours a day news. Everyone used to communicate face to face or by letter was phone. News was on once a day via the box or you read the newspaper so news was effectively a day late.

It's much easier to see patterns and we can capture date in all sorts of ways. Most data was collated in ledgers. Y'know, it had to be handwritten!

The good old days!

Typo central, sorry!

On the top end of the wages scale, doctors etc. It seems wild that they were just carrying loads of money about on pay day.

We did have cheques in the 1970s! I only got the brown pay envelopes for a very short time when I started working in 1975, then the money was paid directly into my bank account.

You still got a payslip but quite often it was handwritten. I was an auditor in a previous life - including in the seventies - and one of the things we did was to check the calculations. Cash was delivered to businesses on Thursdays and the security vans were always of interest to criminals....

I’m sorry about your father. @Whelm
Yes, bare knuckle fighting is less dangerous in that you don’t tend to repeatedly hit the face because the bone-to-bone contact is too painful. That’s what they said on QI, anyway.

Oh, and remember, if you were going to meet at the pub at 8pm, you achieved that by ... being at the pub at 8pm.

and out of the pub by 10:30 when it closed

In my first job in the 90s, we were paid once a week. The cash came in a pay packet envelope, with the payslip attached with a staple that went through the notes. You had to count the corners of the notes to make sure the amount was correct according to the payslip. Any discrepancy had to be declared before you pulled out the staple.

Remember we didn’t have the sophisticated imaging we have now. No CTs or MRIs, or complex neurostimulator tests or contrast imaging, just X-rays which aren’t always terribly helpful.

Back in the very early 80s when my mum was pregnant with me there were concerns about my growth but no ultrasound machine so the doctor ordered an abdominal xray in order to get a look at me. My mum was amazed and wondered why they didn't offer one to every pregnant woman...

In 1980 we partook in head banging at Brownie Camp during the evening disco. What fun for 8yrar olds to shake their heads around violently! When I told my DM she urged me not to, as she explained it wasn't good for your brain. (I think there had been a case in the news of someone head banging and dying)

The people who ran my Brownie Pack were not the brightest, though.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit most people were paid in cash so no need to use the bank.

Peter Sutcliffe (the Yorkshire ripper) had a head injury after coming off a motorbike. He started to think that the statues in the graveyard he worked in was talking to him. He had bad headaches. He went to his GP, who didn't do anything. Then he started thinking God was telling him to kill prostitutes. So even doctors didn't make connections in regards to head injuries.

A lot of tax went unpaid, especially from the self employed etc.

Friday night pub entertainment tended to be a bloke with an organ singing classics like New York and Little Old Wine Drinker Me! You drank stout, bitter, larger or gin and orange/lemon - pub wine - if available - was hock and warm!

TV turned off after the National Anthem - at midnight and BBC2 showed Open University programs late in the evening

I've just looked it up - the life expectancy in 1970 was 71. I guess not so many people got old enough to develop the noticeable neurological symptoms. There just wasnt the evidence until people started living longer.

Also, when people started getting paid big bucks for sport that meant they got access to better healthcare etc, so live longer than your average person maybe? But before, maybe it would have been more likely to be working class / less well off people who would have played football etc, and would have been less likely to live longer than average due to having less access to top notch healthcare etc?

I worked in the wages office of a large car factory. Payday was a nightmare, we'd work out the money the night before and there was a calculation so you had enough of every denomination in coins and notes. It was delivered on the morning and it had to be put in an envelope so that you could see how much was in there, coins to the front and notes folded so you could see how many there were. Then you got to the end and found you had a spare 2 shillings or were 6 pence short. Oh the joy.

Then the next day you cut up the NI stamps, got all their cards out and stuck the stamps on.

Seems crazy now.

And the banks closed at half past three so it was really difficult to get to one to pay cheques in. Never open on a Saturday.

I used to work in a hotel and get paid by bank transfer but live on my tips - ie the bank account money paid my rent etc but food and petrol (and cigs in those days) were always paid for in cash from my tips.

You've reminded me of an older colleague who told me about his wife being pregnant with twins - she had an xray half way thru ish as it was clearly not a normal sized single baby in there, but the babies were one on top of the other, so she had to have a csection because they couldn't tell if they were conjoined or not! Can you imagine the worry for all those weeks?!

I worked at a stockbrokers' after leaving uni in the early 70s and we were paid monthly directly into our bank accounts (v.posh -- Coutts) but when i left there I closed the account because it was incredibly expensive (at the time) at 15p for each cheque you wrote. And you did write loads of cheques! The brokerage had a deal for its staff to bank for free at Coutts which I lost when I resigned.
I then got a job at an 'International News and Business Information' company and was startled to find I could opt to be paid weekly in cash. So I did, it was handy because there was a month or so gap between leaving one firm and starting at the next.
So weekly pay was available even for office and professional workers, in some sectors.