Come on you oldies, yes you Sara, and others.

Sweet cigarettes and tobacco
Coffee shops with juke boxes
Home milk delivery in glass bottles by horse and cart
Road sweepers with horses and carts
Party lines on the telephone
Newsreels before the film
TV test card patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again. Just one channel and only black and white.
Peashooters
78 rpm records
45 RPM records
Hi-fi's
Metal ice trays with levers
Blue flashbulbs
Cork popguns
Wash tub wringers
Antimacasars
Curtain behind the door to keep out the draught
No central heating
Coppers to heat water in summer when there was no coal fire - we didn't have immersion heaters back then
When hardly anyone owned a car

There are lots more things which many, or some of us, will remember which are completely alien to the younger generations.

How about not having a fridge and how some houses had a meat safe? Gas cookers didn't have pilot lights, you used matches.

When I took my driving test cars did have indicators but we still had to use hand signals as that was part of the test, we did both types of signals. Some cars had little indicator arms which popped out at the side of the car, my boyfriend had an A30 and that had little indicator arms.

As a child we didn't have television until way after the coronation, then my mother had her first washing machine when I was about twelve and I am now 64. We used to have the 'bagwash', this was when you put dirty washing in a white fabric sack and it was collected on Monday and returned damp on Tuesday having been washed at the laundry. That would be for things like sheets, pillowcases and towels, the rest of the washing was done by hand. Homes had 'coppers' to heat water in, we didn't have immersion heaters, the only hot water was when you had a coal fire, that heated water too so in summer you used the copper to heat bathwater and water for washing clothes.

I had some cousins who lived in the country, they had no running water so drew drinking water from a well and used a stream for washing water. The loo was down the garden, not one that flushed either. At night you used a potty if you needed the loo!

When I first moved here in Jersey some of the houses were still using gaslight.

Those milk horses were so well trained, they knew when to move on. My friend's dad became a milkman but this was near the end of the horse era, he had an electric float but there were still some horses. He had us in fits when he told us about one of the milkies on Christmas Eve having been given one Christmas drink ( or should I say lots) too many. The horse ended up taking him back to the dairy while he snored.

Do you remember when milk was delivered 365 days per year, 366 on leap years? So as to have Christmas Day off the milky used to deliver late in the evening on Christmas Eve, prior to that they did the normal delivery. So many homes didn't have fridges that it was necessary to have daily deliveries.

Bread was delivered daily too, and the vegetable van used to come round each week, as did the paraffin man.

You couldn't get soft toilet paper, only hard shiny stuff but that was for posh people anyway, most of us had squares of newspaper which we 'softened' by rubbing before use.

The nightcart use to travel along a small laneway behind my grandparent's house. Heaven forbid if you were 'on the throne' at the time. (I was a quick learner- it only happened once!). They lived in town so had luxuries such as milk deliveries, letterboxes that were not a mile away from the house, running water complete with taps and an inside bathroom (washhouse).

I was bought up on a farm, and as soon as I was old enough, I got the job of emptying the can, having first having to dig holes in very granitey soil. Toilet paper usually consisted of old phone books- not sure where they all came from, but I certainly know where they went. Archeologists in the distant future are going to be puzzled working it all out.

We did not get milk out of bottles or cartons. We got it out of cows, with the top third of the bucket being yummy thick cream. Great on porridge with brown sugar.

No running water, either. Our supply came via a windmill pump from an irrigation canal, and was stored in a couple of 10,000 gallon tanks. To get hot water, we had to light the stove and wait.. and wait.. and wait. We only had a bath- I did not have a shower till I was in high school- and then only a few inches deep.

School was totally different, too. Who can remember how to read logarithm tables or slide rules? Rattling off 12-times tables was a regular occurence, as was naming all the rivers on the east coast of Australia!

Sounds like you had your childhood Sue, same time as I did!
Locality may have differed, things you describe did not!

