How poor were you?

I don't know why that is, Alie. Try Googling victorian women periods and maybe you will get into them from the list that comes up. All very interesting, and there were many more that i didn't follow.

Except the last.

Elegran I can't get into any of those links?

I remember being at my grandparents' and very embarrassed to tell my gran I had a problem - she gave me an old sheet and some safety pins......
As soon as I got to uni (1958) I sent for a Tampax sample and got a whole box - never looked back!

Interesting subject - not to be discussed in public then, of course.

I found a few enlightening tidbits
www.mum.org/whatwore.htm
susannaives.com/wordpress/2015/09/tidbits-on-mid-victorian-era-menstrual-hygiene/
georgianlondon.com/post/49464043356/on-flowers-a-short-but-frank-post-on-how-18th
www.gregjenner.com/history-periods/
little-details.livejournal.com/2445819.html

and more . . . .

The STs were horrible anyway in the 1950s and early 60s with the belts and hooks. They had to be burnt, luckily DF often had a bonfire going in the garden.

I thought I might have prompted some unsympathetic comments for introducing the topic of STs ( as they used to be asked for in a 1950's pharmacy). Instead a lovely bunch of symbolic flowers. I should like to know even more about how women managed their periods in the past. What about those crotchless knickers the Victorians wore? Those long thick layers of skirts.....

Born at the end of the war, I can relate to most of the above. One of my earlier memories is of my Dad buying a last so he could mend our shoes. He applied rubber soles and heels and sometimes (to our delight) he put blakies (I wonder if you can still buy those?) in our heels. We liked that because then we could tap dance. Each Summer Dad would cut the toes out of our last year's sandals with a Stanley knife and we wore those out of school, conserving the new ones for school and 'best'. Mum made all our clothes and Grandma knitted us jumpers and cardigans. We played out all the time with our friends and had a lot of freedom. I feel sorry for my DGC who are taken everywhere by car and go on 'play dates'. I was lucky enough to have very loving parents and I still miss them both.

One of the expressions for a period was being "in the rags"

Just googled about sanitary protection. It was available in the 20s but too expensive for most women.

Izal - Granny insisted on us keeping a roll in the loo for her long after the rest of us were using the soft stuff in the 1960s. Schools, on the other hand, kept to Izal for many more years.

Wobbly - I loved making paper chains and other decorations in the '40s and '50s. At infant school I remember lengths of white cotton threaded alternately with pieces of cotton wool and 'silver bells' made from washed foil milk bottle tops! There were a few precious slightly faded prewar decorations, big paper bells and circles, at home, but nothing to buy that I remember.
We put the same little plaster Santa in a Chimney and tiny green brushlike Christmas tree on the icing of the home made Christmas cake each year.

My mum now aged 98 also describes that sort of sanitary protection. I wonder whether there was any other sort available in the 20s?

Jaxie ? My mother described similar protection but in the 1920s and I thought how awful it must have been for her. I had no idea that anyone of my own generation had to cope with similar 'towels'.

This will sound very Third World: sanitary towels - my disabled single parent mother couldn't afford them. She stitched pieces of old towels into squares and I had to wear one all day at school folded into my knickers. Ugh. Then, at home they were boiled in a bucket on the stove. That was in the late 1950's. Modern kids don't they're born!

My parents lived with my paternal grandparents when they first married.18 months later with me on the way they bought a tiny terraced house with a mortgage. It had the luxury of running hot water courtesy of an Ascot heater, so Mum had to have me at home. The maternity hospital was reserved for people with possible complications and people with poor living accomodation. It was 1952. We had an outside loo, a coal fire in the dining room and a gas fire in the front room. There was no heating upstairs and I was born on a snowy January day.
I think we were as comfortably off as any of our neighbours, but both my parents had come from 3 bed semis with proper bathrooms and gardens, so Mum was never happy with the house. We used to go to her parents once a week for a proper bath, watch Dixon of Dock Green, then go home on the bus.

