Domestic Technlogy

During the time you spent at home bringing up your children, what would you say are the biggest changes in domestic technology?

Well I was born in 1916 which was half way through the first World War and we were a middle class family so there would have been some things that we didn't have in the early days compared to the more wealthy families. The house was lit by gas, the street lights were all lit by gas and a man used to come along to light the street lights with a pole and I can't remember if he came again in the mornings to turn them out. There were no telephones in ordinary peoples houses, there were no cars, there were no vacuum cleaners. I can remember my mother throwing wet tea-leaves on the carpet before she brushed it clean because that damped down all the dust, which was very usual. Washing was with a bar of yellow soap, we had deep sinks then. You must have seen in antique shops washboards, I wish I had kepth all these things. Flat irons, have you seen those in the antique shops. You had at least two of those, one would be on the gas cooker when the using the other you changed over. All the fires were coal fires there was no central heating, after we had done the washing , we used to put through a big mangle, with big rollers and to this day I have a dent in my finger where my mother was turning the mangle and as a little girl my finger went in. Life was much harder then. Jumping ahead to when my own children were young, after my daughter was born in 1951, I acquired the first little Hoover washing machine, a little square tub with a tiny mangle at the side. You filled them from the tap and put the soap in but I can't remember how you rinsed them, I suppose we emptied it out.

Leisure

By then(1950's) we had a telephone and we had ordinary radios but going back in the early 1920s, I can remember my father making something in a little box with a little crystal on the top and a little wire which you put on the crystal and dabbed around a bit and put headphones on and if you were lucky you heard something "Hello this is 2LO" which was the start of broadcasting. Coming back to the 1950s when my daughter was born we had a wireless and we had accumulators you owned two, one charged for each week, but the time my daughter was born we had ordinary radio sets which were better than the modern ones. So that was after the war, now television, although they had trials before the last war, they didn't really start up until after the war, in something like 1947 they were tiny little sets, 9inch, black and white and we would put a thick piece of glass in front to try and enlarge the picture a bit. I always remember my daughter used to go round the back to see where Andy Pandy went when he shut the door. I remember we were the first ones in our road to have a black and white television . You had to have a very big aerial stuck up on your roof - you were very proud if you had an aerial on your roof - so we had the cars, the telephone, and so on. Response

General Information

I worked in the 1930s in a bank and certainly all the small branches had enormous thick ledgers which we wrote up by hand so it wasn't until 1946 that they were done away with and then they had a card system, using a small hand adding machine. I want to go back specifically to drapers shops because in those days where to pay the money they put the money in a little sort of holder and there was a wire running right across the shop to a till somewhere hidden away and they just pulled and the holder went spinning along to the till and came back with the change, that was quite fun. I was in Russia not too long ago and you know they were still using these methods, I've seen those used in other countries quite a lot around Europe within the last 15 yrs. One invention which didn't take off was the Airships. In the First World War we had the Germans efforts coming over and bombing us and then we tried Airships, the famous R1001 in the late 1920s, but that was lost over Paris, they didn't ahead with Airships nothing came out of it. Of course we are just celebrating 30 years of the space age, going to the moon but before that the Russians started with Sputniks, which just put this things in the space going round in the stratosphere and we were terrified and when you think what has come out of that so many new materials that were really invented for the space men that now have had endless uses in medicine, and all sorts of things, beginning of many new materials. Talking about materials, until after the war, when the first crimplene came in it was all natural fibres, pure cotton, linen, awful job to iron, now we've got all these wonderful drip dry things so we don't have to iron, but certainly starting that space age, like the wars always hasten inventions and so did the space age hasten a lot of inventions. I can remember about when my daughter was quite young, 40 yrs ago, when the first electricity bill came through with numbers which was the start of computers which were enormous things, because my son used to work in the airforce at Drayton, with air-conditioned rooms with these massive computers and now they 've come down to laptops. The thing the I do feel about progress is that when the computer age came in it was supposed to give us much more leisure, the work was going to be done more quickly so that we weren't going to have to work as many hours and have more leisure but it hasn't worked out that way as far as I can see, all the people I know of my son's generation, they are working all hours of the day and night it's a rat race and at the same time there are so many unemployed, so what has come of that hope?

Computers/Changes in employment

How do you feel about the way the computers have replaced the traditional work force and the employment people had before they were invented ?

Yes that it is what I am saying, so many people are doing away with the staff because the computers are doing the work, but the staff they do have are working much harder and that all comes down to economics. It's not really for the benefit of the people. No, it's just cutting their costs , I doubt in some ways if as much good has come of all that as we had hoped, I don't know how you feel but lots of people feel left behind because they don't understand computers, they haven't been brought up with it, have you been affected in any way? Yes, I don't understand them at all, I was bringing up a family, I didn't need to learn. Maybe I'm wrong, I should perhaps have taken an interest in this when they started, if I went into an office now I wouldn't be able to understand it. I do realise that they have to update them all the time because they are getting more complicated and improving, so forth, and Computers of course for communications, sending E-mails round the world and you get a reply straight away, as for the Internet, I can't make out the difference, my son talks on and on capital letters and things, I don't know what he is talking about so they really have left us older people behind but anybody who needed to go on working, they had to start learning - we couldn't go back to what we were , there have been so many advantages but as I say I don't' think its quite how they hoped life would be.

