Monday, November 21, 2016

A foreign country...


A few months ago, I bought a bound volume of 1925 "Good Housekeeping" magazines. The book sits on my desk and every day while I'm waiting for my computer to chunter itself into readiness I read a few pages. I was born in 1950 - only 25 years after these magazines appeared - and yet they seem to portray a different world from the one I remember from my childhood. But the past 25 years seem to have passed in a flash.

The above advert for knitting wool, for example, with its references to Granny's "shrewd old eyes" and "gnarled and seamed old fingers" - so flattering to grannies! But one of my grannies was only 55 when I was born and I imagine this was the case for many grannies in the days when women tended to have babies at a younger age.



And I know it's an advert, but - attitudes to housework have possibly changed somewhat. This text may have been written by a man - you think?



And as for this one - if only it were that simple. It makes me think of my grandfather, who was very interested in medical matters - he was a vegetarian in the 1930s, for example, which was very unusual then. He was a great advocate of wholemeal bread, which was again quite unusual among Scottish people at that time. But he didn't claim it as a cure for cancer!

4 comments:

  1. I guess they could claim anything because nothing was proven. (or disproven!) I just did a bunch of housework and I did NOT enjoy it.

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  2. Haha -- what a fun book. I do like having a clean house -- it's just the "getting there" that's not fun. I laughed at the idea of dusting ornamental china as being pleasant -- it's understandable though -- they didn't have our amazing variety of fabrics and sewing goodies back then, or surely they would have re-defined pleasant LOL!

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  3. Anonymous6:06 pm

    There was so much more dust in homes in those years, especially coal dust and that was the bane of my Ma's life, living near the mines as we did.

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  4. I too enjoy old books about housekeeping. How time have changed. I have one recipe book, a Kindergarten fundraiser, that includes a recipe for oyster soup, using a pint of oysters!! Imagine making that today - in New Zealand they would cost some hundreds of dollars, they're about $2=£1 each oyster!!

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