Lived in 18th Century thatched cottage, tied house that went with father's job in adjacent apple orchard. Whilst we had mains electricity, and water............no bath, that was galvanised tub in front of kitchen range. Copper Boiler alongside range, mangle outside in shed. Toilet, likewise non-flushing adjacent to house, unlit and unheated.
Light(for toilet)provided by small oil lamp (which currently is used as ornament in front room). It wasn't wise to dig too deep in garden which surrounded cottage,as deposits from toilet buried every Sunday by father - but we had some terrific vegetables!!
Certainly remember some of my relatives having to collect their water either from pump at bottom of garden, or in one case from a well, complete with bucket and chain! Their lighting was those large Victorian/Edwardian period oil lamps.

We lived along, what maps call "unclassified road" (ie country lane), 2 miles from nearest shop, 1.5 miles from nearest bus stop, no car (they were for wealthy folk), transport were cycles. Most Saturdays, I would cycle with my father, 7 miles to town (Colchester), "park up" at my Grandfather's house, do weekly shop.....leave that at Grandfather's and maybe take in a football match. Cost adults something like 1/- but we kids got in for 6d (for those not familiar with pre-decimal in UK, that was 5p and 2.5p!! Things change don't they? I think the 2011-12 prices for same team something like £23 and £11 respectively per game.
After game, walk back to Grandfathers (or get bus), collect shopping and cycle 7 miles back home.
Don't know how my father did it......in those days people had to work Saturdays too, so he didn't finish work until Midday! Yet, he did, week in, week out.......and lived to be 86 years old!

For distance travel (before the "Beeching Axe") the wealthy had cars, the "working class" used buses ad/or trains. Now I guess the reverse applies - only the wealthy can afford train prices, the rest of us use cars!

Thanks Sue...........good trip down memory lane!

We played outside. We made up games. We played Red Rover and Simon Says. Mom used a whistle to call us home at night after dark. We didn't have street lights. We didn't lock our houses or our cars. We had one television set with only one channel and it was a black and white. The first time I saw a color television set was when I was 10 years old. When I first saw "blood" on a gunshot victim on TV, I cried and got sick to my stomach. We bought our milk from a neighbor that raised cows and we made our own butter from the cream on top. We went to a country schoolhouse that had two classrooms. One for grades K-3 and one for grades 4-6. The recess bell was a hand held bell that the principal would ring. If we acted up at school, we'd get paddled by the principal and then get paddled when we got home by dad. We grew most of our own vegetables and raised our own meat. We had transistor radios. The list could go on....and I'm only 51.

One or two things that come to my mind from a childhood in the late forties and early fifties;

Rag and bone men

Brylcreem (how could we ever have used the filthy greasy muck?)

Trolleybuses

Steam engines, and railway platform tickets (obtained from a penny-in-the-slot machine)

Reckitt's blue (used as a whitener in the rinse after the laundry had been done in the copper)

Packets of crisps (potato chips) with salt in twists of blue paper

Broken biscuits (Biscuits came to the shops in cubical seven-pound tins. If any of them got broken, the shopkeeper would put them in a separate tin or in a barrel under the counter and sell them off, all mixed together, at handsomely reduced prices. Nowadays, you may well find broken biscuits in your neatly wrapped little packets, but you pay full price for them. Lord Tesco tells me that's progress!)

Adding machines with handles
Blocks of cooking salt
Ah, when I was learning to write we used slates in school instead of paper
Dip pens when we started writing with ink, and the inkwells in the school desks. We were not permitted to use fountain pens until we were aged 10/11.
In senior school we were only permitted to use fountain pens in our 'good books' we could use pencil and biro in our rough books only.
Children HAD to stand on a bus if an adult didn't have a seat, and not just standing for elderly passengers.
Smoking was permitted on the top deckof the bus.
Drink driving wasn't a problem, there was no legal limit for what you could drink.
When I learnt to type it was on manual typewriters.

Getting a job was really easy, it wasn't necessary to have a degree in marketing to work in a shop, CVs were only for professionals, not for most jobs.

I can read a slide rule, and I'm 34. I've been able to read one for almost 18 years now.

I've seen the test card patterns, and not on Wikipedia either. I've also played those old 45rpm albums on my dad's turntable when I was a child, so I know about some of these things on your list, Sue.

Nowadays some of these high school kids have it easy...they can use calculators to do their tests (even I couldn't do that!)

