The Baby Boomer Generation Read online

  Many of our young dads would have been earning less than £10 a week for working a basic thirty-nine-hour week (the average weekly wage for men was £9 in 1952, which was worth about £200 at 2009 prices). Most of our mothers would have stayed at home to bring up the children but if they had gone out to work they would have been paid just over half a man’s wage for doing the exactly same job. Dad might well have worked in one of the thousands of factories or workshops that stood on every corner of every street, at a time when Britain was a manufacturing nation capable of filling our flourishing high street shops with every kind of British-made product imaginable. He almost certainly walked or got the bus to work, stopping at the corner shop to buy a packet of cigarettes and his morning newspaper before he set off. Whatever kind of job he did, manual or clerical, his workplace would have been bustling with other workers, with no sign of a computer or any other labour-saving technological device. As the breadwinner of the family, Dad would expect to find his dinner already cooked and on the table waiting for him when he got home from work. Sadly for 1950s women, the advent of the ‘modern man’ was still some years away, which meant that after he had eaten his dinner the man of the house would retreat to his favourite armchair to read the newspaper while listening to The Archers on the wireless, and mum would be left to wash up the dishes.

  We may have been very young children at the time but many of us still have vivid memories of life in the early 1950s. During those tender years, most of us lived in our mother’s shadow, generally getting under her feet while she tried to keep the house in order. Less than 10% of under-5s went to nursery school (compared to 90% in 2011); the rest of us stayed at home with mum. The full-time mothers were unable to go out to work, but once their children started school many got themselves part-time jobs for a few hours a day. However, such jobs were hard to come by because the working hours had to fit in around the school day and it was almost impossible to juggle part-time work with looking after the kids during school holidays. Traditionally, ordinary families regarded it as the mother’s duty to personally care for her own children and to nurse them through the early stages of their development. Mum was expected to be the main source of influence over her children, especially in the pre-school years. Dad had his role too, but many working dads saw too little of their children. We virtually lived in mum’s pocket and it was her we relied on for guidance. Even if there had been an abundance of free nursery schools all over the country, it is unlikely that the average 1950s mother would have used them. The idea of leaving a child in a nursery all day so that mum could go out to work and earn money to improve the family’s living standards was out of kilter with the 1950s way of life. The upper classes were well practiced at being separated from their children through the use of nannies and boarding schools, but everyone else thought it was wrong to separate a child from its natural mother for long periods at a time. Our stay-at-home mums were called housewives and they seemed quite happy with that tag, regularly describing this as being their occupation when asked. A housewife had a very demanding role to fulfil; it was hard physical work because there were no labour-saving devices in the typical family home and many of the daily chores were energy sapping. By the end of the decade, less than a third of households in Britain had a washing machine and these were single tub, top-loaders with a wringer on top. There were a small number of high street launderettes in existence but they were hard to find and very expensive to use. Most people still did all of their washing by hand and the average family with three children created lots of washing, scrubbing and ironing. These laundering jobs were done in-between all of the cooking, baking, sewing and everything else mum had to do.

  The wartime practice of ‘make do and mend’ continued for many years after the war ended, which meant that when mum wasn’t knitting a cardigan or making a dress, she was darning socks and altering hemlines to fit growing children. She also had a constant battle with surface grime, which was produced from a combination of cigarette smoke and solid fuel emissions. The popularity of open fires meant that she also had the fire grates to clean out each day. Because there was no fridge in which she could keep perishable foods, Mum also had to find time to do a daily shop for fresh dairy products and other groceries. With so much dusty manual work to do during the day, housewives usually wore a wraparound housecoat or an apron to protect their clothes from getting stained. However, it was quite normal for a housewife to wear good clothes around the house so if anyone knocked on the door she could throw off her apron and look respectable when greeting a visitor.

  Those of us who enjoyed the pleasure of having younger siblings will remember the smell of damp nappies around the house. Our young mums seemed to spend hours at a time washing endless numbers of terry towelling nappies that had been generously soiled by our younger siblings; she would then boil them in a big pot on the stove before pushing them through a hand-operated mangle and hanging them on the outside washing line. In rainy weather, the clean wet nappies would be hung in front of the open fire to dry, thus adding to the damp conditions that many of us remember from our childhood. We had none of the modern-day building materials that we all take for granted today. Home improvement and weatherproofing products like double-glazing, sealants and insulation materials were not available. The man of the house usually did any basic home decorating and repair work that needed doing, and some men would occasionally undertake larger home-improvement projects, but most houses remained cold, draughty and damp in winter.

  A few years down the line, our generation would be credited for introducing most of the home comforts that ordinary working people now regard as essentials in their homes. No modern-day home comfort was more welcomed by the baby-boomer generation than central heating, but we would have to wait another ten or twenty years before it would be affordable for the average family. Many of us are still haunted by memories of the cold winter nights of the 1950s.

