How poor were you?

I remember showing my children an aerial photograph of the street that I lived in, and could point out our house, and knew the names of the families who lived in all the other houses and most of the streets around! (What are the chances of that happening now?). They were fascinated and appalled at the same time. DD said "where was your garden?” I said "what garden?" The whole area is a garden now, with a community farm. There is a tree where my house used to be.

My family weren't poor and we were well dressed with clothes my mother made and ate well. We always had a bathroom and my father bought a house when I was 7. However, we still had ice on the windows, a fire in the lounge the only heating, no mod cons such as fridge or washing machine. Most people had very little in the 1950s compared with our children's generation.

Reading this makes me realise that I'm glad we were poor in a hot climate!

We three children were raised by my single parent mother in the 1950s on the east coast of South Africa (Durban). There wasn't a great deal of money (my mother worked as a receptionist) but always plentiful food, we benefited from my grandfather's big vegetable garden and his chickens reared for the pot. On "payday" we had treats - I remember being sent to the butcher with an order for rump steak.

My mother sewed all our clothes including school uniforms - and she also made fancy "hostess aprons" and sold them to colleagues at work or to neighbours to make extra cash. I remember her being so proud of "my own business".

We were "latch-key" kids a lot of the time, but that meant that I could be left with a list for food and groceries, and cash at age 10 and buy according to a budget.

When we were young children, my grandparents helped look after us after school, had to go to their house. We would play outside until my mother finished work, and would wait at the gate for her with my granddad for an evening walk around the neighbourhood, once she had kicked off her high heel shoes.

I remember there being no money for school outings, or a new blazer when I got "school colours" (I got a second hand one from the school charity office), or holidays. But looking back now, I would say, we were poor, yet rich

That sounds lovely Grannyknot

I thought we were poor, but reading some of the above posts, I think we were just 'hard up'; we always had plenty of food, some home-grown, all home-made, enough clothes (some home-made), shoes and a coal fire. My room was supposed to be warm because the chimney breast went up through it - but there was still ice on the inside of the windows in winter! However, we had blankets and cosy eiderdowns to keep us warm.
My mother was what would have been termed 'a good manager' and everything was always spick and span.

It wasn't until I went to senior school and mixed with girls who lived in big houses, had cars and telephones that I realised that we weren't that well off because everyone I knew until then lived in semis or terraced houses and we never had a car or a telephone.
We always had a holiday of some kind, often in a caravan or in a boarding house.

We always had 'proper' toilet paper too - Bronco or Izal.

I don't know how she managed it, but my mother made sure we were fed, that we had something for Christmas, Easter eggs, Holy Communion and Confirmation clothes and school uniforms when we passed the 11+. There were 7 siblings, one died aged 7 months. My parents were Irish immigrants and we lived in inner city Birmingham. My father was a violent, abusive, womanising alcoholic who worked when he felt like it. He would regularly beat my mother. We never had holidays, days out or anything like that. We were neglected as my mother had to spend all her efforts trying to feed us and fending off the violence. I can remember telling my mother there were holes in my shoes and she cut out shapes from Cornflake boxes to fit into my shoes. We were the kids the other children were told not to play with. I constantly had nits in my hair and sometimes my head would be crawling with live creatures. Not many people around us were well off but most had the odd holiday or a trip out. We never did. I always wanted to be the little girl with the plaits and ribbons.

KatyK, that is so sad.

We were not poor but definitely hard up. My father's parents had been quite well off but my grandfather invested badly and I think my father was shocked to find he had to earn a living rather than walk into a family business. Our house was a 3 bedroomed terrace cottage bought by my granny for mum and dad when they first married. It needed 'work' when it was bought and when they sold it! We had no bathroom so made the trek to Nan's for a bath and had our hair washed on a Saturday night over the kitchen sink.

We always had good, nourishing, food - it was Mum's priority. We had a washing machine but no fridge, the house was freezing unless you were burning your legs next to the fire. Water was heated by a gas geyser over the kitchen sink.

We moved to a much better built semi in 1963 and got a fridge but still no central heating which we first got in 1969.

We were not much different from everyone else we knew. DH grew up in a large detached house with a huge garden, a bathroom AND a downstairs loo and was quite taken aback by how small my first home was.

I am reminded of the Pythons' sketch: Four Yorkshiremen.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

We always had plenty of food to eat and my dad grew all our vegetables in the back of our nanna's huge back garden,we where lucky as my uncle owned the local butchers and my nanna ran the local fish mongers,
We lived in a 3 bed terraced which dad bought when he came out of the Navy after the war just before he met my mum,he paid just under £500.00 for it he was the only one out of his brothers and sisters to ever own property but he worked very hard on the docks and mum worked in the local laundry,grandpa looked after us when nanna ran the shop he walked us to meet mum every night after she finished work.Mum used to sew all our dresses herself and we all had the same pattern and colour which meant my youngest sister (there where 4 of us & my twin brother)always had the same dress for four years as we all grew out of them at different times,we also had to wear big bows that matched the dresses to tie up our ringlets so we did have a happy well fed childhood compared to others.

