by Paul Feeney
Young boy playing on his bike in the middle of a central London street, while behind him some girls are playing with their dolls’ pram. The only sign of any traffic is a bus passing at the end of the road.
Some well-off parents did like to show off their little darlings on Sundays and at Christmas by dressing them in adult fashions. It was all right for girls but there was nothing worse than the sight of an eight-year-old boy kitted out in a miniature two-piece suit and bow tie. They would hang their heads in shame every time they had to endure this public humiliation.
Kids in the 1950s were no angels; they got up to mischief and there were some young scallywags around, but in the main they had respect for their elders. There was no mugging of old ladies and people felt safe to walk the streets. There was very little vandalism and no graffiti. Telephone boxes were fully glazed and each one contained a set of local telephone directories and a pay-box full of tuppences. If a public telephone was out of action then it was because of a technical fault and not because it had been smashed up by vandals. Many young boys carried a penknife but it was only used as a tool to whittle wood, not a weapon. When there were fights, kids would wrestle, punch, kick and scratch, but they would never think of using the penknife that might be in their pocket. Apart from the odd playground scrap involving hair pulling, girls were generally well behaved and didn’t do much fighting.
All kinds of knives and weapons were openly sold in the high street shops and some wild teenagers did carry and use flick-knives and knuckle-dusters in punch-ups, but such fights were usually between gangs of youths and they didn’t touch the lives of children. Teddy boys were tagged as being violent and could look threatening when they hung around in groups on street corners and in coffee bars, but many just wore Teddy boy style clothes for fashion purposes and were not at all violent. As with every generation of teenagers there was some fighting, but it was not exclusive to Teddy Boys; there were also Greasers, Beatniks and other non-descript young men that revelled in the occasional punch-up. However, any rebelliousness in unruly teenagers was generally knocked out of them when they got called up to do their National Service, which was still compulsory in 1950s Britain.
Young adults of the 1950s had lived through the terrible atrocities of war and experienced all of the post-war deprivation. This seemed to make them more protective of their own children and to value their innocence. Britain was nearly bankrupt and up to the hilt in debt to America. Nobody really knew what the future held for them and many people lived for today and were grateful for what they had. Children’s ambitions were modest and most wanted to have a practical job when they grew up. Boys wanted to be firemen or bus drivers, and girls wanted to be nurses or air hostesses. Everyone hated wearing school uniforms but for some reason kids were attracted to jobs that involved wearing a uniform, probably because they had seen them glamorised in films.
Many who look back on their 1950s childhood will remember simple little things that have stuck with them all their lives: the taste of Farley’s Rusk biscuits and thick syrupy welfare orange juice, toasting bread by the fireside, the rhythmic sound of your mum’s knitting needles, Sunday afternoon tea at Granny’s where the deafening silence was only broken by the sound of a ticking clock, Mrs Dale’s Diary on the radio, and the excitement of a visit to the local Woolworths store. 1950s weather will always evoke memories: the long, hot summer days playing outside were great but the cold, dark winters were horrible, and often boring because you spent so much of your time indoors. Those that lived in large urban areas, particularly London, will remember the dense fogs that would descend in the form of yellowish smog. These were often described as ‘pea-soupers’ because they were so thick. People would wear a damp handkerchief over their nose and mouth to protect them from breathing in the polluted air. The smog was caused by cold fog combining with coal-fire emissions from homes and industrial smokestacks. It was a very serious problem and thousands of people died from the resulting pollution. In 1952, extremely bad smog shrouded London and caused the premature death of an estimated 12,000 people over a three-month period.
The 1950s was probably the last decade in which children were able to retain their innocence through to the age of about twelve or thirteen. There was no peer pressure to grow up any quicker than nature intended. You were able to enjoy a carefree life that was full of childish fun and games, and the stresses of adolescence could wait!
