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.

[Idratherhaveacupoftea]

Schools were strict. Corporal punishment was used, I don't think my school had the cane, but I think a plimsoll was involved. We had a teacher who scared every child half to death, a ruler was her piece of smacking equipment. Hand out, a swift smack, it stung if it caught your fingertips. No child ever went home and complained though, we just accepted that's what happened if you misbehaved.

Anyone here remember the school dentist coming in and inspecting everyone's teeth, with a letter to take home if they found a cavity. We dreaded it, the school dentist was a nightmare, No injections for fillings, vile gas masks for extractions, I can still smell the smell of that gas. Nitty Nora, the nurse that rummaged through our heads for nits. We also lined up for a spoonful of cod liver and malt.Same spoon for every child, there was 47 children in my class, one teacher.



47 children in a class, can you imagine the uproar if that was nowadays. We sat in rows and all faced the front, absolutely no talking. When we took the 11+, there was no preparation before hand or testing of any kind.In fact my brother didn't even know he was taking it until the day. We were told our results in the school hall. They called your name and you were told either, pass, fail or borderline which meant you could have another smaller test. No worrying about us being upset at failing.

Snowball fights in the playground, making slides from one end of the playground to the other. Every child trying to make it as slippery as possible, pouring water on it to make it nearly lethal. No going home if the heating failed, you just kept your coats on and did star jumps every 30 minutes to stop you going blue with the cold. Looking back it seems almost impossible that's how it was, but I loved my primary school although it was hard in some ways.

[Dowser]

I was born in 1952. It was a simple time.
There wasn’t the harshness in society that you see now.
The war had been over for 7 years and only the last few things were still rationed.
People were really slim and wore lovely tea dresses.
Men suits or shirts jackets and trousers often with ties
There was a prosperity spurt. Plenty of employment. Most men were in work and some women. Mainly mums stayed home.
We played out in the street . Very safe
We were the first to have a car in the street.
We had a week on the south coast in May and then a week on cardiff in September where we stayed with family 😁

Loved that week.
My welsh cousin has just been for a week. We’ve kept up the tradition for 60 years

There was no sense of lack

My junior school photos show a class full of beautifully dressed, clean well fed mainly happy children. Makes my heart swell with pride

I had a very happy childhood. I just sold my family home two years ago but I still have my aunt’s who lived in the next street and who didn’t have children

Do it was win/ win... two mam’s and two dads... and a nana
All adored me 👍

[SlocombePooter]

In my head I could still do a hand stand or cartwheels, but sadly would snap like a twig, now!

It's fascinating to share all these memories, thanks to all.

Incidentally my DH is 3 months older than me and had a more comfortable upbringing, but we both ended up at university, the only difference being I got a maintenance grant and he got nothing, his parents having too much income. There were no tuition fees, though.

[Emmapeeler]

Following! My parents grew up in the fifties. Their childhoods sound a lot like those described.

[Roussette]

Me too, and many similar memories. Will never forget the freezing cold house, and ice on inside of the windows.

My parents used to buy LPs of all the Musicals of the time and even now I know all the words from Annie Get Your Gun, The King and I, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Oklahama, South Pacific, Calamity Jane etc. One of them was on a while back and I immediately broke into song!

I had older brothers and sisters so got into Elvis, Beatles, Stones from a very early age ... all records played on a Dansette record player.

As far as other memories... dentists were butchers and just filled your teeth with mercury, it was a terrifying experience to walk into the dentist with a big black chair you sat on, and the dentist didn't even talk to you or put you at your ease. Perhaps I was just unlucky.

I have no time for anti-vaxxers. I had both mumps and measles in the 50s, and it was horrible. My whole face was swollen from above my ears to my shoulders with the mumps and it was so painful.

Was it a happy time growing up then? Yes and no, for me.

[GiantKitten]

If we wanted ice cream for pudding in the summer - the newsagents in the parade used to open briefly on a Sunday - one of us had to sprint down the road, buy a long block (the kind for slicing between wafers), get it wrapped in newspaper & sprint home again

[Darkcloudsandsunnydays]

The streets were for playing in. Nobody had a car or television. The schools were Victorian. Food was kept cold on a marble slab in the pantry. The washing was done by hand and put through a hand operated mangle. Housework took up most of the time.

Dad would get up early to light the fire using coal. There were no carpets. A phone was a luxury for the rich and well off.

The population was slim and people ran or cycled out of work at the sound of the closing Bell. Britain was experiencing austerity after the war and national service still existed but rationing had been stopped. There were no sweets.

Although university was free nobody went. You had to go down the mines like your father to earn some money. People smoked. There was smog. Buses were cheaper and full as there was no other transport except a bike.

You rented a place to live in. Few bought houses. Most lived in council houses.

It’s depressing so we were given nhs spectacles tinted red to make things appear less grey.

[Knittedfairies]

I'd forgotten the dentist @Roussette... I had a tooth pulled out that had an abscess behind it without any anaesthetic. My mum was appalled and we never went back to him again. I went to bed for two days and felt very sorry for myself. It was a very big deal for her to leave that practice ; she was the most non-confrontational person ever, almost bowing to those with more education than her.