And we are supposed to be the 'privileged generation'!

I remember the ice on the inside of the windows. It made lovely ferny patterns. Getting dressed in the morning was a very quick process! No wonder we had to wear liberty bodices over the vest and under the clothes. There was still rationing when I was a young child so sweets were still hard to come by.

The first place DH and I rented after getting married had a damp problem. In the winter, the blankets on the bed were covered in a film of moisture first thing in the morning. I had horrendous aches in my joints. We didn't have central heating until we moved house with 3 young children in 1980. What luxury!

Looking back we were poor but i didn't realise it i guess. We always had plenty to eat , mum was a fantastic cook and as dad worked on a farm we use to go shooting for rabbits and pigeons with the farmers permission of course. We had chickens for eggs and meat, a goat for milk and we grew lots of potatoes and other veggies. We had logs to burn in the big farmhouse kitchen we had but the rest of the house was freezing with ice on the inside of windows. We never went on holiday or had days out. We sometimes got school uniform for Christmas presents with a couple of other bits, selection boxes and some smellies. It was only when i went to senior school that i realised how poor we were when i mixed with lots of other children who use to go aboard for holidays and went swimming and to the cinema etc at the weekends. Our weekends were spent helping in the garden and around the house and farm. I think my early life has made me a frugal person now as i know you can survive with very little as long as you have food, family, friends and at least one warm room!!

I wasn't looking for sympathy kitty but that's very kind of you. Somehow I survived it

Not as bad as some on here, but until I was well into my teens there was never any spare money. We had no TV until the early 60s, when I was 11.
When I very first met my dh, one of things we had in common (apart from both being one of four with pretty broke parents) was that the only times we ever had orange squash or chocolate biscuits was at our birthday parties, or at other people's houses!
It was a good start, and here we still are, over 40 years later...

I'm just watching Slum Britain 50:Years On. The original pictures are from 1968. It is hard to believe.

I would consider poor to mean not having food on the table, I have never been in that situation. Not able to afford what I would have liked, but as ones income rises so does ones expectations so nothing changes.

I started life in 1949 in a tiny rented terrace with outside toilet. Just me and my mum as my father had died 5months before my birth. I'm told that my mum couldn't afford the rent and we went to live with my maternal grandmother. When I was just 3 my mum died of TB and my grandmother became my legal guardian. I don't remember her getting benefits other than a widows pension and guardians allowance. I remember coats on beds, oven shelves wrapped in old jumpers put in bed. Grandma carrying a shovel of burning fire upstairs to warm the room before bedtime.
No one on the street had any more than any one else. We had fun.
The garden furniture was a milk crate with a cushion on ? I enjoyed my childhood but I wish things had been different.
I've enjoyed the memories whilst writing this, but it's made me sad (in a nice way).

Interesting how frequently grandparents helped out

Much the same for me, as for many on here, a poor upbringing with only one parent.
However my Mother was very loving and did her best for us, and there were worse households (dirty ones, for example.)We always had enough to eat (just) and played out in all weathers and walked everywhere.If we ever had pennies for bus fare we walked and spent it on sweeties. Certainly had my share of the ruler at school, usually for being late ( wandering through fields on the way to school and not knowing what time it was.)

Iwas brought up in a council house my father died when I was 4yrs my mum worked
I was the youngest of 6 .we were poor but loved and happy . We played out with kids in neighbourhood some had more than us but it didn't matter . We kept warm because we had to share beds and we put coats on top of blankets and used newspaper for toilet roll . I remember eating lots of stew which I didn't particularly like . We only got sweets when we took bottles back to shop for our neighbours . We walked everywhere
I remember being happy so no complaints from me .

We had stew quite a lot but my mother called it 'casserole' because she cooked it in the oven in a Pyrex dish and made a rice pudding at the same time.

I've noted before that Katyk and I must have had very similar childhoods and indeed I could have written some identical sentences:

My father was also a violent, abusive, womanising drunkard who worked when he felt like it and regularly beat my mother, but he was English. When I was 5 and my siblings were 7, 6, and 3 my mother left us with my father to live with a man she'd met that day; he turned out to be a violent, drunken Irishman and two years later mum returned with him in tow - he stayed around to father 3 more children and then he left and mum met a Scottish man and had one more baby (8 in all)! (True story, honestly.)
We never had holidays, occasionally had days out with my grandparents - but we were beyond poor. Someone said there were no benefits in those days, but there was means tested National Assistance for the very poor and I remember going to the assessment with my mother and being asked to take off my shoes so the holes in them could be inspected. We were so badly neglected during my mother's 2 year absence that on her return we had malnutrition, impetigo, lice and scabies. We had to go to the local clinic to be de-loused and have a special bath (at the clinic) to kill the scabies, then we were painted with something for the scabies and something else that was purple for the impetigo.

