It was Gibbs Dentifrice (not toothpaste) around a century ago, I believe. My mum and her sisters had a Gibbs Dentifrice board game - you had to escape Giant Decay and reach the Land of Health and Happiness, avoiding landing on squares such as Caries Wood. I still have it!
I’ll take a photo and consult the Styx at the weekend to work out how to post it on this thread. We have a few games from my aunt’s house. I don’t know precisely how old the games are but the three sisters were born in 1918, 1921 and 1922, and no children have lived in the house since then.
I’ll take a photo and consult the Styx at the weekend to work out how to post it on this thread. We have a few games from my aunt’s house. I don’t know precisely how old the games are but the three sisters were born in 1918, 1921 and 1922, and no children have lived in the house since then.
Very briefly, you have to post it on a free upload site, and then link to it from the Ship. You can’t post photos directly onto the Ship.
Didn't people once use soot for cleaning their teeth?
My grandfather used soot. He died when I was eight, so I can't remember what his teeth were like. When he retired, aged 68, they moved to a house which had a built in bathroom, so he would have had to walk from the bathroom to the living room to rub his toothbrush on the back of the fire. I don't know if he started using conventional toothpaste at that point.
In the farmhouse they lived in prior to that, the toilet had been built as a lean-to onto the house, but he cleaned his teeth at the kitchen sink. Granny was still doing some of her cooking over an open fire at that point, so the fire was close to the sink, and soot was readily available.
(This started as a reply to Baptist Trainfan about the use of soot, but now I feel really old. I remember my granny swinging the kettle over an open fire to boil, and she made oatcakes on something which swung over the fire, too. That house had a plumbed in sink and toilet in the lean-to, but the house they retired to had a plumbed in bath as well! I remember the mottled blue/red skin that was the result of being bathed in a tin bath in front of the fire in the first house- the side next to the fire was too hot and the side away from the fire was too cold and the end result was mottled skin.)
When I was a child my mother had a "daily" who lived in a 1920s London County Council house nearby. I remember them having a plumbed-in bath put in, in about 1960. The houses, much modernised and in many cases sold off, still stand.
Oh dear I feel positively ancient now! I grew up in one of the UK's Land Settlement Association smallholdings (ours was actually a fairly large-holding!) It had an outside toilet, a bathroom that was carved off a bit of the scullery/kitchen, and gas lights downstairs. Only nightlight candles upstairs - which fills me with alarm now! No electricity until the late 1950s. Then of course it felt totally normal and I didn't realise there was anything unusual about our house until school friends started to visit.
Which is bonkers as you can still get them. Just the other night I went to hear Cerys Hafana (of whom you will have heard) and she was selling her new album "Angel" in both CD format (which I bought) and vinyl (which I didn't).
Oh dear I feel positively ancient now! I grew up in one of the UK's Land Settlement Association smallholdings (ours was actually a fairly large-holding!) It had an outside toilet, a bathroom that was carved off a bit of the scullery/kitchen, and gas lights downstairs. Only nightlight candles upstairs - which fills me with alarm now! No electricity until the late 1950s. Then of course it felt totally normal and I didn't realise there was anything unusual about our house until school friends started to visit.
The house in Pickwick, Corsham that my Mum grew up in (from '36-c'53) was the same. My uncle died there in 2008, by which point it had electric (laid over the surface of walls and ceilings in trunking - it obviously did not belong!). The kitchen had a gas Ascot with the long, drippy spout which swung one way to fill the kitchen sink, and the other to fill the bath (once you took the worktop off the top). That worktop was covered in newspapers, because of course it was. When Mum (RIP) went upstairs for the first time since 53, she had a strange reversal where a memory generated a smell - of the paraffin heaters they used during the war in the coldest months.
He had a gas fire in the front room too, and his estimated winter gas bill (jan-march 09 as I remember) was 50 quid. It struck me then that not many then (or today) would be able or willing to cut their carbon footprint to that degree.
Drifting once more into my anecdotage... In the early 50s the toilet in my aunt's house in Greenock was in the kitchen, though it was modernised later with a cubicle around it. When I mentioned to one of my cousins (daughter of a different aunt) some years ago that the house must have been a borderline slum I got the immediate response that, "It was not! The toilet was inside!" It was really a nice place, friendly people, close to the shipyards and the railway, not to mention the best ice cream I have ever tasted - everything a five year old could want
Ah, outside toilets and tin baths. Watching my grandchildren’s amazement when I tell them stories of my childhood, lighting a candle in the outside toilet for night time visits and being third in the tin bath on a Thursday night! Can’t quite remember why tin bath night was always a Thursday. My dad used to bring home his pay packet on a Thursday night (yes with cash in it), maybe that was his reward?