I was born in 1944 we lived in a small terrace house in Birmingham, my Dad died when I was 6
so that left Mom, Grandma and me, we were poor, a coal fire in a black leaded grate, a tin bath
hanging in the outside coal house, water heated in a boiler, an old wringer with wooden rollers
washing done in the stone sink, no carpets just lino and mats, I was a happy child loved and
cherished, my most exciting memory was when we took my Grandma out in her old wheelchair.

My earliest memories were 1948 onward, I was born in 1944.

Yes wobbly I remember making our own decorations. We sat for hours making paper chains. I can still taste the glue..yuk. My dad used to get up extra early to light the fire on Christmas morning. That was part of our Christmas treat a warm living room first thing in the morning. Perhaps we were the lucky generation. Not having it as as hard as our parents, not as soft and commercialised as our own children.

Watching the TV program about a family at Christmas in the 50's, they were buying decorations etc. We had to make our own by cutting crepe paper into twisted strips and a few paper chains. But I don't ever remember thinking that we were poor, yes by today's standards, we appeared to be, but not by the standards of the day as we never went hungry. Being cold was normal, as most homes only had the one fire in the main room, no double glazing and draughty windows etc.

Born at the end of the war we went thro most of the poverty that was usual at that time. Only one dress which was washed n mended every other day. Home made clothes.
My poor husband had it worse than me as he came from a big family.
Used to sleep with 3 brothers in one bed. One of them used to wet the bed. Used to sleep in the same shirt he went to school in often smelling of wee. Their shoes were black cotton gym shoes and every morning a new piece of cardboard was cut to cover the hole in the bottom. Unbelievabley tough days.
But we came thro and live very comfortable now.

Omg yes! I had forgotten about Izal toilet paper! Totally useless. Newsprint was more absorbent. Everything just -ahem- slid off ? Particularly useless during periods (apologies to the grandads on here for too much information).

I don’t remember going without food, but my mother did, so we could eat. There were five of us. Father was away a lot and I found out later why. We were always warm and I remember when I was in bed with rheumatic fever having a fire in the bedroom which was well stoked up. Stew and dumplings, and Yorkshire puddings were often served up and plenty of vegetables, including tomatoes, peas, beans, carrots and potatoes, grown in our own garden. Mum did all her own baking. I also remember she made toffee apples for all the kids in the street. Parents rented a house but it was in a nice area. We were either at school, after having toast for breakfast, or we were out playing in the street. I remember being very happy. Always had ribbons in my hair, and I remember having white socks and sandals to wear with my sister’s hand me down dresses and cardigans. I always got dirty playing marbles or climbing trees or something, but we got bathed every night. I remember the boys and girls being separated at school, and I remember some people getting the cane. It wasn’t until later that I found our why Dad wasn’t there much, he was away defusing bombs being in the RAF Bomb Disposal team. It must have been very hard for Mum.

My children think the conditions of my childhood were primitive but I had loving parents, enough food and a roof over my head. Water came from a pump outside the backdoor so we had no running water, no bathroom and no flushing toilet. We had electricity but only downstairs and heat, only downstairs, provided by a log fire and paraffin heater in the kitchen.

The bonus for a boy was that it was in the country where fields, farms and woods were my playground. I hated the move to a suburb when I was 9 but it changed my life. An unseen consequence of my Mum's desire for a bathroom and 'modern', damp-free house was that I was uprooted from a country school with a long-standing nil Grammar School entry record to a suburban school where about 40% of children passed the 11 Plus.

Sadly, Mum died when she was 48 and I was just 13 so she didn't have the time she deserved in her new house.

Things were never discussed in front of us unlike today when everything seems to be said in front of the children.
Daisyboots I remember the aunties sitting around, drinking tea chatting then there would be a sudden silence if one of us went into the room and, if we asked questions 'We don't talk about that (or them!)'.
It consequently made tracing family history quite difficult . There must have been quite a few secrets.