I can read log tables, or could way back when.

I'm only 54 but I remember sharing most of the experiences listed above.

I also remember when...

An icecream cone cost sixpence and a large candy bar was a shilling. The dentist used to give me a shilling after my check-up so I could buy an icecream and the extra money meant you could get a Peter's Drumstick instead of a plain old cone.
I do remember pounds, shillings and pence, pounds and ounces, feet and inches etc. The maths involved would do your head in. Thank goodness we changed to dollars and cents in 1966, and went fully metric in 1970.
I was the envy of my friends because I had a transistor radio the size of a house-brick with a red leather cover.
I was the only kid in school whose mother worked instead of staying home.
We were the first family in the street to get a telephone - it was used by the entire neighbourhood for emergencies only. Our phone number was only one digit different to that of the airport enquiry desk and we used to get wrong numbers constantly until they changed the airport phone number.
We were the first family in the street to get a television set - broadcasting didn't begin until after dinner (about 7.00 pm) and finished well before midnight. The rest of the time you just got a test pattern. Black and white of course. There were only two channels - Channel 2 (the ABC, the government-sponsored channel) and Channel 7 (the commercial channel).
I roamed the neighbourhood from sun-up to sundown and my parents didn’t have the faintest idea where I was – and nobody thought anything of it.
Everything was delivered to the house by men in vans – the "milko" brought milk and the baker (my uncle) brought bread every day, and the fruit and vegie man came once a week.
There was a chain of clothing stores called S. W. Clark's. Once a week, the Clarks' man came around in a van and you paid him something on your account every week. Sometimes our neighbour would see the Clarks' man coming and if she didn't have the payment, she'd come and hide over at our house so that she would not be home when he arrived and she could claim to have missed him.
My friends and I would roam the grassy banks of the river foreshore, picking up money under the trees because we knew where the drunks lay and the money would fall out of their pockets.
Our school desks had inkwells but no ink in them – it was passé by then.
If you got punished at school, you kept really quiet about it because if your parents found out, you’d get punished at home too. Who wants to be punished twice for the same offence?
It was unheardof for a parent to complain to a teacher about their methods of discipline. Teacher had absolute authority in their classroom and parents backed them to the hilt.
I had pet rabbits when I was three but my parents had to get rid of them because the government passed a law declaring them to be vermin and we were no longer allowed to have them as pets. You are allowed to have them as pets now, though.
We celebrated Guy Fawkes' night - before the government outlawed that too. I remember we were only allowed to have sparklers but no crackers because my parents were so protective. I was envious of the kids whose parents let them have real crackers.
There was no such thing as fast food, except for fish and chip shops. There was no such thing as McDonald’s, KFC etc. The American chains didn’t arrive until I was well into my teens.
If one child caught chicken pox, measles or mumps, all the other children would be sent round to play in order to catch it and 'get it out the way'. The only immunisations we received were for polio and tuberculosis.
Life was so unfair when my mother refused to buy me “witches' britches”.

I remember pretty much all of the above plus

The man who came round sharpening knives, garden shears, that sort of thing, once a month

The man from the Pru coming round every week

Going to the Co-op to get shopping for my Mum and being very careful to make sure I quoted her Divi number so she got her bonus share out at Christmas

Collecting cards in packets of tea - bit like cigarette cards. They ran in sets, birds, famous people, sports stars. Also packets of tea with stamps on them. Cut out the stamps, stick them on a card and you could get a free packet of tea with them.

Green Shield Stamps. You used to get them everywhere and could exchange them for goods of all types. I am still using a garden fork and spade set I got when we had our first house, which is over 30 years ago now.

Oh yes I remember those too, and I can remember sweets still being on ration.

We still have Co-op Share Numbers here! Mine is 5173 if anyone is shopping in Jersey. Divi is 4% on everything you spend so if you shop there regularly for food, or buy any large goods, book a holiday through them etc you get a nice chunk of money back in about April I think.

