What was 1950 like?
The first thing to say is that rationing was still in effect for sweets, sugar, meat and petrol amongst other items. The bread and clothes rations had ended in 1948 and 1949 respectively, while the petrol ration was becoming much more generous. A few months before this magazine was published, the soap ration was removed. These were reactions to the growing unpopularity of the ruling Labour Party who had won the 1945 election with a majority of 146 seats. In the 1950 election Clement Atlee saw his Government, who foresaw no end to rationing given the weakness of the world economy, re-elected with a wafer thin majority of 5, the result of a Conservative campaign strategy based on ending rationing completely. It was clear that the country had had enough of restrictions and was extremely eager to return to an economy where the consumer could be free to spend what they wanted.
In a sense, 1950 was the first modern election, as it took place with no plural voting, which allowed you to vote more than once for various reasons, and no university constituencies which accounted for 12 seats with Oxford and Cambridge having two seats apiece. The turnout in the 1950 election was 83.9% of the eligible voters, an all time high. To put this in perspective, the turnout in the UK General Election of 2024 was 59.7%!
According to the Office of National Statistics, the average wage for male manual workers was £7 a week, whilst for those women who did work, they were paid just £4 a week on average. For young men called up for National Service, wages were significantly lower, even allowing for room and board, which were basic to say the least, amounting to around £1 10s a week. This was just one of the reasons why National Service was so disliked by the generation who came of age just after the war.
The UK Film industry was in very good health in 1950, producing a large number of films. The Blue Lamp saw the first appearance of Dixon of Dock Green. It was almost the last as he was shot by a young thug played by Dirk Bogarde! Luckily for Jack Warner, George Dixon was given a second life and ended up as a fixture of British TV for over 20 years. The pilot episode of The Archers was broadcast on BBC Radio in June, going in to full production the following year. On Television the first appearance of Andy Pandy took place in July in a strand called For The Children, that later became Watch with Mother. The first Chronicle of Narnia, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was published on October 16. Finally, one of the most loved British comics of the Post War era, The Eagle, first appeared on April 14.
Everywoman 1950
So, what caught my eye when I worked through the magazine. Overall, I would say that the sheer familiarity of many of the products and the approach to Christmas was a real surprise. As this is 75 years ago, and took place in a country still in the grips of economic turmoil and rationing, I expected it to be a very traditional approach. In some ways it is, but in others it is very much looking to a better future. In that sense, it was as much about influencing the celebration as it was about reflecting its reality. The adverts for presents included perfumes and cosmetics, which would definitely have counted as aspirational, but many of the articles concentrated on what limited budgets and restricted choice would have allowed. It was quite a difficult balance to maintain, but I think the readers would have felt that it had been done quite well. It’s likely that some of the Everywomen this was aimed at would have cut out both articles and adverts for future use.
The article entitled Highlights of Christmas is absolutely fascinating because many of the concerns expressed by the magazine are still expressed today. First of all, they describe the ‘Oh, we’re not bothering about Christmas’ brigade as a ‘Woeful Greek Chorus’ and I wholeheartedly agree. I know there are often very good reasons for people to avoid Christmas, and I certainly wouldn’t criticise anyone for not taking part, whatever those reasons are. The problem is that, very often, they tell us that they won’t bother to express an imagined superiority over those who love Christmas. In 1950, the magazine reliably informs us, the Christmas card habit was dying out. It’s a cry you hear much more nowadays, and with much more reason, as all but a very few homes end up with a couple of dozen Christmas cards at most. The younger generation never really sent cards to their classmates at school, so they have never got into the habit and I think it will go one of two ways. Either the Christmas card will be all but extinct in 10 years time, or it will make a comeback in the same way as vinyl has for a generation eager for a more tactile world. My money is, sadly, on the former. The final reflection mentions the ‘real or imagined difficulties in post-war conditions’ as a reason why many are turning away from the traditional Christmas. However, as the magazine points out, ‘if Christmas isn’t a time for joy, when will there be one?’
