How poor were you?

When I worked at a primary school in 1999 we discovered a huge stock of Izal in an old storeroom. Our head teacher was all for using it up, but we persuaded her it was too impractical for children so it went into the staff toilets as an alternative to the usual tissue. Some people actually preferred it, but perhaps they had masochistic tendencies!

From 1979 to 1984 I worked as a representative for Sterling Industrial - the company that made Izal toilet rolls. It was actually a big seller, although everybody knew that it was only popular because it didn't get stolen from offices and factories! As an employee of the company, I was entitled to as much free product as I wanted, and while we did use many of the other products in the Izal range (some of the polishes were particularly good) I used to throw away the free sample toilet rolls!

My granny wouldn't use anything else! We found rolls and rolls of it when clearing her flat after she'd died. Soft stuff was for invalids and sissies!!

Izal and Bronco......not only scratchy but didn't do the job properly! Thank goodness for soft toilet paper and bottom wipes.

I'd heard Izal/Bronco was rationed in the army -5 sheets -2 up, 2 down and a polisher!! Yikes

Lovely to read this thread. I was born in 1944 but we always had a home with bathroom. I don't think
most of us who grew up in the 50s were particularly aware of the fact we were poor. I was aware that some friends didn't have new clothes like I did but was also aware that their Dads didnt work hard like mine. My mother was the 3rd of 4 girls so she always had hand me down clothes and because of this she was determined my brother and I always had new clothes and shoes. She made all our clothes and knitted our jumpers etc. Obviously they had to budget very carefully for everything but we were never aware of it. Things were never discussed in front of us unlike today when everything seems to be said in front of the children. We were simply but well fed but like has already been said only the living room was heated in the winter so we all sat round the fire together. I remember the ice on the inside of the windows but also how steamy the bathroom got when the hot water for the bath was run on Sunday evenings. We didnt have much but I think we were mostly happier than the youngsters today with their want want want all the time. It also gave us an incentive to strive for a better life and we were prepared to go without to achieve it.

My Dad didn't like Izal toilet paper so we always had Jeyes interleaved tissue which was great for tracing. When soft tissue came in in the 60s he still insisted on Jeyes so for years there were two types of loo paper in the toilet.

Did Jeyes do toilet paper on a roll as well? I seem to remember we had that too, not as hard and scratchy as Izal and it was whiter (but not tissue like today's toilet rolls).

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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!

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'.

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

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.

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.

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

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