Changes since the 1950s – aka I’m back after a long gap!

First of all, apologies to regular readers (if I still have any!) for the long silence. I’ve had a very busy summer plus it gets harder to think of topics I haven’t already covered. So I thought I’d return with a simple list of things which have changed since I was a child in the 1950s. Just a list, no waffle, no pictures. Readers of a similar vintage to me will recognise them. Memories from other countries will be different. I can only speak for rural Britain which is all I knew.

We’d never heard of or seen duvets. Beds had a bottom sheet, top sheet, a few blankets, a counterpane (a word you never hear now) and in winter an eiderdown.

We didn’t have mugs, just cups and saucers.

TV programmes started in the evening apart from an hour in the middle of the day when there were programmes for pre-school children. Not everyone had a TV.

Nobody had washing machines, tumble dryers, microwaves or freezers. Many people didn’t even have fridges, phones or cars.

Gay meant happy, jolly, carefree. Mobile only meant able to move, not a phone. Remote only meant far away, not a TV control.

Most men wore hats outside and took them off indoors. Women usually wore hat and gloves to go out shopping, visiting or to church. They had winter gloves and summer gloves.

When you were unwell, even if it was just a cold, you stayed in bed. The doctor would visit and your mum would buy you Lucozade.

Toilet paper was hard and crunchy like baking parchment or greaseproof paper. There were no tissues. Everyone carried cotton handkerchiefs (hankies) which were washed on a Monday (wash day) and ironed on Tuesday.

Dustbins were metal and everything went in. There was no recycling apart from glass jars and bottles, many of which were worth a few pence when returned.

There were no charity shops but communities held jumble sales.

Children’s birthday parties involved presents, party games, sandwiches, jelly, birthday cake – and guests were not given a party bag to take home.

I could go on, but that will do for now. Hope you’ve enjoyed it and recognised some things!

17 thoughts on “Changes since the 1950s – aka I’m back after a long gap!”

  2. Most family’s had one TV in the sitting room and the whole family watched the same programmes on only 3 TV stations . TVs were rented from companies like DER and Radio Rentals .

    Children shared bedrooms with their siblings and had bunk beds , single beds and a bedside table and wardrobe . We didn’t “ hang out “in our bedrooms as there was generally no heating in them !

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  3. You’ve covered so many childhood memories for me. I also remember playing outdoors until the light man came with a long rod which he used to turn on the gas lamps which were on every street corner. I don’t know if his job had a name.

    On Tue, 20 Aug 2024, 13:40 Childhood Memories of growing up in the 1950s

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    • I too remember that. Not from home as we had no street lights but when we went to stay with my grandmother who lived in a town. I also remember the rag and bone man passing her house on his horse and cart and calling out.

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      • Thank you for the Rag and Bone man memory. One often came to our village shouting out “Rag and Bones” which was hardly decipherable. My mother would take him some of our rags and he would give us a goldfish sometimes. Sadly the poor fish would usually not last long.

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  6. I was born in the early 1970s but a lot of your memories are relevant to my own childhood! We didn’t have central heating in our house and used to have just blankets on the bed, one being a very heavy, itchy wool blanket! In the mornings, during winter, we would race downstairs to get to the coal fire my Mom had made. I used to enjoy poking it with the poker to make sparks. We had a coal bunker in the garden. There were no showers and we only had a bath once a week, on a Sunday! When I was really little, we had a bath in the kitchen sink (something I did with my own kids!) My Mom had a twin tub for the washing and it was always hung outside to dry (unless raining of course!) I’ve also found that a lot of people tended to buy a house and stay there – not doing any extensions or moving to bigger houses for the sake of it! There were no credit cards (or not many people had them!) so people didn’t tend to have any debt, apart from their mortgages. They would save up for the things they wanted. We also had Lucozade when ill! The bin men just used to fling the bin over their shoulder (no wheels then!) We had 2 TV’s, no remotes, and wire aerials attached to the top that we had to keep messing with to get rid of “ghosts” on the picture (think of “Only Fools and Horses” Grandad haha! The phone was a dial (why they made the emergency number 999 I’ll never understand!) and we regularly had crossed lines where we could hear random strangers conversations. I could go on and on haha! Please keep up the blog, I love it x

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  7. This is a lovely blog that does 2 things to me (I was born in 1962):

    1. Reminds me of many, many aspects of my childhood.
    2. Makes me not that unhappy that that period in my life has passed.

    Could you sort out a lot of the images on your pages as they have been replaced by generic “picture is NOT” icons?

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