The Particular and the Personal

Britain in 1950 was different, in many ways, from Britain today.’ In his 2001 essay, Roland Quinault guides his readers rapidly through a catalogue of the essentials of postwar social history, taking in rationing, the housing shortage, immigration and education along the way. My new book, Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes: The Story of Women in the 1950s, attempts to flesh out factual history through interviews, archival and published testimony, so it is important to have a strong skeleton. Had I been aware of this essay when I was doing the research I would have gratefully snapped up some of the nuggets it provides. 
For example, I wish I had known that in 1950 Leicester was the most prosperous city per capita in Europe, since it would have deepened my understanding of Valerie Gisborn’s life. Gisborn, a factory girl, wrote a short series of memoirs about her early life in Leicester, which I mined for her vivid reminiscences. Similarly, the article reminded me that in 1950 the largest immigrant group in Britain was the Irish. Like the pretty nurse from Kilkenny, Eileen Hawe, whose story I also tell, who spent five years in London between 1946 and 1951. Eileen’s plight as a young married woman with a small baby becomes all the more resonant when you realise that, as Dr Quinault tells us, ‘nearly half the population lived in private rented accommodation, often in dingy rooms or bedsits with little privacy, warmth or comfort’. I need historians like Roland Quinault more than they need me.

The relationship between his fact-based history and my kind of social history, which prioritises the particular over the comprehensive, is an amiable one. My research database bulges with Quinault-style statistics, tabulated survey results, weighty evidence from many such impeccable sources. This is the essential black-and-white bedrock of history. But it is largely uninviting and it lacks colour; after a few pages reading this kind of research material you may feel swamped. Luckily, I read it, so that others do not have to.
I am not an academic. I love narrative, emotion and ‘true life stories’. My own work draws largely on matter-of-fact documentation, but this is the underwater part of the iceberg, largely invisible. I wanted my account of the 1950s to be rich with holiday camps, debs’ delights, Kensitas cigarettes, ‘Rock around the Clock’, home perms and perambulators. And I want my readers to get an inviting, engrossing insight not just into the everyday lives of our mothers and grandmothers, but also into their hopes and fears.
Valerie Gisborn was just one of thousands of workers in the Leicester garment factories, but when we hear her voice it is that of a frustrated 20-year-old, whose ambitions and dreams felt shackled by her monotonous everyday life.
Eileen Hawe’s isolation and her struggle to make ends meet as a young mum also speak to us across the intervening years. Eileen did not want to get married at 23; she wanted adventure and a career. But when you are a Catholic and pregnant outside marriage in 1954, there is no way out.

Listen, too, to the voice of Leila, the reluctant 1957 beauty queen; to Anthea, agonised by sexual doubt in 1956; to Vilma, from Jamaica, trying to find her feet in staid 1950s Eastbourne, experiencing freedom and homesickness in equal measure; or to Lorna, the single mother with a brilliant diplomatic career behind her, supporting her children by working in a biscuit factory in 1953. These voices are typical of countless women in the 1950s. 
Quinault refers specifically to the female population of Britain in a single paragraph, in which we learn that they ‘were not expected to have proper careers’. All too true, sadly, and yet it seems that, not having careers has, till now, also disqualified them from having their voices heard. Yet, for me, theirs is the kind of colourful, engrossing, moving history I want to read. Which is why I try to write it. And thanks to the likes of Roland Quinault, I can.


http://www.historytoday.com/virginia-nicholson/particular-and-personal

I lived through it, don't need a lesson in it.

Great, thanks for sharing

Well, what would you like to know?  I was born at the end of the war, my Nan lived in Council flats in Wandsworth, ( she was a 'char lady' for some of the flats in chelsea part of the time and cook at Chelsea Football Club for the rest, my Grandad was a builder ), a lot of flats round 'squares' where they hung out the washing etc.  Her kitchen was tiny, one side was bath with a let down table top over it, next to it was 4ft high round gas geyser water heater with taps that emptied into the bath, it was the only hot water they had.  Next to it was a cooker, a small cupboard and a sink with cold water and a drainer.  That was it, you couldn't fit 2 people in it.  The washing was done in the geyser and I used to help Nan put it through a wringer.  There was a tiny loo by the front door, a coal box in the tiny hall, one living room with an open fire and two bedrooms.  They still had the blackout curtains up when I went to live with them when I worked at Shell Centre in London at 18.  I remember the rationing and the way women had to spend half their time doing the washing and scratching around for what they could cook.  I remember Clapham Junction before they made 'Cathy Come Home' and my uncle and his wife lived in one room when they got married.  I was 15 when the 60s started.