A 1950s Childhood Read Online Free PDF

smart with their top-to-toe uniform, which included a shirt and tie, a lapel badge carrying the postman’s number, and a flat ‘military style’ peaked cap with a badge that featured a post horn and St Edward’s crown. The post would drop through the letterbox at about 7am each day and there would be a second delivery later in the morning.
    In 1953, this latest Esse cooker with boiler cost £ 91 4s 6d. Equivalent to about £ 1,900 at today’s values based on the retail price index.
    The telegram boy, in his navy blue uniform with red piping and pillbox cap, was never a welcome sight in the street. Few people had telephones and the fastest way to get a message to someone was by telegram, but they were expensive to send (about 6d for nine words and a penny for each additional word, including the address) and were only used to send urgent messages of joy, sorrow and success. Although they were traditionally sent to announce orcongratulate expected good news, like a marriage or the birth of a child, in everyday life they usually meant bad news, normally a death. The curtains would twitch whenever a telegram boy arrived in the street, and everyone’s pulses would race like mad.
    The milkman also wore a uniform, including a collar and tie and a peaked cap. The milk was delivered from either a horse-drawn milk cart or a hand-pulled milk float, also known as a pedestrian-controlled float. Each morning, themilk magically arrived on your doorstep before you had even poked your head out from the bedclothes.
    Outlying areas would have groceries and bread delivered, and sometimes the milk would be delivered from an urn into your own jug and measured by the pint or half pint. Quite often these delivery rounds-men would become friends with their customers, downing many a cup of tea en route.
    Coal was delivered regularly on horse-drawn drays or trucks. The coalmen were usually large intimidating men with faces and hands blackened by the coal dust. They often wore flat caps and sleeveless leather jackets. The coalmen would heave the huge hundredweight (cwt) sacks of coal off the flatbed dray and carry them on their backs to the coalbunkers, or tip them through a coalhole in the pavement into the cellar below.
    Chimney sweeps were always a source of entertainment for kids. They would usually arrive on a pushbike carrying a few long-handled brushes and an old sheet. The sweep would have a permanent covering of soot all over, even when he had just arrived. All the furniture would be pushed back from the fireplace and covered with sheets before he arrived, but it was always a traumatic experience for house-proud mums. For the kids, it was amusing to watch mum’s face and to hear her gasp as the sweep manoeuvred his brushes up the chimney and a cloud of soot bellowed out from beneath the protective sheet, dispensing a nice covering of black dust around the room. The sweep would always be carefully escorted from the house when he had finished to make sure he didn’t rub up against anything he passed on the way. Then the clean-up would begin! In the 1950s, people were encouraged by the government touse smokeless fuel to help reduce the smog. Some people started to board up their fireplaces and fit new snazzy two-bar electric fires to replace the old coal fire. Some did it to be fashionable, but most did it to get rid of the mess and inconvenience of fetching the coal in from the cold cellar or outside bunker.
    Window cleaners were plentiful, with their stepladder and bucket anchored onto their pushbike. Sometimes window cleaners would carry their stuff in a homemade wooden box (like a sidecar) attached to the side of their bike. Most people didn’t have the money to pay for window cleaning and so they did it themselves. It wasn’t beyond a window cleaner’s cheek to knock and ask for a bucket of clean water, even if he hadn’t cleaned your windows!
    The gas and electric meter men would come regularly to empty the meter-boxes of cash.