Promised for a poster here but I though some others might like to see it.
It was given to me by Terry Casey's widow and the bill would have been for his mother (Terry's Dad passed away when Terry was 4 years old)
Strange.
15 bob for the standing charge, and only 11 shillings and 10 old pence for leccy.
I don't know why, but I have kept some utility bills from the early 80's rented student hovels.
That bill is equivalent to about £40 in 2020.
I wonder where that electricity (about 1.5 units/day) would have been used in 1952? My guess is that it would mainly be for lighting and radio, with a little for ironing, perhaps. I would have expected heating by coal or perhaps a gas fire, and cooking by gas. Hot water by an "Ascot" instant gas heater perhaps?
interesting, thanks.
I lived about 3 miles from there as a child in the early 1950s. We thought only dead posh people didn't have to put coins in the leccy meter :)
Not strange for some of us who lived in the 50s with gas for cooking and open fires, Ascot for the hot water, no fridge, no TV, no washing machine, not much lighting, and you had to be at death's door before the electric fire went on.
Likewise I thought that people who had party-line phones were cheapskates, because I thought (wrongly!) that you had a *choice* between your own line or a party line, whereas for most part it is down to how the GPO wired the streets back to the exchange. Maybe the choice of how GPO wired the streets
*is* based on how much the houses were worth and whether or not they were council houses - unless (to quote Esther on "That's Life") "You know differently" - were there cases of expensive houses with party lines next to council/low-cost housing with their own lines?
Well that bill one would be one month before Terry's 8th Birthday. He did not have a posh upbringing.
The GPO cabled the streets for the anticipated number of phones in 5, 10, 20 years, but what probably happened was the phone became cheaper compared to income, and considered more essential, so "even" people in council houses could afford one and the demand was greater than the number of pairs provided.
And council rents were cheaper than private, so people in council houses, possibly in factory jobs with overtime, were (and still are) often better-off in cash terms than "middle class" people in private rented or mortgaged homes on a salary.
There may also have been post-war housing development where a street of 50 houses was redeveloped into 300 flats, either conversion or demolition, with a delay in provisioning new lines.
It wasn't only the external plant that was limited - manual exchanges had a finite limit on size often due to the building size. Extending the exchange meant acquiring a new building elsewhere and moving all the lines.
We lived in a nice (private) estate in the 1980s but had a party line because it was in the house when we moved in, and it was a bit cheaper - we also took out the bedroom extension to save money. Then we moved and in Wales there were still people at school who had no phone because no lines were available (or possibly because they couldn't afford it, but didn't like to say).
I was rather unique in having my own extension in my bedroom as soon as allowed by liberalisation.
Owain
Sorry if I implied I thought otherwise. I didn't as I used to know that area.
I made it about £46 with the BoE inflation calculator.
Interesting to note that they reacon the average male weekly working wage as about £9 - so it shows how the price of electricity has changed as a proportion of earnings.
I suppose the Coronation had not happened yet, and that drove a massive rise in TV ownership 15 months later.
Probably... possibly a vacuum cleaner.
When I rewired the neighbours place at my previous house (built '56) that was still original wiring. I think it had 5 single sockets in total!
No sorry needed. No offence taken. When Helen gave me the bill I asked for permission to post it on the wiki and she said it was OK in full with the address. A widows pension in those days was not a good one.
Just looked up this
Our first house had been split off a bigger house in 1946. 4 power points. One in each bedroom and one in the kitchen One 5A point off the lighting circuit. I rewired before we moved in.
You only ever heard/hear of people "robbing gas meters". Never electricity meters. It may not be just because this slips off the tounge easier, but because in thsoe days it was imposible to run up large bills as compared with gas. And anyone who could afford an electric fire was unlikely to default, And anyway the sanctions were severe - regardless of who the previous occupier was each quarterly bill had to be paid by the present occupier on pain of disconnection.
Whereas anyone with the simplest gas stove could probably heat a couple of rooms by having all the burners and the oven on full blast, and run up massive bills that way.
Meters are more normally associated with flats in shared houses and are, or least used to be installed by landlords themselves who acted as middlemen. Or at least so I was told. Assuming this was legal and technically possible.
michael adams
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Thanks for sharing.
What would a 'unit' have been in those days?
And what was a 'welding service charge' for?
Theo
Hoover upright vacs of the time only ate around 200w
NT
Yes. We had a party line. It was cheaper. But really bad for privacy as you could eavesdrop the next door neighbours conversations. Eventually we stumped up the cash for a private line.
The same as today - a kWh
Near enough, yees. In our cae it was a Rayburn that heated the house and water. So only one perhaps two rooms in the house that were warm in winter. Plus, in 1952, no curtains in my bedroom and ice on the inside of the windows.
The house I moved into in the early 70s had a phone sitting there, but the number went with the previous occupant, and it was many months before we were allowed to have a line.
Chris
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