To sit and think my poor grandmother! What would she think?!

[DurableMatts]

It’s 10:30 and so far today my house has been hoovered/mopped by the robot hoover, the clothes are washed and drying…and I have only had to pop the clothes in and press a few buttons. The house is warm and I’ve done nothing for that as it’s on a thermostat.

I am wfh so I get to earn and I still dropped my dc to school.

My poor granny had 10 dc! She had no washing machine so washed everything by hand! She walked the youngest to school and then came home to clean the house, washed the clothes, hung them out if weather permitted, had to light fires to keep the house warm. And she didn’t earn a bloody penny!

she would be in awe at things today 😢 (and yes I’m well aware that a lot of people still have to do a lot of these things these days…I was just thinking about her is all and it got me)

@DurableMatts I often think of things like this - almost every time I have a shower! There are undoubtedly difficulties for us, but nothing like the sheer physical graft that was involved in being a mother back in the day!

Yes! That’s the other thing. They had no shower, it was baths in front of the fire. The loo was outside. Baths in front of the fire for 10dc 😭😭

Very true, even cooking was a massive task when money is scarce.
My Granny on both sides had 11 children, in tiny homes, Dad’s family were poorer as grandad was a drinker, they slept 6 children in a bed with coats for blankets. Tbf they all grew up to be hardworking people, hard nosed too, my paternal grandmother was ahead of her time. She has 2 jobs alongside her 11 children, down the market for 4am.

I have a vague memory of my mum outside the back of the house putting the clothes she'd just handwashed through a mangle to get out most of the water so she could hang the washing on the line to dry.

I'd faint if I had to do any of the things she had to when we were growing up (50s onwards) with no appliances, no supermarkets, no transport.

I know they were truly amazing 🤩

I would keel over too…I can honestly say I’ve never done a majorly physical days work apart from busy waitressing shifts as a teen/student. My back is killing me at the end of the day and I don’t do a 10th of those things that my granny used to do.

I know it is extraordinary. Both my grannies were born in houses with no electricity or inside loo. They also only had the one cold tap in the kitchen, so all the water had to be heated in huge pans on the stove for washing and bathing. Both of them remembered seeing their first car, as well as their first banana and avocado! By the time they died in the late 1980s they lived in centrally heated houses, with a TV, telephone, microwave, had their own cars, ate food that arrived from all corners of the globe and had been on aeroplanes multiple times. They both had siblings who had died in childhood from things no child in the West dies of now - bronchial pneumonia and scarlet fever.

Amazing to think how much the world changed in their lifetimes, particularly given they lived through two world wars as well.

Mine is in her late 80s. She grafted so hard all her life. She'd work and then come home and do absolutely everything at home as well.
I think she looks at her granddaughters and although there's things about us she doesn't understand - I think she's pleased and grateful we don't have to depend on men to survive. That even though she still keeps her home neat and shiny, that we don't feel that same pressure and that we are out enjoying our lives and doing the things we want to do. She's happy for us.
She's so intelligent. If she'd been able to go to university and learn more things she would absolutely have soaked up every moment. And her granddaughters have all done exactly that - very different subjects and pathways but we've all loved our time studying and made the most of it and came out with excellent grades, I think she loves that we were able to do those things. It really makes me understand how much the world misses out when women and girls are not given opportunities for education, because she would have outshone so many men in her era.

My grandparents on dad's side had a toilet that was joined to the house but outside to get to it. I remember as a child when staying with them how cold it was in the winter going out there but having to have a pot under the bed (gazunder) if I was actually staying with them so I didn't have to go outside in the night.

I worship my indoor bathroom/toilet even though it badly needs replacing. 😆

I’m re watching Call the Midwife at the moment, the social history is jaw dropping. Admittedly it’s set in the particularly poverty ridden East end of London, but yes, incredibly difficult lives for women. The NHS is just coming in, but in no way at the level we expect today. Contraception isn’t available on the NHS so women have endless babies. In cloth nappies !
I remember my granny using a mangle to squeeze water out of clothes. Mt other granny used a washing dolly ! My mum had a twin tub which took all morning to fill, and heat , then spin the clothes. I remember the wooden tongues she used to lift sodden steaming clothes from one side to the other. We just throw it into the machine and forget about it until it’s time to hang it out !

I also often think that, particularly when visiting historic houses (of the working class variety). So much time was required to do the most basic of things and it generally all fell to the women. Cleaning out the fireplace, starting a new fire just to get a cup of tea in ther morning, baking bread etc. Plus to heat water to do the washing. It's amazing what has changed in a short space if time for women in developed countries in particular.

This is why, when things are hectic I daydream I am living in the past (when it was a slower-pace and a more simple lifestyle), it's because I can timetravel. As that means I can come back for the modern conveniences, so i can shower, wash and dry my hair and clothes, and so on.

Sensible daydreaming 😂

I had 11 dc... And a washer, dryer and dishwasher..
Respect to those that had to manage without...

She would thing you were living like a queen and I bet she would be really happy about it.

Carpets/rugs had to be hung on the line and beaten to get the dirt out before hoovers.

Children in the UK are still dying from these diseases. https://www.unicef.org.uk/press-releases/forgotten-epidemic-hospitalising-six-children-every-hour-in-england/
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ukhsa-update-on-scarlet-fever-and-invasive-group-a-strep-1

My grandmother(born in 1912) was the eldest of 13 children, she spent her whole childhood raising her siblings. Her father was a raging alcoholic who drank all of his wages on a Friday night leaving nothing. It’s like the plot of a Helen Forrester novel.
She married relatively late for the era and only had one child, my dad. Unfortunately my dad didn’t meet his father until he was 5 as he was a prisoner of war!
I think about her a lot. I cannot fathom the life she had compared to mine. She died in 2012 just a few days short of her 100th birthday.

My g granny was as poor as a church mouse and the only thing she ever wanted was a washing machine. She was never allowed one. After she died (mid 1990s), the first thing my g grandad did was buy a washing machine

A bit off topic but my grandmother had to get the doctor in for my auntie who had a chest infection, this would be around the late 1930s, grandad had to cycle to the doctor's house to tell him and nan then had to pay the doc when he came.

By today's standards it would have been pence but grandad didn't earn very much back then in a bakery so it made a huge hole in their weekly income.

They must have been thrilled when the NHS came into being years later.

I had a single tub with a mangle in the 80s - it was circa 1956 😂

Doing all those physical tasks would have kept your grandmother fit, she wouldn't have had the luxury of gyms, spas etc.!
I recall my late mother talking about a relative who had 6 sons and a husband in a 2 up 2 down house, all her sons lived at home until the day he got married. They tended to work shifts so when one came home from a night shift he slept in the bed his brother had vacated to go to his job! When the mother wanted to lock up for the night she counted the boots lined up to see if any weren't in 'their' space on the mat.

It's often made me think of my grandpa, who used to be the one who did all of the cooking and laundry! My grandma was ahead of her time in terms of equality.

My late MIL never had a washing machine, she washed everything in the sink or the bath for sheets etc., she would then put them through the mangle in an outdoor shed! This was in the '60s and early '70s. I'm not sure what she did in later years.

I was born in February '48 so Mum had to pay, she always complained of missing the NHS by a couple of months, as if it were my fault!

Same, one of mine had only a cold water tap in the tiny kitchen and a bucket under the sink, outhouse in the back garden. No indoor plumbing.

Both my grandma's worked full time - hard backbreaking blue collar factory work. And then came home and did all you describe (fewer kids though). Men would not get involved in anything domestic at that time and were only vaguely aware there were children.