OK Then!
Air raid shelters, we grew marrows on ours, blackout curtains, parachute silk underwear, gas masks(mine was a Mickey Mouse one), ID cards my number DXJC23 (after nearly 70 years I remember it, it was so important) Ration books, ARP wardens, stirrup pumps, doodlebugs, Hitler speeches, Lord Hawhaw, Mr Churchill on the wireless.Messerschmitts, sirens , sirensuits, dried egg, marrow jam.
Following GI's shouting "Got any gum, chum?"and usually being thrown some too.
Parcels from USA and Canada, with peanut butter, spam , pineapple rings, dried fruit, a real box of chocolates.My first bought doll (sent from America,I was 6)
My first banana, trying to eat it with the skin on. I was also 6.Toffee apples made with the week's ration of sugar.Wotno on walls, "Yes we have no bananas"
Yes!PG tips packets with stamps on! Tommy Handley, Sinatra, Bing, Bob Hope.
My mum copying the New Look on her sewing machine, one of the early Singers, and sheets that were sides-to-middled, wooden darning mushrooms, cut out dolls in books ,the Corona man.,crispy bacon.
Our Milkman filled the jugs we left out , from a churn with a ladle. No glass bottles.D day, VE day Street parties.
I think I am up to about 1946!

ren33............whilst I can recall snatches of WW2 (I was born 1941), my first real clear memory is of the VE Day Street party, and how I screamed the place down when my mother said I was too young to attend the subsequent bonfire & fireworks held on some waste ground (maybe THE Bomb Site.......I think one bomb fell on town).

Talking of which, the village where I lived in above thatched cottage, we moved to in, I think, March 1947 (or 48). It rejoiced (still does presumably) under the name LITTLE HORKESLEY. During WW2, the village church, which was set amongst trees and thus totally invisible from the air, was flattened by bombs jettisoned by damaged German bomber. The "local" was also badly damaged..........the pub was re-built within 6 months, I believe the church was rebuilt about 1958...........a case of getting priorities right!

Other childhood memories........walking round and round the harvest fields, behind the Tractor & Binder with a stick for catching rabbits........to my knowledge I never even got CLOSE to catching one! Lol

I remember when you could smoke in hospitals .. and everywhere else .. cinemas, theatres, planes.

I remember 'fags' were a lolly cigarette.

I remember the test pattern too and before programmes would start for the day they would play the national anthem and before the station would close for the night.

I remember when there were still WW1 veterans marching in ANZAC Day.

Yes,C30, the street parties were memorable. We lived in a very small street then (Eden Street Cambridge) and I remember my joy when a GI (what WAS he doing upstairs in our flat ?) threw down a sixpence for me to buy toffee apples etc. I am sure there were jellies and home made icecream.

People used to have their nylon stockings repaired, some shops had a large machine thing for doing it.

Navy blue school knickers with a pocket for your hanky. The mind boggles now that one would put your hand up your skirt in public to get your hanky out!

The old slow drill at the dentist, oooer, and the horrid gasmask they used on you if you needed a tooth out.

Routine chest x-rays, a sort of walk-in centre, for anyone and everyone - I can still remember them having one here after I moved here 40 years ago.

X-ray machines in some children's shoe departments for checking to see if the shoes fit - Clarks had them, not Startrite, that was when my children were young. My children wore Startrite and were not x-rayed as the shop we used didn't have the machine, they just had expert fitters.

Certainly there was smoking in hospitals, my father had an ashtray on his bedside cabinet. When I had my babies the mothers who smoked had to go to the dayroom, not smoke in the ward.

Teachers could, and did, smoke in the classroom. I can remember a male teacher we had, Mr Turnball, and he smoked.

When I was in primary school the class size was typically 48 children, and you could hear a pin drop. Teachers could, and did, use a cane, ruler, plimsole etc to whack you if you misbehaved. You could even get whacked for not getting enough correct in our weekly spelling test. We would be given ten words to learn ready for Friday's test. If you got 5/10 or under correct you got a whack for each one under 6, so 5/10 got one whack, 4/10 got two whacks - and so on.

Sounds like something we need to reinstate! People cannot spell worth anything anymore.

