The Cinema & The New Cross Empire

The Cinema
Before the war we went to see a film almost every week. There were two main cinema chains, the Gaumont and the Odeon. Each week we had to decide which was the better film. They always showed the trailer of next week's film so there was a tendency to keep going back to the same cinema. The programme always had two films and the news film in between them. During the interval, they go sell ice cream as chocolates and cigarettes. Ice creams chocolates, cigarettes, cigarettes

On a Saturday morning I would walk to Brockley Cross [ 0.8ml] and go to a special children's performance there. There was always a serial. Each episode would end with the hero just about to be killed. This made a strong incentive to go back next week to see if he had survived. One serial dealt with a hero, Flash Gordon, who travelled around in a spacecraft. I later found it amusing that when the Americans did travel to the Moon everybody on Earth was able to watch them on television. The creative film writers had not even imagined that possibility.


The New Cross Empire
Before the war we sometimes went to the New Cross Empire (a music hall). I remember seeing Max Miller and a model called Jane. She featured in a cartoon in the Daily Mirror. Every week there was an excuse for her losing most of her clothes. This was the nearest we had to the topless girls on page 3 that is common nowadays. Nudity on the stage was discouraged. It was permitted only if the model had to remain perfectly still. It was permitted to have classical nude statues in museums, so the Lord Chamberlain had to accept her posing as a statue on the stage. The Lord Chamberlain was the censor of all stage shows until 1968.

There were two evening performances and kids would collect programs from people coming out after the first performance and sell them at half price to those of us who stood in the queue for the second performance. Some time in the 1960s the New Cross Empire was knocked down and replaced by a petrol station. There were many more people driving cars, and many fewer going to a music hall.

https://cinematreasures.org/theaters/29251

The Arrival of Electricity Changed How We Lived

The Arrival of Electricity Changed How We Lived.
The landlord of the house we rented in Shardeloes Road must have been quite a decent landlord by the standards of those days. We moved there before I started school in 1934. He agreed to install electricity, providing my father shared the cost with him. My father was keen to improve our living conditions and it made a lot of difference. Electric light was much better for me to read by and do my homework. We had an electric water heater in the bathroom, and a wireless set that worked off  mains electricity. Before the war, most people had a wireless set that worked from a large high tension battery and a lead acid accumulator, slightly smaller than half of a modern car battery. The accumulator had to be taken to the shop to be exchanged for a recharged one every week.

The Wireless.
From five o'clock until six o'clock every day there was Children's Hour. There were some lovely stories such as Toytown. The character of Larry the Lamb was played by an actor, whose voice was recognised by everybody. The only alternative to the BBC  was a commercial wireless station called Radio Luxembourg. On Sunday evening, I would listen to a programme advertising Ovaltine. There was supposed to be a club called the Ovaltinies. To join the club your parents had to buy tins of Ovaltine. A special coded message was sent out to members of the club. My parents did not buy Ovaltine so I did not know the code  but somehow I managed to work it out for myself. I'm quite sure my father did not help me. It was a very simple code, where one stood for A, two stood for B. Looking back, I am surprised that I managed to work out the code with no help, because I would I would have been only about eight years old at the time.
Our wireless set worked off  mains electricity and was quite sophisticated. It would have cost about £10 in 1935 [=£440 in 2010]. It was powerful enough to pick up short wave wireless  programmes and also could amplify sound from a separate electric turntable but  we did not have one until I got married. We used it for this purpose in the late 50s. Some people had a very expensive [=£900]piece of furniture called a radiogram. It had a gramophone turntable, a wireless, a big loudspeaker and sometimes storage for records, but it would have been very bulky.

[You may wonder how I have converted prices to their equivalents today.  I used the Retail Price Index for that year to the RPI for Jan 2010. There is no simple way of comparing how 'expensive' things seem because wages, taxation, housing, availability of credit have not increased in the same ratio.]

How Did You Pass the Time When There Was No TV?

