General Chat

Father died in the war.....was put in the workhouse with mother brouhjt out by fathers brother and brought up with his family for the next four years mother got a home....one room in a closed public house with one cooker on the landing for all residents Returned to mother...scraped the ice off the bedroom windows in winter Used several coats on top of the blanket to keep warm in bed not an ancester ... it was myself Poor???? not on your life....there was no-one on the estate who had anymore than we did................ ..

I agree with those of you that mention that everyone’s expectations have been driven upwards. Whilst agreeing with that, though, I am not sure that people are any happier for being materially better off, but that has probably been true in the past as well. I am certainly shocked by what people seem to ask for as wedding presents. My son and his wife have basically started married life with almost everything brand new, a far cry from how his father and I started out. I was interested to see what you put about the First World War, Nell. It is a period of social history I know very little about, perhaps it is time that I found out more. Thank you everyone for adding so many interesting snippets from your own experiences.

Another interesting topic! GIven that poverty is the inability to provide material needs it's not suprising that (a) peoples perceptions have changed and (b) it's all relative anyway. Nowadays our standard living is very much higher than it used to be. Human nature being what it is, it's very easy for the comfortably off to maintain that there's no 'real' poverty for anyone who has more than one set of clothes and shoes on their feet, indoor toilets, running water or whatever, but it's not really fair to compare living today with living in the past. Everyone's expectations have been driven upwards. In society, poverty is relative. If a person cannot provide themselves with the average for that society, then they are poor, it's as simple as that. Take a very rich society for example where EVERYONE has a private jet, gold plated bathroom fittings designer clothing, you name it -pie in the sky I know, but just a hypothetical example. Anyone in that society who cannot have those things is reasonably deemed poor, even though other societies may have a lesser standard of living. For them, not having a bicycle may be a sign of poverty if that's the norm for them. Anyone living in Europe has riches beyond measure to someone on another continent affected by many years of famine. Older generations will always think that the young 'never had it so good' as long as we live in a growing economy and humans keep inventing things to have.

People's expectations seem to have changed dramatically, when we got married we were so lucky that my OH grandfather loaned us enough money to buy a small bungalow and Carpets!! We did not have central heating or a washing machine, we had a second handTV and gradually bought things as and when we could. We didn't expect to have a complete home furnished with everything. A few years ago, we were invited to a wedding and asked for the wedding present list OMG!! WE could hardly afford any presents-washing machines the lot was on the list. It seems that nowadays many newly weds want or expect to start married life fully equipped, no saving, waiting. I may be generalising madly here but I don't think the get it now pay no interest for a year helps. This alone can lead to later hardship when the payments have to start but I digress. Many of my son's friends 17 (I am an older mum) seem to expect a car as soon as they can drive. I really don't think that they don't understand 'can't afford' things. Things that were considered as luxuries now seem to be the expected norm. I do not think that many people understand poverty at all. (yes! I had a tin bath in front of the fire in my very young days!) Sorry, think I have rambled! Chris

It isn't talked about, but according to oral testimony in the book 'All Quiet on The Home Front' many people actually starved to death in the first WW in this country. My mum is the one who couldn't go to school because she had no boots to wear (not shoes, they wore out too quickly and no use in bad weather)! She won a scholarship to the local grammar school. The scholarship paid for her school uniform, and she had no other decent clothes, so she never went to parties as she had nothing suitable to wear. At one point she and her sister shared one coat between them. She doesn't talk about this in a 'woe is me' way at all, she is just matter of fact - that's how it was. She is also very grateful that she lives in comfort now - central heating, wall-to-wall carpets etc. I think some of her family's poverty was due to the fact that my grandfather wasn't good at handling money. At one point they were going to be evicted, but fortunately my grandmother inherited some money from a dead uncle in the nick of time. nell

This thread is really interesting - thank you Dea.... My dad's family fit many of the stories already posted.....14 siblings, two bedrooms and the parlour to sleep in etc Another interesting point though is mum's family: My granddad was a ''professional man'' (that sounds so snobby - sorry!!) and I suppose he had certain standards to maintain.....his children had good paid for education and they always had good accommodation .........however, mum (now 81) is definitely from the ''make-do-and-mend brigade''!! She and her sister and my grandmother had to ensure clothes and household items lasted.......lots of darning, patching, turning sheets sides-to-middle, cutting down adult clothes to fit children etc etc....mum and her sister wore their school uniform at weekends, anything that could be mended would be, rather than buy another........................... No, they were not poor, but the way my grandparents lived was quite different from people in the same circumstances today. Merry

my dad was born in 1934, the middle one of 5 children. He always said that first up was best dressed. He and his brothers would sleep in a double bed - not end to end but sideways on. Claire

Well we seem to be agreed about a lot of things I agree with the comment about absolute and relative poverty, it seems to encapsulate what I was thinking about when I started the thread Certainly people attitudes have changed over the years, especially over things like hand me down clothes, and even home made clothes. I well remember being an oddity at school because my Mum used to insist on knitting me twin sets, when the other children had shop bought jumpers. She also made all her own jams, and preserved fruit and vegetables from the garden, in the days before freezers. This self-sufficiency was left over from the wartime, when people were encouraged to ‘make do and mend’ and ‘grow your own’ People’s priorities have changed as well, and the ease with which people can get credit makes it very easy for people to ‘buy now, pay later’ It is something my parents generation rarely did, and therefore people went without. The start of the Welfare State must have been a landmark in the lives of the people of the time, but even that was looked upon by some with suspicion. There are people, who even now, through no fault of their own, find it difficult to make ends meet, yet we also read so often about benefit fraud. A complex problem that successive governments have attempted to solve, with varying degrees of success

It's all relative really, imho. I like Steve's post. :-) Joy

Well I was born in 1950. My parents were lodging in 2 rooms - 1 was the sitting/bedroom and a tiny cupboard called a kitchenette - they shared an outside loo which was 3 floors down. They lived there for 6 years with 2 young kids. The old *** of a landlady would lock the outer door at 9.30 p.m. at night and many a time dad would have to shin up the drainpipes to get into our room when he and mum had taken us to visit family for the day. In the mid/late 50's when I was at infant/junior school, there were plenty of kids on calipers from polio and many more who would come to school with no socks on and very often no underwear (we all knew who these were because they were allowed not to take part in P.E. on those days). Within such a short time, we now have cars, tvs, puters, IT, clothes at a whim, its incredible and I think its such a shame that the generation after mine really dont value just what they do have.