Having Sunday Roasts at my grandparents' house, cooked in a wood-fired oven. Always with fantastic roast potatoes and for desert, chocolate eclairs (cooked in the same oven). I got to fill the eclairs with custard and cream that mum had whipped.
Visiting the 'outhouse' when it really was outside the house.
Playing cards with a 19th century cribbage board complete with ivory pegs (very poor form now!)

Not all memories are that pleasant! Being 'asked' to clean and shine all the silverware - why did they win so many tennis trophies?!

Traffic 'lights' with a rotating hand that pointed to the colours.
Indicators (turn signaling) which involved small "arms" popping out from the side of the car.
Cramming most of the family on the bench front seat of the FJ Holden.
(I haven't thought about most of these things for decades, so great thread!)

Now for a very sad one - polio in countries like the UK rather than third world countries. I remember when the vaccine was newly available but this was too late for so many, I knew and know people who had this dreadful disease. It will be wonderful when the various health programmes mean that no child gets this in the future.

We were told never to eat any icecream but Lyons or Walls as the others could give you polio. Swimming pools were frowned on a bit at that time as it was thought that you could catch polio there.
Speaking of medical matters, my mum had migrains and the only medicine she was given was Pheno barbitone- it just seemed to make her sleep.There were no antibiotics thats for sure

It still can be caught in swimming pools, that hasn't changed...

What is polio?

Poliomyelitis is highly infectious and affects the nervous system, sometimes resulting in paralysis. It's transmitted through contaminated food, drinking water, faeces and swimming pool water.

Oh yes, what about the cars! My Grandad had an Austin 7 that you had to start with a handle. It was a lovely car. My uncle had a Lanchester. He parked it at the top of Porlock in Cornwall and it rolled down quite a way before we managed to get a big stone under the wheel.
We used to all pile in and go to Cornwall on holiday and play car games, spot the car make
I always wanted Ford or Austins. After I had kids I realise why my mum had always wanted Rolls Royce.
You are right, this is a great thread!

When I was a teenager some of the lads bought cheap old bangers as first cars and one of them had a Lanchester, it had pre-select gears, I bet the car would be worth a fair amount now if it was still around. I bet it cost him a fiver!

Remember my cousin buying my Uncles 1936 Morris 8, and doing "full power trials" along the A45....think he got it over 50mph!
My father had, in 1960's......a 1949 Ford Anglia, complete with side indicators. He then went all up market, and bought a 1957, split windscreen, Morris Minor.......still had it in 1972! The number plate (TRT2) was worth more than the car!

I, in the navy, needed transport I could use on my own for weekend leave.......that meant 2 wheels. Bought my first bike, BSA Bantam 125cc, from a shipmate for £5! Even the last bike I rode, in 1976 BSA Royal Star A50 500cc, only cost me £250..........had one today I could add another nought to that figure!

These entries bring back memories!

Being driven to school in the early sixties by my Dad in the sidecar on his Vincent Black Shadow (He was sooooo popular in our street starting the thing up early in the morning, especially when he was on an early duty at HM Naval Base on Portland - HMS Osprey was the 'ship')....

Being sent up to Mr and Mrs Whatley's sweet shop at the end of the street to get my Mum and Dad's cigarettes (10 Woodbines or Players Weights - so called because they were also sold by well, weight).... Kids could do that back then and no questions were asked!

Not seeing my first pocket calculator until 1976 (My best mate Dave Hyde's Dad was a customs officer at Weymouth and had confiscated a few that came into Weymouth port in a 'dodgy' shipment)... It was a small black Sinclair and only had the basic four functions and a square root key! As far as I know it was the ONLY one in Dorset at the time!!

When we took our final exams before leaving school we were only allowed to use log tables and slide rules - the only calculators allowed were the soft ones between our ears, which reminds me.... I had need to attend a local college and, to a man, none of the students had even heard of a slide rule let alone use one. I took mine in to show them and they were fascinated.

Finally, and most importantly, having to take my chances in life.... There were no Health and Safety Nazis around to spoil our fun in those days!

Oh... and the last car that I can remember my Dad buying was a Ford Zodiac MkIII.... It was immense, pale blue metallic, red leather upholstery, acres of chrome and loads of 'automotive' badges fitted to the front bumper... Everyone wanted a lift home in it!