Two
HOME LIFE
It’s another cold and wet Sunday afternoon and you’re stuck indoors with nothing to do. You kneel on a chair by the window, plant your elbows on the windowsill, and stare out into the street waiting for something to happen. The street is deserted. Everyone is stuck indoors, just like you! You detect a faint smell of roast beef coming from the kitchen, and in the background you can hear the dreaded sound of The Billy Cotton Band Show on the radio. ‘Wakey! Wakey! Hey you down there –yes, you with the glasses!’ You cover your ears to protect them from that dreadful signature tune Somebody Stole My Gal. The Billy Cotton Band Show has been on the radio for as long as you can remember, and it seems that you are condemned to a lifetime of Sunday lunchtime listening. There is some movement in the street, but no, it’s only next door’s cat scampering to get out of the rain. You hope that something will happen soon to relieve your boredom. Perhaps the rag-and-bone man will come down the road ringing his bell? Or what about the knife-sharpener with a grinder on the front of his pushbike? Maybe the ice-cream man will come on his three-wheeled bike with the box at the front filled with small blocks of ice cream? No, he won’t come; it’s winter, and he never comes in the winter. By now, your knees are starting to get sore from kneeling on the chair, but at least the rain has stopped and there is a chink of light between the clouds. You shuffle about a bit to get more comfortable, and lean forward to take one last look down the street. At last! Something is happening! A Salvation Army band has stopped at the corner and they look as if they are going to pitch up and play (yes, the local Sally Army bands did go around the back streets on a Sunday). Hooray! The day is saved! The Salvation Army band drowns out the sound of the awful Billy Cotton Band Show. In celebration, you jump down from the chair and slide across the linoed floor in your stocking feet. Well worth the risk of a wallop and lecture about wearing holes in your socks.
This HMV auto-change portable record player with radio would have been a dream machine for any teenager to own in the 1950s.
Sunday was always a very quiet day and kids were often kept inside and told not to annoy the neighbours. Other than going to church or Sunday school and having the obligatory Sunday lunch, people just did relaxing things like reading the papers; then after lunch, snoozing in the armchair, pottering in the garden (in shirt and tie, of course) or going to the park. Apart from the corner shop that opened on Sunday mornings to sell newspapers, all of the shops were shut and the streets were generally quiet.
Even the mildest of winters were horrible because you spent so much time stuck indoors, and you longed for milder days to arrive so that you could get outside again. On cold, dark winter nights, there was nothing more warm and comforting than to curl up by the fireside and listen to a play on the radio. Only the occasional spark from the fire and the gentle clicking sound of your mum’s knitting disturbed your concentration. Children were totally absorbed by the soft tones of the storyteller’s voice purring from the speaker cloth at the front of a big old valve-radio. Even if the reader did all the voices, it was totally believable, and your imagination took you right into the scene of the story. Anyone that was around in the mid-fifties will remember the very scary BBC Light Programme’s science fiction series, Journey into Space, which started on 21 September 1953. It frightened the life out of kids, but it was essential listening and had a huge audience – all those creepy sound effects and that mysterious haunting music. According to the BBC, by the time the series came to an end on 18 June 1958, there were 8 million people tuning in each week. There were loads of well-known people in
it, including David Jacobs (he played many different parts), Deryck Guyler, Alfie Bass and David Kossoff.