The name of Victor Silvester will be unfamiliar to very many these days, but in his time he was the most famous ballroom dancer of the post-war period and his book, Modern Ballroom Dancing was the most significant publication of the time. It was first published in 1927 and the last edition was published in 2005. To have a dancing lesson from this great exponent was a coup for the magazine and a way for its readers to improve their own prowess on the dancefloor in an era when this was absolutely central to the courting process.
Familiar Brands
On the back cover you would have found the advert for Birds Custard, a product that featured in the 1896 Pears Annual! In this case, it is positioning itself as a central component of the Christmas dessert. It includes a very helpful recipe for Christmas Pudding and a ‘Christmas Custard’ which is just normal custard with a dash of spirits! However, that in itself is interesting as, for many families, alcohol would not be an integral ingredient of the season as the idea of excessive drinking was frowned upon. In addition to this somewhat Puritan view, it was also very expensive and out of the reach of many.
Lea and Perrins Worcestershire Sauce is still a staple of our cupboard as is Oxo. The more interesting advert here is for the latter. Instead of a gravy, it suggests that Oxo can be the basis for a healthy drink for children. The football crowds when I was much younger were reputed to be partial to a cup of Bovril along with their pie. If they were Oxo kids in the 40s or 50s that would make complete sense.
The final advert is quite bittersweet. It’s the book written by Marion Crawford, known by the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret as Crawfie, beloved Nanny to the heir and spare. She published the book in 1950, which was filled with affectionate detail and was agreed to initially by the Royal Family. When it appeared under her own name she was ostracised, forced to leave her grace and favour cottage and never spoken or written to again by any member of the Windsors. Their coldness even extended to her death in 1988 when none of the Royal Family sent a wreath to her funeral. The double standards of the Royal Family in this matter are illustrated by the appearance of an article ‘The Day at Sandringham’ which freely gives the readers of Everywoman the type of anecdotes that peppered the book. It is a sad and disquieting story.
Final Reflections
I really enjoyed reading this magazine as so much was unfamiliar but so much was familiar to me as a child. When you consider that my Mum was 12 and my Dad was nearly 16, you can see the social structures that shaped their lives and attitudes.
Three stories in this magazine are very interesting as a reflection of 1950 society. Fanny was a Minx, quite apart from it’s now amusing name for the main character, is about a free spirited woman who ‘had not had a proper upbringing’. I wonder if she needs a man to bring her under control?! ‘When Grandma came to stay’ features an appalling Mother in Law whose aim is to sow discontent within the marriage of her daughter and son in law. Basically the stereotype of post war comedy until the 80s. Finally, ‘Fairies at the Christening’ features an ‘air headed’ woman who has, over the years promised at least a dozen friends that they could be Godmother to her first child. The idea of Godparents may be old fashioned now, but the social and personal knots she ties herself in are very familiar in what is a very enjoyable story.
So, in this magazine you see a reflection of an age that is still restricted, both socially and financially, but it points the way towards a better future in its articles and adverts.
Are you more of a night or morning person?
When you are a child you either get up early by nature or are made to get up early by your parents for school. By the time you get to your teenage years you still have to get up early because of school but your body is telling you it isn’t ready because you stayed up so late. This isn’t to do with laziness or bad time keeping, but due to the changing nature of your brain which induces a kind of jet lag that puts you into a different time zone.
Now, when I was a teenager I was seen as being firmly in the lazy camp when I got up at 11 or 12 o clock on the weekend or during holidays. In that, my parents were following their parents because little was known about the brain and society worked on a ‘9 to 5’ setting for most people. When my children reached their teens I tended to be a little more tolerant of late weekends when there was nothing specific to get up for. This was partly as a result of my own teenage experiences and partly because, as a teacher, I had learned about the issues for the teenage brain.
Now, here’s a proposal for you to think about. If I were in charge of education, and I am glad I am not given the problems involved (!), I would start Secondary school not only at a different time but at a different age.