  The healthy, home-cooked food we pushed around our plates at dinnertime didn’t seem to put an ounce of flesh on us. We used up so much energy while playing outside in the fresh air that most of us remained as thin as rakes no matter how much we ate. We really felt the cold and in wintertime we were well practiced in the art of shivering. The only source of heat usually came from an open coal fire in the main living room where the whole family would huddle together during the long, dark winter evenings. Windows and doors were mostly ill-fitting and heavy curtains were needed to stem the strength of the cutting draughts that whistled through every tiny crack. Rugs would be jammed under the internal doors and bits of screwed-up newspaper stuffed into keyholes to stop the flow of cold air breaking through from the unheated hallway. In the absence of a suitable curtain, a thick blanket would be hung across the main street door to stop the outside, sub-zero temperature from entering the house. Even when the living room reached a nice cosy temperature and you were warm enough to remove your hand-knitted pullover, you still had to keep a woolly jumper to hand in case you needed to venture outside of the snug living-room cocoon and into a cold area of the house. Such movement would be avoided at all costs; even if you were dying for a wee-wee you would cross your legs and hold on to it for as long as possible, rather than face the prospect of having to go out into the winter weather to use the freezing cold outside lavatory. At bedtime, you would make every excuse under the sun to delay moving your nicely toasted legs from the fireside to brave the chill of your frosty bedroom. When you did finally surrender to the inevitability of having to go to bed, you did so in your stockinged feet and at breakneck speed, hopping across the carpet runners and skidding along any bare bits of exposed lino. The bedroom was as unwelcoming as it ever was on winter nights; as chilly as the outside air and with draughts coming from all directions. Your panting warm breath turned into clouds of fog as it met the bedroom air. With no time to spare, you quickly got ready for bed, skipping across the bedroom floor in time to the rhythm of your chattering teeth, and swiftly diving under the bedcovers to find the shelter th
at your body so desperately craved. You would then fully bury your head beneath the tightly packed blankets and sheets. Despite your mum’s best efforts to pre-warm the bed with a hot water bottle, the sheets would still have an icy, damp feel about them. Still shivering underneath the bedclothes, you would begin to sense the early stages of a thaw within your bones as the heat from the hot water bottle at the foot of the bed started to penetrate your thick woollen socks and gradually warm the soles of your feet, bringing your legs back to life. The warm puffs of breath you directed up your nose would produce small droplets that would fall from the end of your frozen nose. You knew that it would not be long before you would have to bring your head out from underneath the bedcovers, otherwise you would suffocate from the weight of blankets, which were topped off with a thick heavy overcoat to act as a poor man’s eiderdown. You would pray that your whole body would soon be warm and that you would fall asleep before the hot water bottle turned to ice. In next to no time, your trembling would subside and you would become motionless, away in the Land of Nod, dreaming of all the fantastic adventure games you could play if you were to wake and find the streets basking in warm sunshine. The reality of morning always came too soon and the bedroom temperature was always as cold as it was the night before. To make matters worse, frost would form overnight on the inside of the bedroom window and the damp atmosphere was made worse by your warm breath as it created condensation that ran down the window and formed pools of water on the windowsill. Such memories do not feature amongst our fondest and are high on our list of things we don’t miss about the 1950s; nor do we miss having to wash in a tin bath by an open fire, or having to use an outside lavatory. It is only a privileged few who can say that they never experienced the cold, draughty and damp living conditions that were commonplace before central heating, home insulation and airtight windows and doors were fitted in our homes. Unfortunately, most of us had to wait until we were much older before we were able to experience the great luxury of living in a warm home with hot and cold running water and an inside loo.

  Many of us had not yet reached the primary school age of 4½ when the 1951 Festival of Britain took place. At the time, it was Britain’s grandest and most important post-war event. London had already hosted the 1948 Summer Olympics (an event that became known as the Austerity Games due the economic climate of the time) and the Festival of Britain was intended to be an all-embracing affair: an event that the whole country could experience. It was intended to show how the country was recovering and rebuilding after the war and to give the people a feel-good boost while at the same time promoting the very best of British design, science, art and industry. There were Festival of Britain exhibition sites in all of the main cities around Britain and many of us went to visit one with our parents, albeit as bewildered infants. The most popular visitors’ sites were in London, with 8.5 million people visiting the South Bank site, which included The Royal Festival Hall and some temporary South Bank attractions, like the Dome of Discovery and the Skylon. These had all been specially constructed to act as the centrepiece of the festival. Also in London, the Festival Pleasure Gardens in Battersea proved to be very popular, attracting 8 million visitors. The festival started on 3 May 1951 and lasted for four months. There were organised street parties all over the country, with bunting and Union Jacks proudly displayed everywhere. Many of us were too young to fully take part in the festivities but we enjoyed waving our flags and we had our fair share of fruit-flavoured jelly.