Yes, telling these stories to my grandchildren and watching their faces is a rather nice reminder of just how old I’m getting!
You had toilets? Luxury! One grandparents', if you had to 'go' you found a patch of docks. The other gp's there was at least a hut at the bottom of the chicken run with a bucket and newspaper.
We never had an outside toilet, for which I am grateful. Or rather, we did have one, but also had an internal one.
@Barnabas62 Almost certainly, it was because he brought home a pay packet, so you had money to heat the water (or rather, you had money for heat over the next week).
I hope that was said with a true Yorkshire accent ...
Actually my upbringing (middle-class London suburbia) was very comfortable, although we didn't get central heating until 1962 (it had been a coke boiler before then, together with a coal fire in the lounge and electric or paraffin heaters); we never had double glazing.
Outdoor loo down the garden, an Elsan emptied weekly ( and a potty under the bed ) until we moved house when I was nearly six. Bath night was Saturday, to be clean for Sunday. I was first in the tin bath in front of the open fire. Water was heated in the copper and brought in by the bucket, topped up for the next occupant. A different life then.
I hope that was said with a true Yorkshire accent ...
Actually my upbringing (middle-class London suburbia) was very comfortable, although we didn't get central heating until 1962 (it had been a coke boiler before then, together with a coal fire in the lounge and electric or paraffin heaters); we never had double glazing.
1962? Blimey, you were posh. It was 1981 before we got central heating, but we did get a gas fire somewhere around 1970
I forgot - one room had a gas fire. We were fortunate in that the central heating was put in just before the Big Freeze winter of 1962-3, when I remember sledging at the local park after school.
I hope that was said with a true Yorkshire accent ...
Actually my upbringing (middle-class London suburbia) was very comfortable, although we didn't get central heating until 1962 (it had been a coke boiler before then, together with a coal fire in the lounge and electric or paraffin heaters); we never had double glazing.
1962? Blimey, you were posh. It was 1981 before we got central heating, but we did get a gas fire somewhere around 1970
There was never central heating in the house I grew up in, while I was there. The coal fire did get upgraded to a gas fire when I was fairly young and in later years there was a storage heater on the landing and a couple of freestanding electric radiators for the other bedrooms. This was still the case in 2012 when we sold the house after my mum died and my eldest brother moved into a flat. I think the house was advertised as "in need of modernisation."
We got CH late 60s. It entailed building a little external boiler house, complete with door that didn't reach to the floor. This formed an attractive ingress for the local rat population who then took up residence in the wall spaces and attic.
I realised that I must be old this morning, when I put a postage stamp on my grandson's birthday card and for a brief moment thought the head of the monarch on it was George VI
@Barnabas62 Almost certainly, it was because he brought home a pay packet, so you had money to heat the water (or rather, you had money for heat over the next week).
That might be true. We had penny in the slot meters. I remember my mum’s delight when we got an Ascot instant water heater. It took a lot less time to fill the bath.
When I was twelve we moved into a council house with a bath, an inside toilet and a coal fired boiler for hot water. Mum thought she had died and gone to heaven. Dad took longer to convince. Rent went up from 10 shillings and six pence a week to 23 shillings a week. So mum got a part time job as part of the deal. “After all” she said “I’ll have the time for it”. Six months later she got a twin tub washing machine on the never never.
Strange how understandings of luxury and necessity have moved on.
I didn't have either central heating or a washing machine until I moved into my current flat in 2008. I used to get up at 6 am, load my washing into a shopping trolley (no car, even now) and walk up the hill to the launderette. Home by 8, straight on the train to get to work by 9 am. I took it for granted.
I didn’t have a washing machine when I had my first baby. Nappies were soaked in Napisan, then put in the spin dryer. No central heating either.
Still no central heating for second baby, but I had a washing machine by then. The baby slept in his big pram in the hall as the warmest place at that time. He slept through from an early age, whilst his older sister was still waking up several times a night.
My parents did not have central heating -ever. They died in 2001.
Icicles on the inside of the windows, anyone?
When our son was born we were living in West Africa - unreliable electricity, no running (or hot) water. Nappies were washed by hand - in the dry season they dried so quickly that they became as stiff as boards, in the rainy season they never got 100% dry!
Puzzler, i stayed with my grandparents quite a lot when I was a child and they still had coal fires, but only down stairs. I remember frost on the inside of the windows in really cold weather.
Living as a child by the Midland line, I never saw any of the Princess Coronations ... until "Duchess of Sutherland" came to Cardiff a couple of years ago.
Comments
My grandfather used soot. He died when I was eight, so I can't remember what his teeth were like. When he retired, aged 68, they moved to a house which had a built in bathroom, so he would have had to walk from the bathroom to the living room to rub his toothbrush on the back of the fire. I don't know if he started using conventional toothpaste at that point.
