Street Life: Where did it all go….?

Imagine stepping into your house to find it had gone back seventy years in time.

If you had a telephone, it would be bakelite, and probably stood on the hall table for maximum impact on the neighbours. The primitive instrument didn’t have a single push button, let alone a touch screen. I wonder how many of today’s youngsters would know how to go about using it to ring Failsworth 1956?

In the kitchen, you would probably find packets of clear starch, washing soda, dolly blue and laundry soap on the oilcloth-lined shelves.

Somewhere there would be a wash boiler or zinc tub with posser, rubbing board, flat irons and a ‘maiden’ (wooden clothes airer).

If the house lacked a larder, there might be a wooden cabinet with perforated zinc doors. This meat safe was designed to allow air but not flies to get to foods now kept refrigerated.

Fireplaces were the focal point of the living room. The hearth would have a stand with fire irons (poker, shovel, fire tongs and small round brush), known as a ‘companion set’. The mantelpiece likely had at least one black and white family portrait, sometimes hand-tinted to pass as a colour photograph.

Hi-tech at the time, the radiogram replaced the piano as the status symbol in ‘the best room’. With parlours kept exclusively for visitors, a fire screen (the more ornate, the better) concealed the bare, seldom used grate. Lacking a parlour, the one my parents received as a wedding present stood before the desultory iron grate in their bedroom.

The most noticeable bedroom disappearances are, chamber pots (the Po), flock mattresses, and counterpanes. Wartime shortages meant bedding was often patched and dingy from much laundering. Young housewives disguised the shabbiness of their beds with fashionable sateen or lacy counterpanes like the ones they saw at the cinema.

My grandparents slept on their lumpy flock (kapok) mattress until the 1960s.

As a young child, I had my afternoon sleep on that bed. But I was oblivious to the lumps while falling asleep to the strains of ‘My old man said follow the van’, which was one of nana’s extensive repertoire of music hall songs.

In the days when Friday night was Amami night, bathrooms for those lucky enough to have one, were often cramped and cold.

My mum’s horror of nits meant my long hair was washed with either Derbac or green soft soap in the kitchen’s pot sink. Something must have worked, as I never had an infestation of those nasty crawlies.

Between the weekly hair wash, pin curls (a strand of hair secured by two crossed kirby grips) would do for work. But come weekend, styling was achieved with paraphernalia the Spanish Inquisition might recognise.

Water lily shampoo pads were the latest thing. After washing, setting lotion was applied, and depending on the style required, one or more items of ironmongery were employed. A sort of curved bulldog clip with fierce teeth was used for waving, while curls were created by winding hair onto metal curling pins.

Until the boyfriend’s knock sounded at the front door, the finished style was protected by a hair net. These nets could vary from ‘invisible’, to the full ‘Ena Sharples’.

The lad’s hair would likely be Brylcreemed, and if he was a ‘sharp dresser’, might be sporting drainpipe trousers and crepe soled, ‘beetle crusher’ shoes.

The disappearance of some items is to be regretted, but I feel seamed stockings won’t be missed by anyone forced to wear them. They were becoming old fashioned when, as a young teenager, my dad came home with a pair he probably bought cheaply from someone in the pub or at work. Those seams never stayed straight, and I would honestly rather have gone out with my legs covered in gravy browning, complete with eyebrow pencil seams, which was the wartime answer to a shortage of stockings.

Products containing the lethal hexachlorophene once added to Signal toothpaste and baby toiletries, has rightly been consigned to the dustbin of history. However, rather than vanishing altogether, other less than healthful products simply changed their name. These days, no cigarette manufacturer would dare tempt smokers with benign pastoral names like Woodbine, Sweet Afton or Passing Cloud.

But, some things really did vanish. Who now remembers Rinso (detergent), pluck (offal for animals) or Benger’s food (wheat flour and extract of pancreatic enzymes which pre-digested warm milk for invalids).

Related Stories

Street life: All the Fun of the Fair

For centuries, fairs were welcomed as a break from the drudgery and monotony of everyday life. In the fifties, touring fairs were pretty small scale. Road locomotives were still being used to shift heavy equipment as well as providing electricity for lights and that unique fairground sound.

A whisper that the Showman’s wagons had been spotted would send a ripple of anticipation running through any district.

By hook or by crook, every kid was determined to visit the fair. To raise money, some ran errands and others cajoled adults into parting with bottles which had a few coppers back when returned to the shop.

Back then, waste ground, parks or playing fields were where fairs set up. In Moston, one of the regular fair sites was some land on Lily Lane, which I think belonged to the brick works.  It was near my school and I recall some of the small hand-operated roundabouts opening in the afternoon. I presume they made a few bob from the mothers of young children being collected from school.

The biggest of the evening rides were the waltzer and the dodgems. One year I seem to recall a (relatively) Big Wheel. I was (and still am) afraid of heights, so that one wasn’t for me. My favourite was the ride introduced in 1891 which was originally called the ‘English gallopers’.

In the 1920s, a BBC advisory committee on the standardisation of English suggested the name ‘gyratory circus’ for what is commonly called a roundabout. I’m certain it would have taken more than the BBC to persuade my grandad to adopt that mouthful for what he called ‘dobbiwakes’. And thanks to him, the ‘gallopers’ are still known as ‘dobby horses’ in our family.

Half of most fairgrounds were given over to booths and stalls offering prizes. Dads and older lads gravitated towards the ones where they could demonstrate their prowess with darts thrown at playing cards, rifle shooting or chucking miniature mopheads at a pile of tin cans.