How Did You Pass the Time When There Was No TV?

During the 30's we spent very little on commercial entertainment. Family  members used to visit each other quite frequently, using bus or tram. We moved from Peckham to New Cross before I was old enough to go to school. When we lived in Shardeloes Road, New Cross my mother took me on the tram [1.7 ml according to Google Earth] to see her parents in Peckham almost every week. There was a strong tradition of the family coming together for tea on Sunday. We had a piano in the house, and on Sunday evening several people would play.

We also had a wind up gramophone [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:78tours.ogv] so we could listen to music. The standard record was 10 inches in diameter and each side played for 3 minutes. There were 12 inches ones mainly used for long orchestral works. The  case of the gramophone was about 18" x 18" and about 9 inches deep. You lifted up the lid in order to put a record on the turntable and then very gently lowered the needle on to the record. Mounted above the needle was a small sound box. Our gramophone stood on top of a cabinet which was about 3 feet high. It had a cupboard with vertical partitions in which were stored about 20 records. The records had to be stored carefully because they were made of brittle shellac.

Until I was old enough to do jobs to help my parents I had a lot of spare time. My primary school was Mantle Rd Junior Mixed. It had no grassy sports field, but after school we would play on the asphalt playground kicking a tennis ball around. At home we had a slate bed billiards table and a dart board. I learnt to play on them when I was about eight. There were no electrical toys, but I had a clockwork train set. There were lots of board games such as Ludo, where you rolled  the dice and moved your counter on the board. On Friday my father would buy me a lead soldier or a farm animal. I played with my military band and my farm. I sometimes went to a rather dull youth club attached to the local church.

Public Libraries

I spent a lot of my time reading and was lucky that there was a public library a short distance away. During the school holidays I would have all day long to read. Sometimes I would read a book in a day and go to the library next day to get another. In 1938 we had the Munich crisis and the news was very worrying. Sometimes I would deliberately read in the library so that I did not get home until the Six o'clock News had finished.

Drinking and Dancing

Drinking and Dancing
It seems that each era has its problems with alcohol and uses different ways of dealing with it. In the Thirties we did not have breathalysers so the police would ask the suspect to walk a chalk line. It was an offence to be drunk in a public place so if a drunk was in a front garden the police had to persuade him to is come out to the pavement. They could then take him to the station, and make him walk a straight line. If he could not do so he was charged with drunkenness and spent the night in the cells at the police station. The next morning he would appear at a magistrates court and be given a small fine. There was a newspaper, called The Evening News, and every day it had an article, written by the court reporter, who would give a humorous account of odd characters who turned up in court because of drunkenness.

Ordinary shops were not allowed to sell alcohol. There were specialist shops called off-licences and the licensing authorities did not allow them to be too close to each other.

A premises had to apply for a licence in order to have dancing in it. Presumably the authorities considered that dancing would encourage people to drink or misbehave, but I personally did not hear or read about alcohol problems at a dance in those days. Even in 1950 the local Council could forbid a public dance being held on a Sunday. In 1945 I took lessons at a ballroom dancing school and we were allowed to have a dance on Sunday because it was a practice session.

Sunday must have been a very boring day for adults in my part of London, because all the shops were closed, the cinemas were closed and there was no public dancing. Pubs could open, but had to shut at 10pm instead of 10.30. I have been told that in some parts of Wales alcohol could not be sold at all, except to a traveller. A large number of Welsh people decided to travel on a Sunday.

My Country Holidays

My Country Holidays

One way of having a cheap holiday was to stay with a family on an informal basis. Our contribution would help them with their housekeeping.

A neighbour of my mother's parents had a sister who lived in Knowl Hill village on the A4 between Maidenhead and Reading. We sometimes stayed with her for our summer holidays. We went to Knowl Hill by coach from Victoria coach station.

'Aunt' Doll (Mrs Stokes) was kind and cheerful. I loved the food and helped her pick caterpillars off the cabbages in her huge garden.