When I lived in Worcestershire we had a tripartite system of First, Middle and Senior schools running from 5 to 9, 9 to 13 and 13 to 18 respectively. That was the best system in many ways. Pupils in Middle Schools were able to develop at their own pace educationally and, more importantly, socially. The difference in readiness for Senior school between an 11 year old and a 13 year old is night and day. To nearly every 11 year old, Secondary school is scary or downright terrifying. By the time they get to 13, they are more confident in who they are. Why do you think places like Eton and Harrow start at 13? If it is good enough for the toffs it should be extended to those they would deride as plebs!
Once that school starts, it should be set up very differently in terms of teaching hours. I would start school at 10am and finish at 5pm which would partly sort out the issue of morning lessons which are a waste of time for so many teenagers. The 5pm finish would be helpful in terms of scheduling the lessons at a time that suits those being taught. It wouldn’t be too unwelcome a change for teachers either as, by the time we are halfway through a term we too find early mornings a real challenge! When you look at the experiments that have taken place over the years, they are remarkably consistent in terms of their results. Grades improve, attendance improves and illness reduces. Why won’t we do it across the board? Quite simply, because it’s human nature to say ‘That’s the way it was when I was a kid so that’s how it should be for everyone else’.
If you want to look at some of the theories, this is a good start, but I would be really interested in your views for or against in the comments below.
What Was 1939 Like?
On September 3, of course, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced that a state of war existed between the United Kingdom and Germany. Prior to this, the whole country was switched to a war footing in preparation with the Women’s Auxilliary Air Force and the Women’s Land Army set up and reservists and Civil Defence Workers being called up. These actions were completed by the end of August. It is an event reflected in the pages of the magazine as I will investigate later.
However, World War II wasn’t the only thing that happened during the year. On January 2, 118,557 fans packed into Ibrox to watch Rangers v Celtic in the Old Firm Derby. It’s still the biggest crowd to turn up to a game in Great Britain and, with safety measures being what they are and terraces being a thing of the past, it will never be surpassed. The Sutton Hoo Viking treasure was excavated in the summer of 1939 and donated to the British Museum. Also, Greggs Bakery was founded in Tyneside in this year, and thus the future of sausage rolls and decent priced coffee was secured!
Average weekly wages in 1939 included 38 shillings a week for farmhands who were expected to put in a 50 hour week for 9 months a year, going down to 48 hours during Winter. Members of the Women’s Land Army had their wages set 10 shillings a week below that. Those working in the clerical professions would typically earn between 40 to 70 shillings per week. Shop assistants were low paid by the standards of the time with around 30 shillings a week being their average. Domestic servants would typically receive 15 shillings a week if they were live in and double that if they were not. Miners would typically receive nearer 60 shillings a week to reflect, at least to some extent the danger they faced every day.
Music that was recorded or released in 1939 included Run, Rabbit Run, There’ll Always Be An England, Wish Me Luck as You Wave Me Goodbye and We’ll Meet Again. All four songs became wartime standards that are still familiar to so many people today. One that has been forgotten is I’m Sending a Letter to Santa Claus by Vera Lynn which neatly brings us to the theme underlying this magazine.
Picture Post 1939
When I saw this on eBay I was really pleased because I was fascinated how the first Christmas of World War II would be treated. It turned out to be far more nuanced in its approach than I was expecting. The imagery of the front cover is, I think, the magazine saying, ‘This is what we are fighting for’. The ideas of innocence and future potential are a message to the readers that the war will be over and we need to protect the future of babies like this. Then, on Page 13 you have the picture of Father Christmas holding a tin helmet. Although war has begun, the festive season must carry on, as it did in World War I. Obviously, no one knew how long the war would continue for, and no one yet foresaw the Blitz which would bring civilians into the new front line. However, that spirit of trying to be as normal as possible shines through in that picture. We then see the Life of Jesus Christ recounted using bible verses and pictures from artists and photographers throughout the centuries. In a far more devout time, this was another way of reminding the readers that there was a higher power that would help and protect the country in its time of trouble.