  The Festival of Britain celebrations may have bedazzled us infants, but those four months of festivities were dull in comparison to the street parties we held to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on 2 June 1953. Because of the post-war baby boom there were now many more young children around and so there were a lot more street parties, and they were much bigger than those we had seen during the Festival of Britain. We were now old enough to take a full and active part in the celebrations. Some of us were fortunate enough to be among the 3 million people who lined the pavements of London to see the newly crowned Queen’s procession pass by, while others crammed themselves into the living rooms of their wealthier neighbours to watch it all on newly installed 12in television screens. It was the first time ever that a monarch’s coronation had been televised for all to see. Those who couldn’t get to see it on television had the option of either staying at home to listen to a commentary on the radio or going out to one of the various public-viewing venues that had been set up in places like cinemas, church halls and hospitals. Cheerful celebrations took place in every nook and cranny of the country and even the rain didn’t dampen the atmosphere. Once again, the nation showed its great patriotism with brightly coloured displays of red, white and blue flags, and bunting criss-crossing streets and market squares throughout the nation. Children wore lots of different homemade fancy dress outfits and many donned replica royal crowns made out of cardboard. There was also lots of specially printed coronation merchandise, including paper aprons, bibs, napkins, mugs, games and picture albums. For many of us, the Queen’s coronation was probably the most memorable event of our entire childhood.

  At the time of the Queen’s coronation, most of our parents were in their mid- to late 20s but to us kids they seemed much older. Many had signs of worry and hard work etched into their faces and few dressed at all fashionably, often wearing the same type of clothes our grandparents wore. Although it was by now less common for men to habitually wear hats and raincoats, it was still popular practice for them to wear a collar and tie at all times, even when pottering in the garden or mowing the lawn; 1950s men didn’t seem to do casual dress. In summer, women would wear brightly coloured dresses and sandals but the men would still don their usual shirts and ties. Many continued to wear their demob suits every day for years after the war had ended. The hairstyles and clothes of the day also made people look much older than their years. Few carried any excess bodyweight, with most people being on the thin side, and this only added to the older look.

  Starting primary school was the first real milestone in our young lives. The occasion broke many hearts and brought about major changes to our daily lives. We were forced to completely alter our daily routine and we had to learn to get through each day without mum’s help. It was a very stressful and confusing time for us; suddenly torn from our mother’s apron strings and from the safe comfort she provided at home during the day. It was the start of growing up and there were so many things we would miss. We were waving goodbye to the wonderful taste of Farley’s Rusk biscuits and the thick syrupy welfare orange juice we loved so much; these would soon be just a memory to us. Fortunately, as growing children, we would need to keep taking our daily spoonfuls of Virol malt extract, and most of us thought that was l-o-v-e-l-y. The bad news was that we had to continue with our daily dose of that awful-tasting cod liver oil. There were also some new unwelcome tasks that we would have to contend with at school, like the frequent inspections carried out by the school’s ‘nit nurse’, and the humiliation of regularly stripping to our underwear and standing in line to wait for our routine medical check-up, which was done by the school doctor. We had to quickly adjust to the discipline of school life because there were lots of rules to obey and these were strictly enforced. The teachers did adopt a gentle touch when dealing with the infants in their charge but there was no pampering or fussing over any of the sad-eyed new arrivals, not when the teacher had forty-plus infants to manage. Fidgeting and whispering were the teachers’ main enemies in the classroom and you soon learnt to sit still, be quiet and pay attention. There was no sign of any cuddly toys or any hint of an afternoon snooze. Punishment for misbehaving in class soon progressed from being made to stand in the corner to a slap across the back of the legs with the flat edge of a ruler.

  During the Monday class register call we would hand over our tightly protected 5-bob school dinner money to the teacher. The kids from poorer families stood out from the rest because they were never called up to pay their dinner money a
nd it was obvious to the other children that they were getting free school meals. We had a school assembly each morning when we were told of any important things that were happening, like special church services, new rules we had to obey or things we were doing wrong. We would also say prayers for the starving children in Africa and the people suffering in Soviet-occupied eastern European countries like Hungary and Poland. At mid-morning on every school day we would each get a small (1/3 pint) bottle of free school milk to drink. The majority of us liked the free school milk but not in the freezing cold of winter when we were made to drink it even when the bottles felt like blocks of ice.

  School uniforms were commonplace and again the rules were usually strict, even in infant school. The uniforms for primary school were designed to be unfussy and affordable, and mums found that by shopping around on the high street they could put most outfits together. Girls commonly wore a white blouse, grey gymslip or pinafore dress and a lightweight summer dress. White socks and the regulation navy blue knickers were always evident and girls never wore trousers to school. Boys would wear white or grey shirts and grey flannel trousers with long, grey woollen socks. Most schools had a school blazer, mainly for boys, and some schools made the children wear caps and bonnets as part of their uniform. It was normally mum’s job to sew the school badge onto the breast pocket of the blazer and on the front of the school cap or bonnet, but sometimes a metal badge would be pinned to the front of a girl’s bonnet instead. Everything to do with the frugal fifties was practical and sensible, so there was no room for fashionable footwear at school. We all wore heavy, black leather shoes or boots that were indestructible and designed to last a lifetime. When holes did start to appear in the leather soles, dad would apply a pair of Phillips’ stick-on soles in the hope that the shoes would last another ten years, during which time one of the younger siblings might also get some use out of them. We had nothing like the designer trainers that have become essential everyday wear since the 1970s. Our only shoes of comfort were the black canvas plimsolls we all had, but these were not designed to take much in the way of kids’ daily rough and tumble and so they were generally only used for school games or PE.