How did people leave home at 15…

[Holdinguphalfthesky]

… move to London and start working as a music PR? Just reading an interview with Mariella Frostrup and it says that’s what she did. Even back in the 70s, how would someone have done that? I seem to remember in Caitlin Moran’s book How to be a Woman, she also walked into a job in music journalism at a very young age.

Is it unreasonable of me to ask how they did it? What’s being glossed over in the retelling?

It was very common to live in 'digs'.

Which would normally be a bedroom in someone's house (or a shared bedroom).

You'd pay a small amount and the rest would be made up of babysitting/cooking/cleaning/odd jobs etc for the owners.

This is what my dad did when he left school.

Genuinely, a lot of people in that era moved into squats, or took up a bed subletting 3-4 to a bedroom. You could work full time at 16 so it's not unreasonable to think you could negotiate as a 15yr old school leaver especially if you were prepared to work all hours for a pittance.

Well, I don't think she waltzed straight into music PR, she had some fairly menial tea-girl/mailroom type job in a recording studio first.

Or is the moving to London at 15 bit that is primarily intriguing you?

MF claims to have lived in a squat and supported herself through odd jobs in pubs and shops. Which was definitely more common in the 1970s-1980s, casual employment was easier to find, landlord checks weren’t really in place, and standards and approaches to child safeguarding were a lot poorer than they are nowadays.

Yes, I was a bit older, but did something similar. Also moved over from Ireland. Lived in a squat on Kilburn High Road, and did bits of cash in hand jobs.

It's also worth bearing in mind the jobs didn't have to offer much - they might have been freelance but even if they weren't they didn't have to offer minimum wage, I don't think sick pay or pensions were a thing for part time etc. So if someone nagged you for work and volunteered for a particular job, or task above their station, there wasn't much risk to the employer.

I know someone who at 15 started running errands for a famous designer's studio and progressed from there. It wasn't an official job more of a "go there, bring that" kinda arrangement for "experience" and pocket money. I assume it's the similar setup with this "working as a music PR".
And yes, would be lodging with someone or squatting.

My husband left home at 15 in the mid-80s. Lived in squats, got a job when he was 16, rented a room in a shared house, got a better job, etc.

There were masses of jobs in the 70s. Children were much more independent at a very young age. From primary and all through our teenage years my brother and I looked after ourselves during schoool holidays. Doing housework lighting fires, shopping and cooking.

When I left school in 1964, I was offered every job I applied for. I started work earning £10 a week. My Dad said he been at work years before he earned that much. 5 years later, having changed jobs s 4 times I was earning £22.

We got married, lived in rooms,paying £2 pew week rent from an joint I come of £40.

My uncle finished his junior cert in ireland and was in london the next month aged 15.
There were 9 siblings and my grandad was dead.
You had to work.

He rented a shared room in a house where his sister in laws (my other uncles wife's) brother was staying (they shared the room) so he had someone he knew. A few friends moved over too.
There were a load of them in the house... 2 or 3 to a room.

By 19 he owned half a house in Holland park woth one of the lads....they lived there and did some work on it and sold it for 11k when he was 21 (which everyone thought 11k was a king's ransom and was v impressed by)

I find it WILD.

He had a v interesting life...

I sometimes say I left home at 15, because essentially, I did. I became an inpatient in an adolescent unit at 15, and was living in a supported flat by the time I was 16. This was mid to late seventies.

My DB left home at 15 and lived in a shared house. He worked part time and then maybe more at a guitar workshop where one of the men lived.

Honestly, no idea. I left home at 17 and was financially independent, but somehow I lived on no real money in massively shared accommodation. Everyone I knew was skint, it was just the done thing, to kind of scramble up out of nothing with no support from family or state.

Also worth remembering that although London has always been a wealthy city, it wasn’t always a desirable place to live. The property boom that resulted in ever increasing gentrification of what would have been fairly undesirable parts of London really didn’t start till the 80’s.

places like Notting Hill were considered working class if not slums at that time. There was lots of very basic accommodation, bedsits and hostels. There were no credit checks and rent was collected on a weekly basis.

Basically the 70’s were not a good time for inner cities and there was a lot of middle class flight from outter zones to the suburbs.

I know SM portrays life for boomers in the 70’s as some utopia where everyone had a car and detached house funded by a job in Woolworths but it isn’t true.

There's that, too. My parents both left school at 13 because their wages were needed (each had lost a parent early, and was the eldest of a poor family).

Someone recently said it was terribly sad that when I left home, my sisters moved into my room, and I was on the sofa if I came back for a visit, but we were poor. My parents had left home and been independent far earlier than I had. There wasn't the room in the house to keep a room for someone who had moved out, or the cultural contexts for boomeranging back and forth between university and home.

I was born in the 70's but my goodness you forget how much times have changed (for better and worse).

I went to London at 16 to work. I went as an au pair to a wealthy family. They were mad to employ me. I don't even like little children. But I wanted to be in London.

Interesting. What was it that changed would you say? Legislation, social attitudes, something else? I mean, I can’t imagine any opportunities being available for a 16 year old now to move out an live independently, there’s few enough for 18 year olds.

Do you think we’ve more lost something or more gained something?

My late mum left school and went to Pitmans at 15 so was commuting into London , she also went to the TT races with some random on a bike at 15 - I’m not sure my grandparents were the most responsible parents . The only reason she didn’t leave home was because they owned a pub and needed her to work a few shifts . Life was very different then .

Most people left school and got jobs at 16 after doing O Levels or CSEs. Or they got married quickly and started a family. Only a handful went on to A levels and university.

My mum started work at 16. It was completely normal then - most people started work at 16 unless they were doing further study and much much fewer people did.

yes, moving into “digs” so a shared house or being a lodger was normal.

now - there is an expectation to be in education until 18. Many many more people go to university.

there’s BTECs and so on and it’s expected that teens go to college.

students with an EHCP are entitled to be in education until 25.

My parents did similar. They both say there was such a labour shortage it was easy to get work and my dad described some sort of council office where you could go and pick job cards but it also lists of lodgings and you just lodged. He literally got a train and sorted put accommodation on arrival and a job the next day.

I have a much older half sister who let home at 16 to work in London in the very early 80s. Jobs and accommodation were so much easier to come by. Often there weren't lengthy application processes or references for either. Jobs you'd walk into an agency or somewhere with a card in the window carrying your typed CV and your two precious letters of reference, and start the following day. And similarly rooms you'd just pay in cash at the end of the week when you got your pay packet. And as noted by a previous poster gentrification was still a long way off for a lot of now desirable places - my half sister most often lived in Clapham/Balham/Wandsworth which were considered very humdrum at the time.

Indeed! I lived in a shitty house with no bathroom, central heating or hot water until I was 16.

A friend of mine remarked recently (we were discussing her granddaughter's refusal to accept university accommodation that did not offer her an ensuite) that "We all accepted that we'd live in what my grandaughter would call squalor as young adults and for quite some years afterwards!"

Pretty unofficial type arrangements I would think - renting a room in someone else's house for cash and so on. Plus much lower expectations of lifestyle - sharing a room with a stranger etc. Obviously it made teens very vulnerable to dodgy and exploitative people. Look at the history of certain serial killers like Dennis Nilsen or Fred West - I think part of how they got away with it was that they preyed on young people who just weren't on any official radar - not officially resident anywhere.

Read Ootlin by Jenni Fagan - raised in care, terrible abuse and so on. Have slightly forgotten the details now but she did similar in about 1993 I think, age 15 or so - became a firmly off-the-books lodger to someone else in a way that probably constituted illegal subletting or similar.