Did anyone grow up in the 50's? (and 30's and 40's if you are on here!)

[PancakesAndMapleSyrup]

I've been reading with great interest the thread on growing up in the 80's but wondered if there were any posters on that were brought up in the 50s and could explain what life was like then? Just very interested in what life was like around the country then and what attitudes were like before exploding into the 60's.

[PancakesAndMapleSyrup]

Thanks Jo!

[Greenteandchives]

Oops dumpling you are correct! .
It was a long time ago.

[JoMumsnet]

Hello! We've had a few requests for this thread to be moved to Classics, to join this one on Life in the '80s and this one - Did anyone here grow up in the '70s?

Seems like a good idea to have them all together in one place so we're shuffling it over now.

[PancakeAndKeith]

I take it everyone here watches Talking Pictures TV?

Not only do you have all the old films etc but they have short films that are things like ‘weekends in 1949’.

[SlocombePooter]

Ours was known as The Bug Hut, for very good reason. I remember cinemas used to have double seats in the back row, much used by courting couples!

[Roussette]

I'd forgotten Saturday Cinema Club! It was the Gaumont and I loved going! None of the kids sat still, it was total mayhem, mostly showing Norman Wisdom films which I loved loved loved. And Pathe news.

"Mr. Grimsdaaaaale....."

(sorry just indulging myself here!)

[SlocombePooter]

Thanks Devon that was really interesting! My school was not so multicultural, but we had a Spanish boy and several Polish children. Their dads had been stationed nearby during the war, and being Catholic our school was the obvious one for them to attend.

I am no longer religious, but I do miss the Latin Mass, we had several visiting priests who didn't speak English but Mass was fine. Gosh those long services, I often had to go out because I felt faint from fasting!

Great memories.

We did charm warts, but I never knew that Boots did it!

[thedevondumpling]

Playing on the bomb building sites. The most exciting adventure playgrounds and you never knew what you might find, old cups or saucepans. Wonder we never found a body.

[thedevondumpling]

Does anyone remember being taken to breathe in the fumes if there was any tarmacing going on? If you had a bad chest it was supposed to cure you. Also the wart charmer, they had one at our local Boots. You gave her six pence and she wrote your name in a book and the wart was supposed to go in a certain number of days. Don't know if you got your money back if it didn't work.

Also the flocks of starlings. At twilight if you were in the city centre the sky would suddenly go dark and hundreds and hundreds of starlings would descend. I miss that.

[thedevondumpling]

The coins only changed gradually, so what was sixpence one day, was 5p the next, then a shilling was 10p No sixpence became 2.5p, a shilling was 5p and two shillings was 10p.

[thedevondumpling]

Well life varied, if you think about growing up now there will be children in two parent families or one parent, rich families or poor families etc and it was the same then.

I lived in an inner city deprived area, my husband in a council house with his widowed mother and we had phones. I drank plenty of fizzy pop just not coke as my father was convinced it was an American plot to make us all drug addicts.

My house was cold, we would all sit as close to the fire as we could but both my aunts had central heating, I'd have loved that. I lived in a very multi cultural area so exotic food smells were normal and the corner shop was run by an Indian family and the corner cafe by a West Indian couple, I think they were Jamaican.

I remember the local Muslim community were collecting to build a mosque, they bought the land and there was one of those thermometer type things that would show how much money they had and then there would be a flood or earth quake or something and the money returned to zero, I always felt so sorry for them as it seemed to me it could never ever get built but in the 60s it did and it is still there now.

I went to a Catholic school, the majority of the children were first generation born in England and parents were mainly Irish, Italian or Polish. My best friend was Polish and her mum ran a Polish deli which was very interesting.

At school we were 48 to a class, no TAs and the teachers were strict but they had to be. The toilets were outside, no handwashing for us. Lunch break was 90 minutes so you had time to go home, eat, run some errands and play. In my class 23 out of the 48 went to grammar school which was impressive I think.

The thing that sums it up for me is something I heard Frank Skinner say, the world was black and white in the 50s and that is how I see it with just flashes of colour. So I can see my street, kids playing, life going on and I see my sister's new red coat and it is the only bit of colour. I can see my classroom, again all black and white with a blue altar cloth on the little alter in the corner.

We didn't have a car but my aunt and uncle did and took us out for day trips. I don't remember not having a TV, I think I was 2 or 3 when we got one, mum paid weekly and a man came to the door to collect the money.

The Saturday picture club at the local cinema was 3d and older kids would take us for the price of an ice lol and my mother thought that was a bargain for a few hours peace and quiet. On your birthday week you got a badge that glowed in the dark and you went up to the front and everyone sang happy birthday. There would always be a big boy who paid to get in and then opened the emergency exit to let his friends in, when the usherette chased them they would take it in turns to be the sacrifice who got caught and thrown out. There was a "rough" cinema where you could get in for a jam jar (I kid you not) but we weren't allowed to go there as it was too dirty apparently. Pop came in glass bottles and you paid a deposit on them and collecting discarded bottles and getting the deposit back was a supplement to pocket money, some bigger boys found out where the empties were stored at a local pub and were running quite a racket.

We seemed to eat alot, I can remember eating a full meal after school and then having a fish and chips supper, I couldn't do that now.