Communications

Have you found it difficult keeping in touch with your family or have you found with improvements with technology it's become easier to keep in touch ?

My daughter is in Australia, in the old days if you wanted to get in touch, particularly at Christmas you had to book a phone call probably weeks in advance, now I pick up the phone and she picks it up as if round the corner. I have a lot of relations in Canada and California and they get cross because that I'm not on E-mail because phoning to have a reasonable conversation is still reasonably expensive and they don't want to write letters anymore they just want to dash out an E-mail.

Lifestyle/Domestic Life

The changes you talked about earlier, in your domestic life, do you feel that they have helped you to do other things, more freedom?

Yes, domestically there is far more leisure than there was, apart from the fact that so many of the women one either have to go out to work and run a house, or that they want to go out to work because they have been reasonably highly trained and they don't want to be a cabbage sitting at home, but they couldn't be out working full time and running a home, doing everything if it was in the 1920's . Even all the fast food now helps. What you said about your mother having a mangle and you having the first washing machine, was that a big change, making your life easier. Oh yes, in my mother's days you had someone helping you with your work, Sundays you always cooked a joint, and we all sat down together at table to eat., eating cold on Mondays because that was wash day and we all sat together for a meal. I picked out one piece of domestic technology that has changed , the microwave. Do you believe it is a good introduction as opposed to the conventional oven. I don't think they are nearly as good, personally I don't cook meat in a microwave, but they are very useful for heating things up. but they haven't replaced a conventional oven, not in my opinion.

Working Life

Going back to again to your working life talking about the big ledgers you had, do you feel that the those things have been replaced by computers and modern technology has taken away some of the skill from working, it has made people's working life easier?

I suppose it has taken some of the skill away but much more importantly it has taken away the personal touch , I mean when you talk about leisure in bank, building societies and wherever, you used to know your manager personally, you knew the cashiers, I can remember the manager coming round to discuss the quarterly charge, etc. I was all personal. Now they are even doing away with staff and just having holes in the wall, etc. It is much more reassuring when you know that a human is there that you can go and talk to rather than just a machine. Do you think that this is the way things are going to be in the future? Oh yes without a doubt. When all of my age group will have gone, you will be used to it as it is now but as I have said before, I cannot visualise that there will be as many changes in the span of 80 years during your lifetime as they are have been during my lifetime. Now in the 19 I lived for 8 years in the village of Downton, just down the road , I was in the WI there and I did a talk and I was asking the villagers what life was like in their days and to my utter astonishment having been brought up in London and Surrey they said they were still getting water fro the wells in about the 1950's and they were cycling down to the privy at the bottom of their gardens. There was a lot of difference in those days between the rural areas and the towns.

Transport

Coming to transport there were trains, trams which superseded trolley buses, buses, I do remember in the 1920's being at Croydon Aerodrome when Charles Lindbergh landed having flown the Atlantic and Amy Johnson landed having flown to Australia and now I am in Australia in 22 hours. What do you think about trams as they are talking about bringing them back in? Yes, the were snags to them because they ran in the centre of the road and they had these ridges where the tracks were so to go onto the tram you had to walk out to the centre of the road which was dangerous, but I don't think they were all that good, the trolley buses were better running on wires - why they did away with those I don't know.I know they are running trams in Croydon now In my days when you went to school, you either had to cycle, walk or go to a school near your home

Entertainment/Media

What do you think about changes in technology regarding entertainment, do you think it has improved your life?

The films you see have improved enormously., I love the live theatre. In the old days most towns had a nice little repertory theatre which put on a different play every week and you could afford to go to the London theatre, I don't see much improvement there . Do you feel that the effect of the media and the press has on peoples lives is worse now then it was? Yes quite definitely. I think people should have private lives. Look at the way Princess Diana was hounded - no I don't think that is an improvement. You can't keep anything quiet nowadays. I remember when the King who became Duke of Windsor was getting friendly with Mrs. Simpson, we in this country knew nothing about it, there was a blank, other countries America, France, they knew Now things go round the world in 2 minutes, whether that is a good progress I wouldn't like to say.

Education

Do you think in education that the areas of the curricula are wider than they were when you were at school?

Yes much wider, but it takes time, I am certain that at Grammar school I was educated better than you are now but only in the narrower number of subjects. Do you feel that it is an improvement having wider areas, would we better off having a higher understanding what the traditional values are? Not being a teacher, I am not in a position to judge. You have a much wider view on life through television and travel and you have much wider choice of training for careers at universities. When I was at school, careers for girls was either teaching or nursing

Summary

Summing up, the influence of modern technology on my life has made my life a whole lot easier physically there are horizons widening incredibly, I wouldn't go back to how things were there has got to be a plus with query to it.

Contribute your memories

Return to Archers Court