In the farmhouse they lived in prior to that, the toilet had been built as a lean-to onto the house, but he cleaned his teeth at the kitchen sink. Granny was still doing some of her cooking over an open fire at that point, so the fire was close to the sink, and soot was readily available.
(This started as a reply to Baptist Trainfan about the use of soot, but now I feel really old. I remember my granny swinging the kettle over an open fire to boil, and she made oatcakes on something which swung over the fire, too. That house had a plumbed in sink and toilet in the lean-to, but the house they retired to had a plumbed in bath as well! I remember the mottled blue/red skin that was the result of being bathed in a tin bath in front of the fire in the first house- the side next to the fire was too hot and the side away from the fire was too cold and the end result was mottled skin.)
"...recently covered by Ugly Kid Joe..."
Yeah. Recently. In 1992.
Bonus age points to anyone who can guess the song.
Cats in the Cradle? The only song I know by them (and a storming song/version too)
The Cat (appropriately) gets the age point.
I would have looked blank too, but that's because I am even older than most of those who do recognise the reference.
I knew there was something odd in the middle 60s. So reg swapped in Jan from 64 to 68, F starting August-ish 68, G Aug 69 etc?
The house in Pickwick, Corsham that my Mum grew up in (from '36-c'53) was the same. My uncle died there in 2008, by which point it had electric (laid over the surface of walls and ceilings in trunking - it obviously did not belong!). The kitchen had a gas Ascot with the long, drippy spout which swung one way to fill the kitchen sink, and the other to fill the bath (once you took the worktop off the top). That worktop was covered in newspapers, because of course it was. When Mum (RIP) went upstairs for the first time since 53, she had a strange reversal where a memory generated a smell - of the paraffin heaters they used during the war in the coldest months.
He had a gas fire in the front room too, and his estimated winter gas bill (jan-march 09 as I remember) was 50 quid. It struck me then that not many then (or today) would be able or willing to cut their carbon footprint to that degree.
Yes, telling these stories to my grandchildren and watching their faces is a rather nice reminder of just how old I’m getting!
@Barnabas62 Almost certainly, it was because he brought home a pay packet, so you had money to heat the water (or rather, you had money for heat over the next week).
Etc. Etc.
Actually my upbringing (middle-class London suburbia) was very comfortable, although we didn't get central heating until 1962 (it had been a coke boiler before then, together with a coal fire in the lounge and electric or paraffin heaters); we never had double glazing.
1962? Blimey, you were posh. It was 1981 before we got central heating, but we did get a gas fire somewhere around 1970
There was never central heating in the house I grew up in, while I was there. The coal fire did get upgraded to a gas fire when I was fairly young and in later years there was a storage heater on the landing and a couple of freestanding electric radiators for the other bedrooms. This was still the case in 2012 when we sold the house after my mum died and my eldest brother moved into a flat. I think the house was advertised as "in need of modernisation."
When I was twelve we moved into a council house with a bath, an inside toilet and a coal fired boiler for hot water. Mum thought she had died and gone to heaven. Dad took longer to convince. Rent went up from 10 shillings and six pence a week to 23 shillings a week. So mum got a part time job as part of the deal. “After all” she said “I’ll have the time for it”. Six months later she got a twin tub washing machine on the never never.
Strange how understandings of luxury and necessity have moved on.
Still no central heating for second baby, but I had a washing machine by then. The baby slept in his big pram in the hall as the warmest place at that time. He slept through from an early age, whilst his older sister was still waking up several times a night.
My parents did not have central heating -ever. They died in 2001.
Icicles on the inside of the windows, anyone?
When our son was born we were living in West Africa - unreliable electricity, no running (or hot) water. Nappies were washed by hand - in the dry season they dried so quickly that they became as stiff as boards, in the rainy season they never got 100% dry!
It cannot have been later than 1964. And that is 61 flipping years ago!
No fires in the bedrooms, no other heating.
Brrrr!
I didn't mind but I would now! My Granny lived with us, I bet her old bones felt the cold.
'Language, Timothy!'
Now where (oh where) did that come from?
Sorry - fairly limp sitcom with Ronnie Corbett as a middle aged man still living with his mother.
By “fairly limp” I assume you mean “crap and totally unfunny”. This sort of thing is also often referred to as “gentle comedy”
Either that or ‘comedy drama’.
His Big Chair jokes were brilliant, classic shaggy dog tales. Well delivered.
"Gentle Comedy" - set in the same middle class suburban semi as a good 50% of the last 60 years of UK Sitcoms and totally unfunny.
"Comedy Drama" - we tried to be edgy by making up for a shortage of laughs by having some serious stuff happen as well.
I was being kind in case someone had fond memories, unlikely as that may seem.