[Roussette]

Knitted I will never forget the waiting room at the dentist and one of our neighbours was there with her son, younger than me, about 6 or 7 years old. He was shaking with fear and wet himself.

It's a wonder I don't have a lifelong fear of dentists!

Who remembers having to put your head on your desk and sleep for half an hour after lunch?!

[sueelleker]

My sister and I both had all the childhood diseases except scarlet fever. One of us would catch something, and pass it on to the other.

[Darkcloudsandsunnydays]

I spent all of my time in the countryside playing and walking the dog and looking at the wild flowers. It was a riot if colour that no painting could ever do justice to.

The village that I used to live in has gone. My old school is a house. The barn I used to play in is a house. The flowers don’t exist anymore nor the wooden gate that I used to look over and gaze at the flowers longingly. The old pub too is a house.

There are hundreds of small new houses and cars. The village is now a commuter town.

I used to live in a small village in North Yorkshire. Only the village name remains. The river still runs through it. I sometimes go back to the river and stand by it’s banks watching it flow. I pretend I am back in time.

Everything else has gone.

[GiantKitten]

I think I must have had measles - I can remember being in bed for ages, with the curtains drawn, & the doctor coming.

Also chickenpox. Not mumps though, afaik. And I used to get terrible earache in the cold - my mum used to put warm olive oil in, and stuff my ears with cotton wool.

[nellyitsme]

I grew up in the 50s. My mum is Irish and married an Englishman and came to live in a small English town she got called an Irish b##ta*rd, an Irish gypsy etc.
We got a 3 bedroom new council house on an estate with lots of grassed areas and wild places around the railway line. We roamed all over the town and the surrounding countryside and played wherever we wanted and came in as it got dark. I knew families of 12 kids living in 3 bedroomed prefabs. We thought we were a small family of 6 compared to these families.

Everybody seemed to be in the same boat and all the dads seemed to work in one of several factories in the town, and the roads would be packed with men on bicycles at starting and finishing time. We thought our house was big with lots of brick built sheds and outhouses and a large front and back garden in which most people grew their own veg.

My aunt and uncle and my cousin came over from Ireland, and for a few years lived with us - nobody thought this was unusual or that we were overcrowded. It meant that my aunt could look after us while my mum was at work, as child minders or pre school was unheard of. I knew one girl who went to a nursery and that was because there was no father around. It was rare to see single parents and it was assumed that the father had died in the war.

We got family allowance for of, I think, about 18 shillings a week for three of us (just under £1.00). It was collected from the post office and you had a book that had to be signed by my mum or dad and collected on a Tuesday. My mum and dad got paid on a Thursday in cash in little brown envelopes and very often there wasn't any money left on the Tuesday when we got bailed out by the family allowance.

In the mid 50s hire purchase became available and people often bought clothes and furniture from catalogues or the club and a tick man came round the houses to collect the weekly payments

At primary school, I remember being taught to use the reference library to find out information and we'd do a project that we had to research. We sat the 11 plus and about 8 of us passed, and I went to the girls high school but my mum really struggled to afford the uniform and I felt like a poor girl amongst posh girls. We had elocution lessons which made me feel even more the council estate girl, lthough with hindsight there were quite a few girls from council estates. I was the first in my family to get a degree thanks to a full grant.

There were perverts and odd characters but somehow we knew who they were and kept out of their way and didn't tell our parents

[Gran22]

I'm with you Roussette about dentists! I was taken regularly as a child, but have had all sorts of dental issues, probably because I was so scared I stopped going in my teens then paid for it as a grown up.

I was born soon after WWII in Scotland, we lived in a privately rented flat, with an indoor bathroom, just me and my parents. I can remember children at school having to share toilets on the landings outside their flats, and having to wash at the kitchen sink. I was the only child in the block, several 'old' ladies would give me treats at Christmas and Easter. (They were probably younger than I am now!) My mother sewed and knitted all the time! School could be harsh, some teachers loved corporal punishment, the belt (or tawse) was used regularly by at least one sadist I came across. My granny and other family members lived nearby, and my mum didn't work until my dad died when I was a teenager. He'd been in the army all through WWII, and his health wasn't great afterwards. Trying to find work in her fifties was difficult for my mother but she went cleaning, and then became a housekeeper. She was an excellent cook and baker.

My experience was a bit different from the majority who have posted - we always had a phone! However, it was rarely used, as hardly anyone else did. It was installed so my dad's employers could get hold of him if there was an emergency. He came home at dinner time (lunch time now) every day, and I did most days - staying for school dinners was a treat for me. We didn't get a TV til 1960, but I loved the radio back then. I played out in the streets round about, or in the local park from a fairly young age. I'd walk to school and my gran's from about 6 on my own.

We had two weeks holiday every year, all the mills and factories closed for the same two weeks. We went to a hotel in a small town in the North of Scotland, and met up with the same people every year. We never had a car.