Radio vs Television
When television sets first came into British homes they changed the traditional family lifestyle forever. The 1950s can easily be divided into two sections, the ‘radio years’ of the early ’50s and the ‘television years’ of the late ’50s. In the ‘radio years’, the focal point of any room was its source of warmth. Chairs would be gathered around the open fireplace in the living room, or near to the range in the kitchen. There was always a huge radio on a nearby sideboard. For some reason, you got more absorbed in a radio programme if you could see the radio from your chair. In the ‘television years’, all the chairs were arranged to face the television set, and you had to sit fairly close to it because the screens were quite small. In the ‘radio years’ children happily sat at the table and ate their tea at a leisurely pace, but television created an urgent need for kids to finish tea more quickly so that they could get to see Children’s Hour on the television. No longer were children happy just to have the radio playing in the background while they ate their meals; television required their undivided attention. All those grey and grainy, yet mesmerising, children’s programmes, like Muffin the Mule, presented by John Mills’ sister, Annette; Billy Bunter, with Gerald Campion; Crackerjack or ‘Crack-er-jack!’, with Eamonn Andrews (Ronnie Corbett was a regular on the show in those days); Blue Peter, with Christopher Trace and Leila Williams (did you know she was winner of Miss Great Britain in 1957?); The Adventures of Robin Hood, with Richard Green and the lovely Bernadette O’Farrell, and in later episodes Patricia Driscoll (every schoolboy’s dream), who took over as Maid Marian for the final two seasons.
In Britain, television had been around since long before the war, but even in the late 1950s, reception and picture quality was still quite poor. Whenever there was bad interference, the remedy was for someone to carry the aerial around the room until a reasonable picture appeared on the screen. There always seemed to be some image ghosting, but you learned to put up with that. Sometimes the picture would go completely haywire, and when that happened it was useful if you had a skilled engineer in the family to give the TV set a good whack on the top of its cabinet, which usually cured the problem. Whatever the downside, it didn’t stop the growing demand for television sets throughout the 1950s. In 1947, there were only 15,000 British households with a television set. There were 3 million by 1954, and almost 13 million by 1964.
Around the House
The front room, or parlour, as it was often referred to in those days, was reserved for visitors and special occasions. It housed all the best furniture and many boasted a gramophone and an upright piano. These rooms were often just dust harbours and a complete waste of space because visitors usually sat in the kitchen or back room, which were more lived-in, warm and cosy. If you were lucky enough to have a kitchen larger than a galley, then you probably spent a great deal of time in there. The kitchen was the hub of the home, where all the cooking, eating, washing and ironing was done, and the baby was usually bathed in the sink or in a bowl on the kitchen table. Some kitchens even had a full-size bath in the corner that was covered with a board, but people living in older houses had to make do with a tin bath in front of the fire or a weekly visit to the public baths. The family pets were fed and watered in the kitchen, and that is where the dog would have its bed. Families often had hair-washing nights, when mum would mix a packet of Palmolive shampoo powder with water in an old jam jar or milk bottle; enough for the whole family to wash their hair – and in the kitchen, of course!
This smart 1950s HMV 2-band radio would have impressed the neighbours at the time.
Although magazines were full of pictures showing the latest fitted kitchens with all the appliances, in the real world kitchens were sparsely furnished with bare essentials, like cooker, sink, mangle, washboard, kitchen cabinet, and table and chairs. Stuff like Omo washing powder, Ajax powder and Robin starch were stored on a shelf under the sink, hidden behind a curtain. Fridges were expensive and still beyond the reach of ordinary families, but most houses had some form of pantry for storing food, with a wire mesh for ventilation. In warm weather, milk bottles were often stood in a bowl of cold water, and in colder weather, unopened milk bottles were kept on the outside windowsill with a stone on top of each bottle to stop the birds from pecking at the tin-foil top. The old ‘whistle kettle’ was a permanent fixture on top of the stove, and it got plenty of use in boiling endless supplies of hot water for tea and for washing. All mums seemed to have a sewing machine for mending and making things, and again the kitchen table was, more often than not, the place where such work was done. With so much time spent in the kitchen, it was normal to find a large valve radio sat on top of a kitchen cabinet or, if it was deep enough, on the mantle shelf above the fireplace. Many kids would do their homework at the kitchen table or, if that wasn’t available, on their bed when the bedroom wasn’t too cold.
Ticking clocks were a familiar sound around the house, but somehow you didn’t notice them. There were various wind-up clocks in every room, even in the hallway. In the still of the night, the rhythmic ticking could be deafening, but nothing could keep a tired child awake.