Our neighbours were very kind and  sometimes I would ride on a hay cart.

Here you can see Aunt Win and her friend, Ivy,  helping to bring in the hay. So much better than noisy London streets.

They both worked at Ghinns, a large drapery store in Rye Lane. They would not be able to afford  holidays if we did not take them with us. Children left school at 14 but only earned adult wages whn they reached the age of 21.

Aunt Doll had a sister who lived a mile away in Warren Row. Sometimes we would walk to her cottage to have tea. We would walk across this hay field until we reached the wood that you see in the background of the photo. We then followed the path through the wood to reach Warren Row. Her husband worked in a nearby chalk mine, which was very interesting. Usually chalk is obtained from the open face of a quarry, but this was definitely like a cave. It was dark and cold when he took me into it.

I used to enjoy the Victoria plums I could buy from the orchard a few yards along the road. It belonged to Mr. and Mrs Neighbour. I would call out, and they would come to their little wooden gate. Victoria plums fresh from the tree have a very special taste. It was also great fun going blackberrying. It was as good as helping myself to free sweets.

For our holidays in 1939 we stayed in Reading with Mrs Lambourne. I think she was a relative of the Stokes family. At the end of our holiday my parents returned to London, but left me behind in Reading. It would have been August, and war might soon start. It did start in September but it simply extended my holiday. Later on I will tell you about my experience of Evacuation.

Holidays before EasyJet

Holidays before EasyJet

Money was short during the Great Depression. Ordinary workers were only allowed one week for their annual holiday but even one week needed careful budgeting. The railways used to offer reduced price excursion tickets to seaside resorts like Brighton so we had a few seaside holidays. We would stay in a small guesthouse, but I did not like these very much. On one occasion I disliked the food so much that I ended up eating sandwiches of tomato sauce between slices of bread.

Both men and women used to wear full length bathing costumes. People did not have special sporty clothes for their holidays. Sometimes men would sit on the beach wearing long trousers and jacket.




There was very little entertainment for someone my age. I enjoyed going on the Dodgems cars but that was only once or twice in the week.
Playing by myself on the beach soon became boring. I was never encouraged to learn to swim. When I was older I refused to go swimming because I believed that swimming could make me go deaf. My father was deaf, and I was not prepared to risk it. Unfortunately, nobody ever asked me why I was frightened of swimming so I did not learn until I was 23.





Sometimes my mother would bring her youngest sister. Aunt Win was about eight years older than me. She would play with me and that helped a lot . She was very kind and like a big sister to me.

Next time I will tell you about My Country Holidays which I enjoyed much more.

1929 Was an Eventful Year

A Labour government came into power.
Parliament voted to abolish workhouses.
A woman became a UK Cabinet Minister for the first time ever.
The Wall Street Crash precipitated a worldwide depression. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929]

And, on top of all this, I arrived.

In this blog I hope to record some of my family history. It is the story of an ordinary family who lived through some historic times. It may interest others who want to know about my generation. They may be surprised how we lived without so many things they take for granted.

I grew up in the Great Depression which lasted until WW2 so I experienced many changes.You may be surprised how we lived without so many things you take for granted.

We lived without antibiotics and the NHS. We shopped without supermarkets. And women had no labour-saving gadgets. Ordinary people, like my parents, did not own telephones or cars. We travelled by tram, bus or cycle. We did not even hear an aeroplane, let alone fly in one. A wide choice of places to rent meant no pressure to get on the property ladder. Milk, bread and coal were delivered to the house, usually using horse and cart.

It is not easy to find reliable details of everyday life. Nobody bothered to record such trivial details. Modern media usually presents a dramatic version of past events. Even old documentaries will contain government propaganda. Old photographs only show what people looked like, not how they actually lived. Period dramas try to do this, but we cannot tell if they are accurate.

I welcome your questions and will answer as many as I can.

Next time I will tell you about Holidays before EasyJet.