Lovely thread this Dee. Thank you...

As Montypython said.............. Michael Palin: Ahh.. Very passable, this, very passable. Graham Chapman: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chassilier wine, ay Gessiah? Terry Gilliam: You're right there Obediah. Eric Idle: Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Chateau de Chassilier wine? MP: Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup o' tea. GC: A cup ' COLD tea. EI: Without milk or sugar. TG: OR tea! MP: In a filthy, cracked cup. EI: We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper. GC: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth. TG: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor. MP: Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, 'Money doesn't buy you happiness.' EI: 'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'. We used to live in this tiiiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof. GC: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING! TG: You were lucky to have a ROOM! *We* used to have to live in a corridor! MP: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph. EI: Well when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpaulin, but it was a house to US. GC: We were evicted from *our* hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake! TG: You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road. MP: Cardboard box? TG: Aye. MP: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day, week in, week out. When we got home, our Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt! GC: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY! TG: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife. EI: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, (pause for laughter), eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing 'Hallelujah.' MP: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'. ALL: Nope, nope.

Oh most definitely Dee. My Grandfather was down the pits when he was 13. (1899) My husband was working full time as an apprentice baker at 13. (1946) Children went to school regularly without shoes, some even in the winter. Poverty I believe is decided in this country, by how we manage to keep up with eachother. When my children were all at home in 1973'ish and onward. They (whomever they are) decided that ' children without a coloured television... were living in poverty!! Oh my poor children. LOL Deanna X

I think that the perception of poverty changes with each generation. The next always wanting to start where the last left off as far as material possessions are concerned and they consider themselves poor if they can’t have those things. I can remember my mum being chuffed to bits at being able to get carpets in the bedrooms. I took it as a foregone conclusion that I would have them when I had my first house. I don’t think perceiving oneself as poor has changed much over the years but the level at which that happens has. I can remember seeing a programme on television over 30 years ago comparing the lives of two men on an equal level of benefits. One was scruffy, unshaved, dining on fish and chips with a tin of fruit for ‘afters’. He couldn’t afford this, couldn’t afford that. His house was a pig-sty and it seemed he spent his day sitting in front of a television, smoking. The second was clean and tidy, proudly admitting to shopping in charity shops, visited markets late in the day to buy cheap fruit and veg and the same with supermarkets to buy the bargains there, arranging his menu according to whatever he managed to get hold of. His house was spick and span, his bills paid on time. He was proud of the way he managed and thankful for the benefits system. To me that illustrated that often it is peoples management of money that affects our perception at first sight of how poor they really are. We must often get it wrong and have sympathy for those who are just feckless while those that give an outward appearance of managing are ignored. If I could have doubled an income, I know which one I would have given it to. Mags x

both my husband & i have had bad heath so we are on sick ,between we get £156 a week we still have to pay for every thing & we are finding it difficult i got ayearly presciption payment card as i couldnt afford my monthly presciptsionsi have to have 12 items at a time! but we just had to cut down on things loveJoycexx

going back to the clothes that they used to wear day in and day out as they couldnt afford wardrobes like we do today. How on earth did they keep those long dresses clean around the hems??? Especially with horses instead of cars. The filth around the bottoms must have been a constant battle!!!

There are two types of poverty absolute poverty and relative poverty. Absolute poverty for example when you can't afford to feed yourself and your family much less anything else is found in places like Africa. Relative poverty (a definition from my a handout from my sociology classs) Individuals, families and groups in the population can be said to be in poverty when they lack the resources to obtain the types of diets, participate in the activities and habe the living conditions and amenities which are customary, or at least widely encouraged or approved, in societies to which they belong. Their resources are so seriously below those commanded by the average individual or family that they are, in effect, excluded from ordinary living patterns, customs and activities. Despite the complaints of poverty nowadays it is most unlikely that anyone, in this country, lives in absolute poverty and what is classed as poverty today is far from the conditions our forbears had to live in. Juliexx

I feel the main difference now a days is that we tend to more often than not buy what we want rather than what we need, then end up having nothing to spend on the real things we acutually do need, our priorites have changed somewhat, just think in the days of our ancestors the price of most of our pcs would have bought them a house !!!!! xxhugxx

This is the Government's modern day definition of poverty :- 'Anyone living on less than 60% of the UK average (median) income. For a single person it means an income of less than £100 per week after tax, housing costs and benefits, says the New Policy Institute. For a family of two adults and two pre-school children it means living on a weekly income less than £260 ' I wonder what our ancestors would have thought ?

Hi Dee I think it's relative - a lot of people can't afford to do things like pay for dentistry because they are up to their ears in repayments for things. If some people have to pay for a few prescriptions, they have to go without something else. People aren't starving in this country but they do have to go without putting the heating on etc because of fear of the bills. We don't have the poverty that people endured in past times but there are people who live go without things that some of us take for granted - so I would say our perception of poverty has changed.