Laundry, Loneliness & Laxatives

[callmemadam]

When I was a child, my aunt took Woman’s Weekly, (mostly for the knitting), then passed it on to my mother. I would while away a wet afternoon in the holidays curled up with a heap of them, reading the advice given out by ‘Mrs Marryatt’ (later she called herself ‘Mary’) and my favourite, Looking at Life with The-man-who-sees. So I was pleased to pick up some ancient issues yesterday and renew my acquaintance with them. By the way, the model on the left in this photo is now better known as Mrs Michael Howard.


Looking through these mags two things struck me. Firstly, the similarity in tone to the old Girl’s Own Paper and secondly, the power of advertising. Keeping house, cooking and entertaining, making dainty home improvements, dressing fashionably but cheaply and making most of your own and your children’s clothes: 1956 could be 1906. Your problem would be isolation (young mother, pensioner) and The man-who-sees would be there with encouraging advice. On the left is his predecessor, The Friend Who Understands, looking disconcertingly like Dornford Yates.

Robert Opie is surely right about the power of brand names to bring back the past. When I worked in an ‘istoric hice I would sometimes be on Laundry duty, where the goffering irons and heated drying cupboard would be ignored as visitors exclaimed over bars of Monkey Brand soap. These sixties images of Omo, Daz, Camp coffee, Lavendo polish and ‘No More Tears’ Johnson’s baby shampoo are obviously imprinted for ever on my mind. Notable that in 1956 pain relief is required for ‘One of those days?’ but by 1962 it’s OK to ask, ‘Period Pains?’

Advertisers were fond of picture stories. Here Tessa finds income and confidence by becoming a Littlewood’s agent



and poor old granny hasn’t been getting the right kind of sleep but is put right by Horlicks.



Whiteness in the wash was something of an obsession: who remembers the guilt-inducing ‘Someone’s mother isn’t using Persil’?



This may seem quaint but should you spend an evening watching ITV3 and sit through the advertisements for DulcoEase, Vanish and Cillit Bang, you may wonder how much has changed.
Finally, an idea for supper:

Comments

[pinkhebe.livejournal.com]

Plaice and tinned spaghetti. Reminds me of fridays at prep school: it was always fish (fingers or cakes), and if we were lucky, spaghetti hoops instead of baked beans. And always mashed potato. Sometimes peas. Gosh. All that starch!

~x~

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Yukky or what? Don't think I've ever been offered such a strange combination. Growing girls need starch!

[land-girl.livejournal.com]

Lovely post! Wasn't it the Woman's Weekly who had the Robin Family, too? People used to save those for me to read when I was small ...

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Yes, I've been reading about Rowley Robin! I was sure there was one called Rowena but in these issues there's just Rosemary. The series must have run for donkey's years.

[land-girl.livejournal.com]

Oh, there definitely was a Rowena! I remember now: my Mother had kept her collection of stories from when she was a little girl, and my great-grandmother in Scotland used to send them too.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Glad she wasn't a figment of my imagination.

[hartleyhare.livejournal.com]

I remember Rowena too! Wednesdays were a big day in our house, when I was little: Woman's Weekly arrived for my mum and Twinkle for me.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

What a luxury that was, to have magazines delivered. It's not that long ago we had to stop having papers put through the letterbox but it seems an age.