AcrossthePond55
I've read (mostly on MN) about the post war shortages, rationing, and 'austerity' in Britain that seem to have lasted until the '70s and I wonder why the US didn't do more to help the UK during the postwar period. We say we have a 'special relationship' but it doesn't seem like we were very generous. So, possibly a naive question...was it really as bad as it's portrayed? No heating, rationing, outdoor plumbing, sharing bathwater, food shortages are some of the things I've heard mentioned. Were these things 'reality' in post war Britain or just lifestyle 'holdovers' in families from the wartime shortages?
It's all a bit patchwork. For instance, the very last thing came "off the ration" in 1954 (I think it may have been bacon, which was also one of the first things that was rationed). And though the US government was more generous to the Germans than to the British (we paid off the last of the US post-war loan sixty years on, at the end of 2006, whereas the Germans got the Marshall Plan and a lot of help to rebuild their factories), individual Americans were wonderfully generous with food parcels for ages after the war had ended.
It wasn't as bad as it was portrayed because people were used to it. You don't hanker after what you don't really know exists! We didn't have a fridge in the fifties, but then nor did anyone else we knew, so we didn't feel deprived. A lot of people got a telly for the coronation in 1953, but a lot of people didn't and went next door or to Them Down The Street to watch the coronation on theirs. Nobody missed foreign holidays or going by air because those only happened for the Rich, and if you weren't rich they didn't happen. Fitted carpets? Only in hotels, and only in expensive hotels at that. Lino was the norm for most people, with a carpet in the middle of the main (sitting/living) room with the end of it under the sofa.
Because my father was crippled (his chosen word: he was very clear that he had not been disabled!) during the war (not a war wound, he got polio in the Indian Army), we got a car when I was five; before that he rode a bicycle to work, and I think it may have hurt him horribly but he never complained. It was just that a car was a priority: we couldn't really afford it, but we were happy to do without other things so that DDG could get the mile-and-a-half in to work more easily; he would not have been able to walk it, and he did so hate the bicycle. He called it rude names.
No heating: yes. And chilblains as a result. Anyone a bit younger than I am is quite likely not to know what chilblains are; anyone my ago or older does know and is really glad their children never had to. No heating also meant water frozen in the mug by the bed when you woke up in the morning, on some winter days. Two of our five bedrooms had gas fires in them, but they were only used if someone was ill (me again!) and the doctor said the patient had to be kept warm. And since the doctor did house-calls for children, he knew at once if the room they were in was too cold: if he kept his overcoat on, he was going to prescribe hot-water-bottles as well as penicillin.
We were middle-class, so we did have indoor plumbing, and a washing machine (top loading twin tub, with a mangle), but we also had shared bathwater, eldest first simply because he was likely to be cleanest; with three children it made sense for them to wash in the same hot water, because heating the water was expensive.
So was food. Not shortages exactly, but for example except in autumn when the apple trees were fruiting we children were allowed three fruit a day each: one apple, one orange and one banana. It was deeply sinful to steal fruit that belonged to one of the others! And that was because they were good for us but they cost a lot. We were more likely to get stewed bottled rhubarb (bottled from the garden) than fresh fruit. But we got one penny per year of our age given to us each Saturday, to spend however we wanted.
Oh, and bread was sold by the baker from house to house using a horse and cart. He would stop outside and shout "bre-ead!" and people came out of the nearby houses to buy it, and lardy-cake if there was money spare for it that week. That was one less thing that had to be bought when my mother went food-shopping in the morning at the local shops; they were about a quarter of a mile away, and if she would be getting heavy things like potatoes she would take her bicycle so they could be put into the basket at the front instead of her carrying them. There was no supermarket in the town where I lived, not until I suppose 1965 or so. Possibly even later. Milk was delivered, but the milkman only delivered milk, not eggs or yoghurt.
And nobody I knew except my mother cooked using olive oil or garlic.
And that is quite enough. I dunnalf go on.