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?

I think mine would love to do that. Was it in Europe?

There's camps in Italy and Austria. English camp company. You stay with host families, get travel allowances and can also do the TEFL qualifatcation

https://www.theenglishcampcompany.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=wix-smart-campaign&utm_campaign=google-ads-campaign-2026-1-8-9f3b0c88&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23440526156&gbraid=0AAAABCiU-Qdultvm5OoxM_bzqhkVDfjMF&gclid=CjwKCAiAzOXMBhASEiwAe14SabIEpX_SaXSx6DvLWtm8-uN46wA_PZO36FSHHgOa5Raope05o3yH4BoC_KUQAvD_BwE. Xxd😭

Thanks @Thechaseison71
next year await my post wailing about how she wants to go off and work abroad at 16 and I’m terrified for her 😆

From talking to my dad young people back then were far less entitled. Willing to take any job, basically being a dogsbody or teagirl, doing dirty jobs or long hours. You just did as you were told.

I was talking to dh young cousin last week who was bemoaning lack of jobs. But he's only applying to really desirable glamorous industries! He could get a job easily if he just was willing to start out doing something less exciting. The young people in my work also have mad expectations compared to when i started work 20 years ago. They rock up late, will just announce at 10am that they are wfh because they have a headache (then are barely online). Then they complain if given "boring" work and complain if not rapidly promoted every single year. I try really hard to be patient and remember how I felt at their age but its disheartening how entitled they are. I was just delighted to have a job and saw opportunity as something i had to create/find, not something that should be handed to me in shiny wrapping paper.

I agree with this. It was sink or swim in the 1960s and 1970s when I was growing up. A lot of people of all ages did sink, sadly, but those of us who survived emerged with useful skills and a lot of resilience. Playing outside from a young age with children we might or might not know - not an adult in sight, never mind actually supervising - and learning to tell the time so we'd be back home at the instructed time. Going to the shops on my own from a very early age (4 or 5 in my case, I know this because we moved away from that house when I was 5.5). Using public transport alone from about 6 or 7 (next house) so I could go to the library to change my books. I was a sensible child and came to no harm. All of this could easily have gone wrong but it didn't. Very few British children are trusted to do any of that now.

In my experience, it was a lot easier for those who were well off and well connected. When I was a teenager I knew people like this. They constantly flitted around staying with friends and relatives and seemed to have no problem landing interesting jobs, at a time when jobs were scarce. They also knew how to market what they had done, making it sound interesting and respectable when I suspect that a lot of it was neither.

In my experience, it was a lot easier for those who were well off and well connected. When I was a teenager I knew people like this. They constantly flitted around staying with friends and relatives and seemed to have no problem landing interesting jobs, at a time when jobs were scarce. They also knew how to market what they had done, making it sound interesting and respectable when I suspect that a lot of it was neither.

I know what you mean, but in a sense I also found the opposite. At Oxford as a WC person from a poor background who’d had to make my own way from a young age, I felt my peers were much younger than I was. They’d had much better educations and had wonderful holidays and internships, but I’d hitched around the country, worked in an abattoir and as a relief miller, lived in a London squat etc etc.

What I linked to is actually very well organized. My DS found out about it 10 days before he went lol. Much to horror of his girlfriend who said " you can't get organized to do something like that in a week" lol

Yes, I see what you mean. I grew up in Ireland where opportunities were more limited and people's lives were more restricted, imo. I think the better off saw more opportunities and had the confidence to take them. I did eventually get to take a degree and to travel a bit but I was in my forties and fifties by then. Sounds like you had an interesting but maybe challenging time. Bet you had fun though.

As a side note, my husband, who came from a much poorer background than I did and from a very large family, did leave home at fifteen to go to work on building sites in London. That was in the early 1950's and it seemed to be quite normal for young Irish people to do this back then. I think in their case it was necessity. There just wasn't room for them at home and the grass was definitely greener in England at that time.

Do you want to rephrase your last sentence? Did you really do that!! Can't stop laughing🤣

Lost. Definitely.Loved the independence of the 60s/70s

Children and young people were much less protected and supervised in the 20th century than now. Partly life was probably safer as most people knew their neighbours and looked out for each other a bit, in towns and villages anyway -- cities were probably freer and riskier. But partly kids were expected to look after themselves more.

There were few organised activities apart from Guides and Scouts, as children usually played with their friends or neighbours' kids, in local parks or in each other's homes, and came home at tea time. Several children I knew were 'latch-key kids" whose parents were both out working, so the children let themselves in when they came home.

I walked to and from primary school on my own in the 1960s, and I remember one day going home for lunch, then walking back to school a bit late, so the playground was empty and no one heard me trying unsuccessfully to open the big heavy gate. In the end I had to walk back home and miss the afternoon's classes.

Most people I knew left school at 15 or 16 (school-leaving age went up to 16 in 1972) and got a job straight away. They didn't earn much, but most still lived with their parents and gave their mum a chunk of their wages. Weddings were important celebrations, then as now, but for most people it was never on the scale that's seen now. It was usually a church ceremony, then a reception in a church hall or community hall catered by the families or a bakery, with a local band or records for dancing. Not the equivalent of six months' wages!

I believe food was the biggest expense for the average household, though people rarely ate out or bought takeaways. Families didn't spend a lot on holidays or clothes. Heating was expensive so, in many homes, only one room was heated, by oil or gas or an open fire. You dashed upstairs to bed with a hot water bottle!

It was easier to live on the low wages most people earned in those days, as expectations were much lower, and, as they say, "we made our own entertainment". We didn't feel poor because everyone around us lived the same way.

I missed the main point I meant to make, answering the OP's question! Many people lived with their parents till they married, and very few went to university. But it wasn't that unusual for adventurous teenagers to take off to the big city and find a bedsit or a shared room in a boarding house.

Jobs were easy to find, though low paid and with little health and safety or other protections. If you weren't picky, you could always find unskilled work in factories, hotels, shops or numerous other businesses, having all the fun (and risks, and exploitation) of living an independent life. Leaving a job one week and getting another the next was fairly easy!.