The stories of children in It’s Strange, This Christmas are sobering and upsetting. The picture in the middle of four boys is particularly affecting. They are the four sons of Stoker Jones who was killed when HMS Courageous was torpedoed, and we see them looking through the window of the Barnado’s Orphanage in Plymouth. Maybe the Mother is also dead, maybe she was unable to look after them, but the four Jones boys would be joined by millions of others in the next six years as the war ran its course. At the time, perhaps, they were representative of the way that lives were already being torn apart by Hitler’s evil regime and would have strengthened the desire of those on the frontline and on the Home Front to defeat the enemy at all costs. It is presented in that understated matter of fact way that films of the era tend to have, and is far more impactful as a result. Other stories reflect the Children of men abroad fighting for their country, men who had been injured and men who had lost their jobs as a result of the war. I must confess that I had never considered that people lost their jobs at a time of mass mobilisation.
The main reflection in the magazine comes from the Archbishop of York, William Temple who signs himself William Ebor as tradition dictated – Ebor being short for Eboracum, the Roman name for York. It is, once again, very nuanced in its argument, even if, as you would expect, he invokes the shared religion of so many. He refers to the celebration of Christmas, observing that, ‘Christmas as a purely secular festival has a charm and joy of its own’. When you compare that to the language of today, it is very inclusive and tolerant, perhaps because the place of religion is so secure. Later on he treads into even more unexpected territory telling the readers that Christians in every part of the world were part of the same church and who were united by Christmas. He specifically mentioned German, Italian and Japanese Christians, the first two who had already fought against the UK, with the third joining them as a result of the treaty of 1940 that set up the Axis Powers. They were brave words in that context, and it would be interesting to know if they were received with open minds by most of the readership. That readership would have been at the sharp end of the war, the 3d price positioning it as a mass market magazine.
Familiar Brands
Below you will see four instantly recognisable products being advertised. Stork, Nescafe, Aero and Quality Street are still found in our homes, the latter especially at Christmas time. Stork provides recipes for Mince Pies and Christmas Trifle, Nescafe positions itself as a great tasting instant coffee, Aero as the chocolate that is good for your teeth (!) and Quality Street as the perfect sweet for Christmas. With the exception of Aero, the brand positioning hasn’t changed. The products themselves have of course changed, arguably for the worse in the case of Aero and Quality Street, but the fact that they are still around indicates that despite our complaints they are clearly doing something right.
Final Reflections
The Picture Post of 1939 was as fascinating and evocative as I hoped it would be, but the tone of the articles and the way that British life was portrayed was quite surprising. It wasn’t jingoistic – perhaps that tone came later in the war – and it didn’t seek to use emotion to strengthen its case as I might have expected. However, the restraint and the reportage style make this far more effective than any over the top journalism could ever do. There is a clear lesson for today’s journalists and writers both online and offline.
What are your feelings about eating meat?
I am an omnivore and always will be. However, there are two distinct caveats I now apply to the meat I do eat. First, how much have I been eating recently and second, where does it come from.
When I was brought up, most people had meat with nearly every meal. The Sunday roast was a British staple in virtually every household. Meat for sandwiches, again something I ate virtually every day, was of the highly processed variety. The result was a very unhealthy diet that led to problems with the digestive system at best and high levels of cancer at worst. For me, when I was in charge of my own kitchen I initially followed that pattern. However, I was lucky enough to go to Japan and find a completely different and much healthier vegetable based diet. Once I had got used to it, and I had three years over there to do so, I couldn’t go back to the meat heavy diet of my childhood and early adulthood ever again. Nowadays, we keep our meat intake as low as possible with, in an average week, meat featuring two or three times in our meals.
