The suffering better off's in WW2 with shortage of domestic servant labour

[joboy]

I do remember my father taking me to Lisson Grove Labour Exchange to pick up his dole in the 1930's and I remember the huge number of men lined up to get theirs ....... of course I was too young to understand what it was all about.
We lived in a two roomed hovel in Hall Place then and a tinned bath was used by all the family and I thought it was 'the norm' for everybody.
To get back to the topic;
My mum did a bit of 'charring' for a family in Elgin Avenue (where the 'toffs' lived at that time) for one day each week which supplemented dad's dole.
They were nice Jewish folk who treated her well and she worked for them for a long time up until,and shortly after,the outbreak of WW2.
I was just turned 12 and almost 6' tall at outbreak of war and growing fast and the family she worked for had a son who was slightly older and taller than me and I used to get all his cast off clothes which were always in very good condition.
I remember a heavy grey overcoat that had a velour black collar that was handed down to me.
Such an acquisition!! as such an item was out of reach for the folk where I lived and I wore it for years.
Joe

[dobfarm]

I agree with a lot of what your saying, there are some really deserving cases of people in real need, some at higher levels of class where people lose their job unexpected. I was watching a program a while ago about food banks, showing people who have to got to use them out of sheer need, yet the program team did not seem pick up on the fact that one of a married couple at the bank, who while they interviewed outside the food bank building, that person had gone out for a smoke, a hand rolled fag you would expect, no it was a 20 pack of king size cigs that cost about £7 to £10 a packet and times that by 7 days a week.

[barryd]

Joboy - surely you must be wrong. Haven't you read the David Lloyd-George speech "Land Fit For Heroes".

[joboy]

You jest of course Barry (with your tongue in cheek) ............ and you probably appreciate that as old as I am I am a realist.
A land fit for heroes  >:(was,as you know, complete BS which can be viewed here;
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Bullshit+Baffles+Brains.
It was a common saying in my days as a Royal Marine and known simply as the three 'B's
Joe

[panic]

Same as it ever was.

The 3B's live, been in companies where visits by directors etc will have people getting stuff in order with a front veneer and all the carp behind.

You will get people working in care who understand peanut wages from well to do. My missus does and been a few times when looking for new clients you get someone in a big house advertising for help looking after someone, offering minimum wage on split shifts (30m-2hrs a few times a day, travel time not paid obviously). You see the same adverts regularly as people only last a few months until they get  something better.

[dobfarm]

Hi Joboy

Actually going back to my mum, though my dad by 1956 was in his own right on a average decent wage as an engineer for the time, after we kids was getting older at school, my mum got a job as a charr woman doing morning work, cleaning for a another Mill owners wife and more finding something to do. The lady was a different kettle of fish too the other tight one, she used to work with her, washing up, making the beds, mum would run the vac/dust around and Friday was bottoming out day for the coming weekend for both of them, by 11 30 am, work over, kettle on, gabbing time, mum used to get at varied times in the afternoon depending on the latest gossip and would come home with fair lump of meat from the couples weekend joint and veg from her husbands garden on Monday. She worked for the older lady till she died in the 1970's and we as kids in the fifties/early sixties got some great presents at Xmas from the couple also became more friends. Dad loved gardening and her husband spent hours on dads allotment with him and dad used to do odd jobs for the chap like decorating.

Things were not always, what they seemed.   

[jbml]

At the outbreak of the second world war, my great grandfather had two Irish housemaids who wanted to go home to safety, but were worried about the prospect of not being able to find work there.

My great grandfather's solution was to rent a house in Bray, where he and his wife and their six youngest children lived for the duration, continuing to employ their two Irish maids.

My grandfather stayed behind to run the family drapery business (now working full-time at the manufacture of army uniforms) whilst my grandmother was left with the task of looking after the house which had previously been done by the two housemaids! She was, however, from a more modest background - her father had died just after the first war, and her mother had been denied a war widow's pension and so struggled to bring up her four children working as a cleaner at Whipp's Cross hospital.

[fifer1947]

Does anyone remember the man who checked your eligibility ie the Means Test inspector?

Checked you didn't have 2 of anything, or other stuff you could sell to keep body and soul together, looked in your drawers and cupboards in case you were hiding anything? 

[giggsycat]

Does anyone know when they are planning to bring The Workhouses back?

It can only be a matter of time!