I can remember the first adverts for automatic washing machines, I think they were Hoovers and cost £99 which was a fortune and my gran was disgusted at the idleness of modern women. My granddad was equally scathing and I do remember him holding up my aunts knickers that were drying by the fire and saying how disgusting and there weren't big enough to cover a woman's backside and the dancing would be the ruin of many a good person.

Some was good and some was bad.

[EngTech]

Bring back Noggin the Nog, not forgetting Nog Bad the Bad.

BBC2 in colour 😎 Now that was impressive seeing colour TV 👍

Stingray, Thunderbirds in colour as well 😎👍

Seeing Telstar satellite being launched and watching American TV until Telstar dipped over the horizon until it went round the Earth and came over the horizon again.

Take it for granted now 😎

[SlocombePooter]

greentea thanks for that. I suppose it was progress, but every so often I realise what modern things would have cost in old money...yikes!

[Greenteandchives]

The day we changed currency was 1971, Feb15th. I was working in a department store and it was utter chaos. Everything changed overnight. We had had a lot of training, but of course the general public hadn’t. People were so confused, and kept asking to pay in real money. The coins only changed gradually, so what was sixpence one day, was 5p the next, then a shilling was 10p. We weren’t allowed to tell them the price in old money. It was awful, and very very confusing especially for older people who really struggled with the changeover.
It made adding up sums of money at the end of the day a whole lot easier though, as we only had pounds and pence, not pounds, shillings and pence.
Sorry to derail the 50s thread slightly, but someone upthread asked.

[PancakesAndMapleSyrup]

Kitten that link to the radio times is bloody AMAZING!! Love it!

[PancakesAndMapleSyrup]

All I know about the change from decimal was from my late grandparents, they said it literally was swopped over like for like as written, so they always complained that lots of things had a huge price hike overnight!! So much became really expensive.

[Chottie]

I still cook in pounds and ounces too. Partly because I use my mother's hand written recipes a lot,

[Chottie]

@GiantKitten

Chottie, you had tights??? What luxury!

I don't remember tights being a thing at all where I lived - it was all knee socks in the winter (& chapped knees above them sad )

Yes, I was very cosseted (and warm!). I wore red, blue or navy tights at the weekend and brown tights (which matched my school uniform) during the week. I was fortunate to never have chilblains or chapped knees. I had hand knitted gloves and mittens and scarves and bobble hats as well.

[HazelBite]

I grew up in North London in the 1950's. 50% of the pupils in my class were not of British ethnicity, I grew up with children with exotic names, from the Indian Sub Continent, Africa, Jamaica, Turkey, Italy Poland, Cyprus and many more.
As children we were very accepting of any differences our classmates had, it was a wonderful experience/education, and I consider myself fortunate.
I remember my father buying my Mum a washing machine, in 1956 a huge "English Electric" top loader with an electric wringer (no spin dryers) Our first refridgerator was purchased in 1957 an "Electrolux" with a tiny ice box, oh the luxury of ice cubes and homemade orange squash lollies.
We got our first family car in 1959, and we had always had a home telephone "Stamford Hill 7292" was how you answered!
My much older brother and sister listened to records Elvis and Cliff Richards, to this day I know all the words to many of their early songs.

[GiantKitten]

Oh well, for a cathedral wedding 2/6 sounds fair! (I bet his mum had to iron his surplice though )

My brother used to get about 1 shilling (maybe a bit more, can't remember) for singing at weddings at our church, & I was dead jealous because girls weren't allowed in church choirs in those days.

I love that your mum has the same metric benchmarks as me!

[Emmapeeler]

Thank you! Yes I think it was for weddings at Coventry cathedral (the one next to the bombed one).

Me and mum were measuring something last week. I used one side of the tape measure and she used the other... And she said “I know a metre is about 40 inches”

Funnily enough though I always bake in lb/oz, because she taught me to make cakes.

[GiantKitten]

Yes, a bob was a shilling - 5p now. It would buy you 2 Mars bars.

2/6 was also called half a crown (a crown being 5 shillings) & yes, that sounds eminently reasonable - generous in fact - for a choir performance (do you mean at a wedding, as it was a Saturday?)

I'm not very good at metric either. I know that 1m is about 40" & 15cm is about 6" & 500g is a bit over 1lb & 500ml is a bit under a pint but I can't think in random metric numbers

[Emmapeeler]

Loving this thread.

I think my Dad said he got paid two and sixpence for being a Saturday choir boy I sadly can’t ask him now. Does that sound realistic? And is a bob a shilling?

My mum still can’t do cm.

[SlocombePooter]

Roussette that is so poignant. And a common thing, sadly.

[Roussette]

I remember decimalisation distinctly, luckily I was young enough to not struggle too much. I, too, am hopeless with metric, not much good at cm and mm!

Hi derxa ! Yes you are a child of the 50s and welcome

The stigma of unwanted pregnancies was absolutely awful. My very best friend who was only days different in age and we'd been friends all our life... was just 15 when she had a baby. My parents banned me from seeing her ever again as they said she was a bad influence. In those days you did what your parents told you to do. To add a happy note to this story, we finally, by a huge coincidence too long to go into, met up with each other a year ago, nearly 50 years later. It was very emotional.