Most adults seemed to smoke cigarettes and there were ashtrays in every room, even in the bedrooms. Peoples’ clothes and all the soft furnishings must have reeked with the smell of cigarette and pipe smoke, but again, you didn’t notice it. Air freshener products were not yet in common use and so rooms were usually given a good airing by opening all the windows to let fresh air blow through the house.
By the 1950s, many people were fortunate enough to have access to an inside toilet, but an awful lot of households still had to endure the hardship of using an outside toilet. Commonly referred to as lavatories, lavys or lavs, the outside toilet was usually situated in a small lean-to at the back of the house. These lavy lean-tos often had no light fittings and at night you would have to feel your way around and take advantage of any reflected light from the house. More often than not, they were cold, damp and draughty places that could be quite scary for kids. There were usually plenty of gaps around the door to allow the cold air to get in, and just to make sure, air holes were drilled near to the top of the door for ventilation. In wintertime, all of the water pipes and the overhead cistern had to be well lagged to prevent the water freezing. The sound of condensation dripping from an exposed piece of pipe just added to the overall eeriness of the place. To a child, the simple mechanics of using an outside loo could be quite daunting; the toilet itself seemed to be so big! Lifting the huge wooden lid with squeaky metal hinges was a task in itself for a four-foot-nothing wimp of a kid. This exposed the seat, or throne as it was sometimes called, which always seemed to be at waist height and required a great deal of stretching on tiptoes before you could get seated. Then you had to contend with the seat’s enormous hole, over which you had to carefully perch with your hands pressed down firmly on each side of the wide wooden seat to support the weight of your body for fear that your little bum would fall through the hole and your whole body would be flushed away! Then it was time to make one of the biggest decisions facing a 1950s child; would you use the sheets of Izal toilet paper that were peeking from their cardboard box on the back of the lavy door, or instead opt for the neatly cut squares of newspaper that were dangling from a string on the wall. It was just another of those many childhood imponderables, why did we have to use these thin, shiny, slippery sheets of Izal toilet paper when newspaper was so much more absorbent and effective? Izal had the answer emblazoned on each sharply folded sheet, with the words ‘medicated with Izal germicide’. Yes, it was more hygienic but you needed to use about a dozen sheets and it still didn’t seem to do the job! However, Izal toilet paper was see-through and could act as a good alternative for tracing paper; children regularly used it as a substitute for the real thing. And by the way, what was that piece of flannel for that was always hanging on the back of the
toilet door? There was usually no sink in the outside lavy but there always seemed to be a flannel or small towel hanging on the back of every lavy door. I dread to think!
In the 1950s, a radiogram like this would be considered a real status symbol.
This popular style of television was described as a ‘slim television’ in the late 1950s, and was suitable for any size room.
Food and Drink
There had been vegetarians in Britain for over a hundred years, but they must have been very small in number back in the ’50s, and it is unlikely there were any among post-war working-class families. The austere 1950s didn’t really cater for people with dietry preferences. People generally ate what was available, and meat was considered to be a necessary source of protein and essential nutrients for healthy growing children and working adults. Kids were very active and used up lots of energy. They needed feeding and, in the main, they were given what was thought to be good for them rather than what they liked. It was considered important to have three square meals a day, and when money was scarce you would fill up on bread and potatoes.
What you had for breakfast was usually dependent upon what you could afford, and whether your mum worked and how much time she had to prepare it. During the week, most kids would have cereal, porridge, or a lightly boiled egg with bread soldiers to dip in. A full breakfast or ‘fry-up’ was usually reserved for the weekend when, if you could afford it, breakfast became a real meal, with bacon, egg, sausage, tomatoes, baked beans, and black pudding with fried bread. Everything except the baked beans was fried. There was always a fresh pot of tea being made. It was tea with everything; it was just second nature and coffee was too expensive to drink regularly throughout the day.