When times were tougher, money wise, we bought the cheapest meat, which contained poor quality ingredients and which were not manufactured with any interest in animal welfare at any level. The first thing I was able to change was to get free range eggs rather than caged eggs. Even when I did that, and I was an early adopter, I felt like I was taking advantage of poor practices and eating meat that wasn’t produced according to the principles I wanted to follow. So we cut back on meat until we could start to adhere to those principles. Now, every meat product we buy has to have minimum levels of animal welfare. What if we couldn’t afford it? We left the poor animal welfare product on the shelf and looked for a meat free alternative. I would love for everyone who is in a similar situation to me to do so as well.
Just a quick advert if I may! It is now December 1 and I am writing a series of posts for Blogmas featuring a number of Christmas Magazines from 1896 to 2025. If you love popular culture or social and cultural history I really think you will enjoy these articles. Today we go back to 1896.
https://davidgpearce205.blog/2025/12/01/christmas-magazines-through-the-years-pears-annual-1896/
What was 1896 like?
1896 was the 59th year of Queen Victoria’s reign, with the Queen becoming the longest serving monarch in British history on September 22. Robert Paul demonstrated his film projector, the Theatrograph at the Alhambra in Leicester Square on 20 February. Great Britain and Ireland compete at the first modern Olympics held in Athens from 6 – 15 April. Blackpool opened its pleasure beach on April 23. On August 17 Bridget Driscoll became the first pedestrian to be killed by a car. December 11, around the time that people were buying this magazine, Marconi’s early work on radio was being presented to the scientific community at the Toynbee Hall in London.
In 1896, the average weekly wage for a labourer was 13s 9d, but 20 years earlier it was 14s 1 ½d. Not for the first or the last time, the poorest in society found their spending power lowering by the year as inflation and all powerful employers with a huge pool of labour kept them squeezed. If you were a Post Office Clerk you would be earning, on average £90 per year. A Butler, by contrast would be earning in the region of £42 per year despite the very high level of responsibility he would have had. The Duke of Westminster was, as he would remain for the decades to come, the highest earner with an annual income of £250,000! (Facts and figures courtesy of The Victorian Era website at the link below.)
Pears’ Christmas Annual 1896
It really is an amazing piece of history to be able to hold and to read. This magazine was published 129 years ago in a world that, in so many ways, we would not recognise. The overtly moral tone of the magazine would not connect with a majority of the readership today. However, Pears’ soap saw itself as a way of improving the reader by encouraging them to be better both outside, by using Pears’ products, and inside, by reading the uplifting content of the magazine. It’s easy to be dismissive of this approach from our vantage point of 2025, but let’s look at the social and health conditions of the time. Life expectancy was just under 46 for a man and 50 for a woman (Statista.com, 2025). People were living in damp, dirty and overcrowded conditions, causing diseases like cholera to spread extremely quickly. Malnutrition was extremely common as the weekly wages for large families with little money was generally insufficient to buy enough food. Fruit and vegetables were out of the reach of many of the poorest people, as was meat, with potatoes being the only staple that could be counted upon. The average labourer would not be able to read, or would only be able to read at the most basic level so they were restricted to unskilled, often dangerous and frequently backbreaking work.
We only need to look at the cover price of the magazine to know that it was aimed purely at the middle classes or above, as one shilling would have been completely out of reach to our labourers. We should also take notice of the cover. It is clearly Father Christmas of course, but look at his clothing. It is red, a full 30 years and more before Coca Cola put him in red robes. It was nice to be able to bust that long standing myth! The content was pitched at readers with a level of education high enough to be able to read higher level language and comfortable enough both financially and materially to be interested in improving their complexions. Women and children were the target audience for this instruction, as, presumably, it was not something that men would have been interested in. So, in common with some of the other magazines I will be looking at, it was marketed to the woman of the house.
Advertising
To look through adverts from days gone by is to see both the differences and similarities between that time and the present day. As mentioned, this was a magazine aimed at middle class women, but it was also aimed at those who were of a higher social and financial level. The set of adverts at the top of Pages iv and v bear this out.
