A 1950s Childhood Read Online Free PDF Page B

Most people paid for their gas and electric as they went, via ‘shilling in the meter’ boxes, which the meter men padlocked and sealed with wire and wax. The meters were set to overcharge and so you would usually get cash refunded when the meter was read. Fish and chips tonight!
    Paperboys were a common sight in the early mornings. Paperboy jobs were highly valued as a source of extra pocket money, but the paper rounds were usually quite big and widespread because most people would buy their newspapers on the way to work. It was unusual to see a girl doing a paper round.

    Food ration books issued by the Ministry of Food. Rationing of foodstuffs finally ended in July 1954.

Healthcare
    Most homes had a few basic medical supplies on hand to treat the little warriors’ cuts and grazes, fevers or infections. Aspirin, Beecham’s Powders, Veno’s cough mixture (at least a year old), a bottle of smelling salts, a tin of plasters, tincture of iodine antiseptic, and Germolene antiseptic cream with its distinctive hospital smell that reassured you of its remedial powers.
    As a young child in the early 1950s, you ate quite healthily with high calcium and iron intakes through eating foods like bread and milk, red meat, greens and potatoes, and you drank very few sugary drinks. You were also very fit with all those exhausting and dangerous games you played, but you still couldn’t escape the childhood illnesses. Chicken Pox, Measles, Whooping Cough, German Measles, Mumps and Tonsillitis; you got them all. In the early 1950s, before immunisation started in 1955, there was a great fear of catching polio. It was a horrible disease that crippled thousands of children and, sadly, killed many. It wasn’t unusual to see children with crutches, leg callipers or corrective shoes after contracting polio. Diphtheria was a big killer prior to the introduction of nationwide immunisation in the 1940s, which resulted in a dramatic fall in the number of reported cases. In 1940, there were 3,283 deaths in the UK, compared with just six deaths from the disease in 1957. Tuberculosis (TB) was also a big concern in Britain up until the BCG vaccination was introduced in 1953; but even then TB didn’t disappear entirely.
    Winter always brought the misery of colds and flu, and minor infections like earache were common, as wereinvoluntary nosebleeds and fight-inflicted bloody noses. The walking wounded were to be seen everywhere; a child with his or her arm or leg in plaster, a temporary eye patch, or a leather fingerstall tied around the wrist, were all familiar sights.
    If you needed to see the doctor, it seemed easy. You didn’t have to make an appointment; you just turned up at the surgery and waited your turn. Doctors’ waiting rooms were small intimate places, simply furnished with rows of hardback wooden chairs. There was no receptionist to manage the patients and doctors would retrieve patients’ notes from filing cabinets themselves. Apart from the wooden chairs, the only accessory in the waiting room was the bell or buzzer to summon the next patient into the surgery. Doctors did a lot of home visits; if your mum said you were ill in bed, the doctor came out without any fuss. It all seemed very efficient and free of paperwork. In the early 1950s, you definitely didn’t want to hear the doctor say that you needed an injection. They were still using re-usable needles then, and they were so big! The doctor would ask your mum to boil the needle in a saucepan of water for a few minutes to sterilise it. That would add to the trauma, with so much more time for the patient to think about it. The injections made a huge hole in the fleshy part of your tiny arm or backside, and they really hurt.
    If you were confined to bed with some dreaded lurgy, then you had to have a bottle of Lucozade and a bunch of grapes next to the bed, even if you didn’t like grapes. The Lucozade was supposed to give you energy and most kids loved it. You had to drink it