100 Years Ago....

[Gillstay]

Dad, born 1930, lived in Bristol near the Docks, Docks tend to be quite rough places. His father had a lodger, Ralph Weeks, a very big man who was the local bobby. Apparently if a big fight broke out ( this would perhaps be the late 1930s) in a local pub (as it often did apparently), there'd be a knock at the door, Mr Weeks, we need you at....
He'd go down there, pick out the biggest fella,...and set to him, often knocking him out, or down. That tended to calm things down a bit.
Imagine that happening now....

A few years ago i wandered around Bristol docks and said how interesting it was to an old boy.

`Before the war you would not have been down here after dark!' was his reply.

 

[MontyVeda]

Pure luxury!! We had a hard earth floor.
...

one of my friends bought a small terraced house on the outskirts of town and under the carpets and underlay was exactly that!

 

[Oldhippy]

I have a resident born in 1923, biplane were still the norm, so many changes and inventions in one lifetime. Probably more than any period in time.

 

[presta]

The most common occupations in Britain at the time were: agricultural labourer

This graph is a favourite of mine, if anything proves the Luddites were spectacularly wrong it's this:

If technology and productivity improvements put people out of work over the long run the way the Luddites feared we'd have 57% unemployment by now.

I thought this was going to be a thread on all those cyclechatters who have received telegrams from the King (or Queen if proper old)

My father would be up for one of those in a fortnight if he hadn't died 36 years ago. He was a Leeds fan too.

a 1920s house, remarkably spartan but with some (then) mod cons

My uncle lived in the same back to back terrace all his life, so I got to see the house where my father grew up. It was pretty much still as it had been in the 1940s, complete with the old range and the rag rug my grandma made.

There's a terrace of cottages at the St Fagin's museum that have been restored to a different decade in each one. The 1980s one has the same freezer in that I had, it makes you feel old when your stuff starts turning up in museums.

Dad, born 1930, lived in Bristol near the Docks, Docks tend to be quite rough places. His father had a lodger, Ralph Weeks, a very big man who was the local bobby. Apparently if a big fight broke out ( this would perhaps be the late 1930s) in a local pub (as it often did apparently), there'd be a knock at the door, Mr Weeks, we need you at....
He'd go down there, pick out the biggest fella,...and set to him, often knocking him out, or down. That tended to calm things down a bit.
Imagine that happening now....

My father's best friend ran a pub next to the Salvation army hostel once. The down and outs sat outside drinking meths until opening time then piled in the door, so they were used to getting a bit of trouble, and he kept the leg off an old bar stool behind the bar just in case it came in handy. On one such occasion a bloke was going for his missus behind her back, so he got the stool leg and whacked him over the head with it. "No need to hit 'em quite so hard next time, just on the shoulder will do" said the copper.

His missus was the nurse at the main bridewell under Leeds town hall for a while, where they put the rowdies on a Saturday night. She was a lovely woman, with a heart of gold, but she didn't take any aggro from the lodgers.