30-03-2018, 10:08 AM
1
Life in the Fifties as it really was
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/book...ALLY-like.htmlI notice she was the third of 9 children so I guess I was lucky as there were only 3 of us. However, we had neighbours up our road with 8,10 and 12 children and they really were very poor. Our house was fairly bare but clean and as my Mum was a good cook we always had decent meals. She was 1 of 8 so knew how to make a meal out of very little.
I look at my nieces kids with toys galore, Ipads, bikes, every outside toy you could imagine and wardrobes stuffed with clothes.
I had what I went to school in and what I wore at home and that was something like another skirt and jumper. I didnt even have a wardrobe!
I had wealthier girl cousins who went to a convent with posh uniform so I got all their offcasts but I must have looked out of place at our village school in a convent uniform! The rest of our clothes came from jumble sales but we did get new cardigans as mum used to knit those. She could only afford a ball of wool at a time so the little shop would put it by for her, so often the cardigan would be a long time in the making. There were plenty of kids at school who wore plimsoles all year round, had glasses stuck together with elastoplast and had most odd haircuts where their Mums couldnt afford a hairdresser.
In our road we were all pretty much the same. All the Dads worked but it was very low, rural wages and the Mums looked after the kids. Because we were slightly better off than the kids with huge families, sometimes my Mum would fry up pans full of chips and make cones from greaseproof and newspaper and a whole crowd of kids would sit outside on the kerb and enjoy them!
30-03-2018, 10:34 AM
3
Re: Life in the Fifties as it really was
Yip..We were poor but We didn't know it as Everyone else was the same..during school hol's We would be out of the House after breakfast with a bottle of pop and a couple of pieces (sandwiches) and wouldn't come back until our stomach rumbled...happy days
30-03-2018, 11:15 AM
4
Re: Life in the Fifties as it really was
My sisters and I were well fed and clothed. However my first school (4-14), when I started there, was straight out of the Victorian era and something of a nightmare.
The head master, who was a pupil teacher when my grandfather was a pupil before WW1, and head teacher when my father attended, was very cruel. He hated the kids from poor families and beat the living daylights out of them. He even beat one lad unconscious!
I was badly bullied because my parents were better off than many of those of my classmates. My father was still in the throws of getting his horticultural business up and running, my sisters and I, from the age of about eight, were expected to help out if necessary. It could be very hard physical labour, we didn't get paid for our work, or in fact any pocket money at all, throughout our childhood.
We were expected to be obedient and a would expect a good thrashing if we didn't toe the line. I had plenty as I was always going were angels feared to tread.
Health and safety was not implemented in those days, it is a miracle I survived my childhood, I was electrocuted twice, among all the other things which I have listed on another thread.
Still I lived to tell the tale.
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