Looking at the variety of mod cons for exercise, bicycles you would expect although the model shown is perhaps more modern looking than I might expect. An early version of Roller skates is more of a surprise. The home bath cabinet is quite similar to what you would see at a modern health spa, and the home gymnasium, though rudimentary by modern standards, would still do the job. Of the three, only the home gymnasium is priced – from 21 shillings – so the idea of ‘if you have to ask how much, you can’t afford it’ was still very much in place for consumers. Also, only the Rudge Whitworth bicycle mentions that it would be a good Christmas present. In fact, a mere handful of the adverts actually mention Christmas. It is interesting that the adverts here are actually, in a sense, lagging behind society at large. Gift giving, which had been traditional at New Year had moved quite substantially, for most in England if not in Scotland, to December 25. Also, it was not, as had hitherto been the case, largely centred around children, as adults had now started giving gift to others. However, the commercialisation of Christmas had been in progress for perhaps 50 years by the time this annual was published, so the advertisers were either unaware of this – very unlikely – or acknowledging to some extent the view that the festival was somehow being cheapened – much more likely, given their professional and still largely church going readership, and more astute as they could present the more acceptable face of commerce.
Familiar Brands
When I was looking through the annual, I counted four brands that you can still find in the shops today, apart from Pears’ itself. Beecham’s were advertising pills instead of powders, but the other three are still famous for the same products. Bearing in mind the economic ups and downs of the past 150 years, that survival is quite amazing.
Atora now has Vegetarian Suet, but still makes the Beef Suet featured here. Notice it markets itself as perfect for the colonies. Given the fact that the middle classes often provided administration and other help to the government outposts, this is clever marketing. What better present than a taste of home after all?
The Cadbury’s advert, from the days when it was manufactured in Birmingham, where the owners built their own village for their employees, thereby creating loyalty through a mixture of philanthropy and the fear of losing the roof over their heads! It positions cocoa as a kind of health drink with claims of nutrition and purity.
Finally we have Bird’s Custard Powder with an advert that predated the more informal and playful style that was to become much more popular in the decades to follow. Then, as now, it’s irreverent tongue in cheek approach would have made it stand out against its more staid and traditional competitors. That said, you would sack your kitchen staff if they started having egg fights!
The Festival in Stories and Pictures
Very interestingly, this magazine is in two parts. The outside has pages numbered in Roman Numeral style. In the middle we have the real Christmassy part of the publication. The front page is one of 12 coloured plates drawn by artists of the time. Perhaps people could cut out and frame them if they so chose after they had read the story and article contained within. Inside, on Page 2, there is a note to readers expressing a hope that the Pears’ annual, now in it’s sixth year having been first published in 1891, would be a worthy successor to Dickens’ Christmas publications. Along with 12 colour plates, there is a story, ‘Once Upon a Christmas Time: A Story of Yuletide’ by George R Sims, and an article entitled ‘A Real Old Fashioned English Christmas’ by Joseph Gregg. The former can be found from Page 9 ending on Page 31 whilst the latter starts on Page 3 and ends on Page 7. Both of them reflect the seemingly eternal idea that there was a time when Christmas was ‘celebrated properly’! I found the article about Old English Christmas Traditions absolutely fascinating. There are no adverts to interrupt the narratives, hence the necessity for the outer magazine.
The plates are absolutely lovely throughout and give evocative views of the Christmases of the early Victorian period and before. My favourite plate is the one below, which shows a market on Christmas Eve, and which could have come straight out of the pages of A Christmas Carol.
Final Reflections
So, a late Victorian Christmas was one that we might recognise, if only through different versions of A Christmas Carol. The contents of the outside pages of the Pears’ Annual reflected the then current commercialised Christmas, whilst the inside pull out reflected what Christmas ‘should be like’. It is a contradiction at the heart of the season which has been a central feature for many years, and arguably for a number of centuries. It continues to be so 129 years after this fascinating piece of history was published.
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 