I used to devour books and imagine myself living the lives I read about. Enid Blyton taught me about having adventures and the importance of good manners and other middle class writers taught me what life (in my view then) was supposed to be like for children. It didn't include hiding behind the sofa from the rent man or running to the phone box in my underwear to call the police when mum was being battered again. It didn't mean tearing up bits of lino to stick in the electric meter when mum had gone out for the evening and left us in the dark with no money to feed the meter.

For the sake of fairness I should say that mum was left chronically short of money because her menfolk drank it all and she tried to do her best with what little she had.

It was a horrible childhood in many more ways than I've written about here, but story books saved me. I really believe that. From reading books I knew there was something better than the life I had and I aspired to that better life; the life I'm living now is the life I dreamed of as a child. And more importantly, my children have been given the life I dreamed of. They didn't have lots of material things, but they never went without necessities; their parents were never in debt; they've never seen a parent drunk or fighting and they've made lots of good memories.

These stories are so fascinating. It seems like another world but I empathise with many other contributors. In some ways I was lucky because my father worked as a signalman for British Railways. We lived in two different railway houses, the first having oil lamps, a fire to cook on, a shared outside tap and also a shared outside chemical toilet. The second seemed luxurious with a cold tap and sink indoors, a cooking range on the fire but still an outside chemical toilet. Both houses had walls running with damp.

For the fire my mother used to gather coal which had fallen from the trains, usually at night. The story goes that one night when heavily pregnant she brought a lump of coal home that she could not lift in daylight it was so huge!

We too had heavy coats on the bed which were issued by the NUR (National Union of Railwaymen). Dad never wore them but I was fascinated by the brass buttons.

I think other people thought we were well off as we went on holiday to my paternal grandparents on the train, about 40 miles away. They lived in (to us) a luxurious council house. We also visited my mother's sisters who lived in Ireland. All the sisters had owned the family home since the death of their parents when they were very young. It had the bonus of being near the seaside!

These 'holidays' were possible as my father had a small number of 'free' tickets each year which included sailing on the Irish ferry.

I remember always being hungry. We never had extras like biscuits or squash but occasionally had a banana for tea! Oh and the ice patterns on the windows. They were beautiful. From about the age of 9 years it was my job to light the fire in the morning. I so remember the cold!!

grannyactivist I too was a voracious reader and I longed for the opportunity to go to boarding school or be an orphan as they always seemed to have such adventures!

I wonder what our children and grandchildren will look back on in years to come.

A Tin Bath by the fire,with a airing rail draped with Towels for privacy , outside loo and outside water pump ,exchange and mart being cut into squares and threaded on string for loo paper , no phone , no heating beyond a coal fire,Toast with a proper toasting fork (ooh it was lush) connie Onnie sandwiches and shuggy butties, Lino on the bedroom floors , frost inside the windows , home made clothes , taking washing to my grans as she had a copper with a fire underneath ,and a proper dolly tub, washboard and mangle.
Ooh and cinder tea when we were ill , yuk .

wobbly I take your point about poor meaning not having food. We always had food, I don't remember ever being hungry. But what made me realise we were poor, was when I went to other children's homes. I grew up mostly in a one-bedroomed flat with the lounge being divided up with a masonite frame (my grandad built it) to make an extra bedroom for my mother, sister and I to share, my brother being in the "proper bedroom". So for me being poor was about accommodation.

Katy and grannyactivist your tales remind me of Angela's Ashes ... you describe poverty of the spirit added to poverty of material things.

As for others, reading played a huge role in my life in terms of escapism.

My mother swore off men after my father left, but wasn't bitter, just a bit broken-hearted. She was a divorcee at 27 and that was her for the rest of her life.

We had a miserable childhood......when i talk to my chidren they say oh mam tell me aout when you were poor! I am the youngest of 11.....As I am Irish my father spent most of his money in the pub fell in the door abused my mother and often put us out to walk the streets in the cold.my mother was a lady she showed us very little love ,,,she was so beaten down. We lived in a 3 bed council house fire in sitting room ,freezing bedrooms...Always had fuel and heat as she worked in evenings..She died at 53 I was 16 then.as my siblings all were older this did make things easier in the60s as they got jobs. One by one they left and I was alone with my father and his drinking .....I was terrified of him . I met my lovely husband at 17....My father hated him because he knew he would take me away ,.His family became mine...At 58 our life good ....