[Roussette]

We always had a phone too. And I do remember that when you picked it up an operator would come on and say 'Number Please?' and the phone numbers were just the name of the Exchange and 3 digits.
I remember when it went up to 4 digits, but still just the name of the place you lived.
I find that mind blowing. So few people had phones the places could cope with 3 digits.
We had a party line we shared with a neighbour. You could listen in to their conversations and if you wanted to make a phone call you just kept tapping the receiver rest.
You also got a lot of crossed lines.
I spent a lot of time listening in to people's conversations. I was a peculiar child.


I also remember the boredom and watching flies crawling on the window for something to do, when I'd run out of books. I swear that's why I'm happy in my own company, I learnt to be self sufficient!

[SlocombePooter]

I was also traumatised by the dentist! Only taken if in pain. but also aesthetics weren't of concern in our family. I had an accident and bashed my front teeth out of place, but it never occurred to my Mum to take me to a dentist to have them braced. There was quite a fatalistic attitude, it was oh, what a shame your teeth are chipped and crooked now. DH living in a nearby but different world had braces as a matter of course. And a daily bath! Posh ;-)

[louisvootin]

place marking as i love these threads

[SlocombePooter]

Roussette now it's So many books, so little time!

[Roussette]

Indeed! My e-reader is my friend!

[SlocombePooter]

Yep!

[StandardPoodle]

Oh this has brought back memories!
Fruit salad sweets, 4 for a penny (one old pence).
Walking to and from school on my own from age 5.
No central heating, ice inside the windows in the winter. Wearing bedsocks and mittens in bed, it was so cold. Chilblains every winter.
Food was what was in season. No frozen stuff - few people had a refrigerator let alone a proper freezer.
The nearest we got to having a takeaway was fish and chips maybe twice a year.
Using public phone boxes and having to put more money in when the pips went or you were cut off.
Our primary school had outside toilets with the high cisterns. Anyone who didn't pay attention in class would have the blackboard rubber thrown at them. We had no prior warning of the 11 plus or practice for it and were just told one day we were sitting it that day.
In the holidays, we left home in the morning and roamed, returning for meals/bedtime.
No-one dared say they were bored as they'd quickly be found a task to do!
We were thin, fit, and self sufficient.

[beachcomber70]

Yes, I was a Brownie, a sixer of the Gnomes! On bob-a-job week we would knock on the doors of strangers and go in to do jobs for them...no one would dream of sending small boys and girls to do that now.

I remember too to this day the smell of the rubber dentists mask when a tooth was pulled using gas, awful.

People often had allotments growing all sorts and most gardens had a fruit tree and bushes...apples, gooseberries, plums, blackcurrants. They would be bottled for the winter and apples stored under the bed where it was certain to be cold.

A meat safe was in the pantry. A box with a metal mesh door to keep flies away, on a marble base. Fresh milk was kept in a bucket of cold water in the summer to stop it going off...hopefully.

Our class at school had 50 pupils in it. Our teacher was great, such interesting lessons and school trips. We all had to write in italic writing with Osmiroid fountain pens. We took the 11 plus without any panic or preparation...and all of us [bar one] passed for grammar schools! It was an amazing achievement for our teacher and school. The one who 'failed' actually didn't fail at all...he went on to become a widely respected teacher at a secondary school.

I was caned a couple of times, but didn't stress about it. At home I got 'clips round the ear' but again it seemed normal at the time as I was maybe a bit cheeky and got into scrapes trying to be like one of the boys.

I used to get 2-4 books a day from the library and read them in a day sometimes. The librarians knew me well. Famous Five, Secret Seven, Jennings and Darbyshire, Billy Bunter, Topsy Twins, Bobby Brewster, and all of the William books. There were also piles of comics to read too...Beano, Dandy, Bunty... Happy days.

[proudestofmums]

Not rtfs so,apologies if some of these have been mentioned.

I remember the excitement of getting our first fridge! And no supermarkets round our way - parent and I used to go to grocer, ahe’d Order everything and then it would be delivered. The bacon was sliced on a fancy slicer.

Going to the dentist as a small child for extractions. No anaesthetic for injections but a rubbery smelling mask placed over the head. Terrifying.

Stockings with suspenders belts nd seams that were never straight.

Walking 2 miles home from school at the age of 5.

Tiny television set.

No car radios so when Dad,drove me home from school I listened to a clunky tape recorder. Oh, and gramophones with shiny black records. friend’s house had one where you had to keep replacing the needle.

Typewriters.

Ladybird clothes

Dad, a senior local government officer, working on Saturday mornings.

[florentina1]

I was born in 1948. My parents were factory workers and shop workers. Unusually for that time my mother worked full time. She was able to do this because NaN lived with us. She was a bit of a dragon as she had already raised 11 kids and really did not want the bother of another 2 at 70.

When she died we were left on our own from ages 8 and 10. We did chores, lit the fire , cooked our own meals. At 8 I was cooking chips in a big saucepan of lard. We went for miles on our own. I was once sexually assaulted in a park, but I was terrified to tell my mother.

I did not know what was happening really as we were never told the facts of life. I was in late teens before I knew anything about sex. I married in 1969 and married life came as a bit of a shock. Fortunately my DH was lovely and very patient.

School teachers were absolute dragons and I hated each one of them.

[Knittedfairies]

Bare legs in winter, and the rubbing if your socks weren't long enough to wear with wellies...