Shopping Saturday - Go east my son!

A bundle of 1950s hire purchase statements for a spin drier, a washing machine and a fridge might not seem the most promising starting point for an interesting bit of family and social history.  But bear with me ...

I found the carefully preserved statements amongst the belongings of my great aunts - "Nancy" Thompson and Lillian Barton.  The first thing that struck me was how expensive everything was!

The spin drier bought in 1959 was £32 - £600 today.  And they paid £68 and £71 for the washing machine bought in 1961 and the fridge bought in 1963 - that's over £1,000, ($1,500), each today.

My aunts were comfortably off but certainly not rich.   Nancy, was a nursing supervisor and Lillian, who was separated from her husband, didn't work.  These precious - to any housewife! - items represented a major outlay of money.  The statements from Roomes of Upminster, suggest the hire purchase was very quickly paid off, so there must have been some serious saving to  afford them.

Thrifty Thursday - Post Office Savings

I remember Post Office savings books from my childhood in the 1970s.  They were still a big part of everyday life then, providing an easily accessible and "safe" way to save money.

And right from it's creation in 1861, "safety" was the watch word of the The Post Office's Savings Bank (POSB).  Understandably so as the previous decades had seen a number of high profile bank failures in Britain, in which people had lost their savings.

The PSOB allowed even those without sufficient money to open a standard bank account to save and to have their savings guaranteed by the government.

These savings books belonging to my great aunt - Lillian Barton (nee Thompson) -  show how actively the savings accounts were used.

The account was originally opened in Richmond, Yorkshire in 1935 after Lillian's marriage and show deposits between 3 and 6 deposits a year of never more than £7 (£200 today) at a time and sometimes less than £1 (£18).  There were withdrawals, but through small savings she had by the beginning of 1951 saved £173, the equivalent of £4,670 in today's money.

In 1951 this pattern of use completely changed and the equivalent of almost £4,000 was withdrawn from the account at branches near to the house of Lillian's sister Nancy in Upminster, Essex.  I am merely guessing here - but it appears that Lillian may have used the nest egg provided by her earlier thrift to walk away from an unhappy marriage.

If you're interested in finding out more about British postal history check out the British Postal Museum and Archive and if you enjoyed this post do come and talk history and genealogy on Twitter.