Coconut shies were popular with everyone, but the target nuts appeared to be cemented in place. As the prize was generally an ancient, dried-out coconut, those long odds against winning were sometimes a blessing.

We kids preferred games of pure chance such as roll the penny, hoop-la or getting a ping pong ball to drop into the narrow neck of a round fish bowl.

The dolls offered as prizes seemed to be peculiar to fairgrounds. For years I longed for a bride doll. When my dad unexpectedly turned my dream into reality, I changed my mind and opted for one dressed in maroon crinoline and bonnet. To this day, I can’t explain my contrariness.

Before decimalisation made them redundant, most of the country’s copper coins must have passed through the innards of a fairground slot machine numerous times. Those old machines acted like a magnet for our precious spending money, and all we got was a few seconds watching a little silver ball whizzing around before it vanished again.

New Moston was a little unusual in having a golf course side by side with a railway line and an abandoned coal pit. The golf club held an annual open day which included a small fair with swing boats, chairaplanes and roundabouts, plus a variety of booths eager to part us from our money.

Some of the more novel stalls were run by the club members themselves. One I recall was a row of enamel buckets lying on their sides with the rims propped up at a slight angle. Standing a considerable distance away, you threw one of your three golf balls at the buckets. The idea was to make it stay inside without bouncing straight out again. I think the prize was sweets, which I could have bought at the corner shop for the threepenny bit I risked for the 3 goes with the golf balls.

Our back windows overlooked Nuthurst Park. The fair came every year, and watching it being set up was an entertainment in itself. Sadly, once the activity ceased, daylight made the silent rides and booths appear disappointingly tawdry.

But when darkness fell, the scene was completely transformed. Somehow, a circle of coloured light bulbs and the insistent throbbing of that unique music, managed to create the illusion that the best place in the world to be was amongst that milling crowd.

Related Stories

Street Life: Are We Nearly There Yet?

A day trip was the nearest thing to a holiday many kids could look forward to in the fifties.

Since 1836, when John Jennison opened his Pleasure Gardens, Mancunians have flocked to Belle Vue. Our journey there was not as simple as today’s car ride. We had a fair walk, followed by two buses. Transferring from one vehicle to another, we must have looked like refugees about to cross the Gobi desert.

Dad hefted the pushchair. Weighing a couple of stone, its only concession to transportability was a fold-down handle. Mum carried her handbag, the baby, plus all the changing paraphernalia, including wet nappy bags (no disposables then). My burden could be macs and/or umbrellas, and a bag with stuff like damp cloths and sticking plasters.

Our first port of call was generally the zoo. The animals were interesting, though their welfare left a lot to be desired. I’m still haunted by the memory of the famous polar bear as he paced around that stark enclosure.

My parents paid up for rides and ice creams. But Mum wasn’t going to stand in a long queue for over-priced food and drink when a few butties and a (glass) bottle of ‘mineral’ would hardly be noticed amongst our survival gear.

The Belle Vue memory I do cherish is gliding at treetop level on the Scenic Railway. The cost – and long queues – were drawbacks for rides like the Caterpillar. Those ‘free’ fake ruins we loved to play on must have been a godsend for parents.

For something farther away than Belle Vue, an enterprising neighbour might organise a coach trip to the seaside. The whole street would set off for the day, and if it was Blackpool, it might even include the illuminations.

Local newsagents acted as booking offices and designated collecting points for day excursions. Outside the paper shop, kids would compete to be the first to spot the ‘chara’ approaching at its maximum permitted speed of 30mph!

Special clothing for leisure activities didn’t exist then. The small crowd of women would be in ordinary dresses, light coats, nylon stockings and comfortable footwear as they waited for the coach. And if not actually in their Sunday best, kids would be respectably dressed. I would have my hair in two plaits with ribbons and a couple (or more) hair slides. My outfit would be a candy striped frock or similar, white socks, and leather or newly whitened canvas sandals.

Adults and children held diametrically opposed theories for what constituted the perfect day trip. All kids wanted was to get cracking with buckets and spades, while adults deluded themselves that the farther the destination, the more exciting the outing (a notion that would soon be dispelled).

About 10 minutes into any journey by train or coach, there would be a plaintive chorus of “are we nearly there?” or “I’m starving, can we eat our butties yet?”

My personal exception to the distance versus enjoyment ratio was New Brighton, where half the pleasure lay in the train and ferry to get there.

Deckchair hire was an expense, so to keep costs down, a decision had to be made about the fewest number they could manage with. Then someone was nominated to fetch the tea tray. A deposit of 10 shillings secured a pot of tea, milk, sugar and the required amount of thick white cups and saucers to be taken onto the beach. By the time the tray arrived, we kids would have discovered what delights the greaseproof paper packets held. Whatever the filling, sandwiches were invariably warm, soggy and sandy.

Where underclothing was concerned, mum made no concession to season or location. Modesty demanded my dress doubled as a changing tent. Vest, underskirt and navy knickers had to be removed under it, before wriggling into that elasticated pea-green swim suit.

Southport was our favourite seaside destination, so unless there was a sudden downpour, those ghastly swimming costumes never got wet. We loved the Peter Pan (later Happydays) playground in Southport. Grandad could usually be pestered into taking us there before he settled down to read the newspaper, with his trouser legs rolled up and a knotted hankie on his head.

Disposable plastic and electronic games devices were unknown. Back then, we set out with little more than a few sandwiches in greaseproof paper and a couple of comics for the kids, and lived to tell the tale.

Related Stories