When I started Memoir Mode I posted up some family photos of the 1940s.  The blog had only been alive for a couple of weeks so only a handful of people have seen them.  My grandmothers family had an American magazine follow them around to see how a ‘British Family’ were living postwar. So I am really lucky to have professional quality photo’s of my family in the 1940s.

The previous post was based solely on what my Grandmother and my Great-Aunt were wearing, but there are plenty of other photo’s I wanted to post.  In fact there are so many, I might just do a few scattered posts.

Quite a few of the photo’s have snippets of the articles that were published, so I will quote them underneath the photo’s.

Mr Wall is at present employed as a maintenance foreman, a responsible job, by the Metal Box Company. one of the many modern factories strung out along the Great West Road which leads out of London. He lives with his family in a neat, semi-detached villa in the north London suburb of South Harrow.

like most of Britain’s housewives, Mrs. Wall’s life is immensely complicated by shortages and rationing. Laundries that only collect and deliver once a month and doing her own washing on the skimpy ration of three tablets of soap per ration book a month.

Her spare time is devoted to her pretty daughters, now nineteen and seventeen. She finds them widely varying temperaments. The elder Irene, a serious girl with a taste for music, a lover of the open air. Spends her week-ends riding in nearby Ruislip. While the younger girl, Florence, prefers Cole Porter to Greig and the reflected warm glow of Hollywood to the wind of the heath.

Children at the camp have their own playground. Florence and Irene Wall join the kiddies on the slide.

So that their parents do not see them before Christmas Day, Irene and Florence Wall hide the presents behind books in the book case. They will be brought out on Christmas morning.

At 7.30 the Wall’s buy tickets at south Harrow station for the tube to take them to Shepherds Bush. Fare is ninepence. The Wall’s pay a monthly visit to the theatre in the winter as a rule.

About once a month the Wall family take a tube train into the West End of London to the Theatre. Half an house run from South Harrow they can manage to get to the second performance of a variety show easily after their evening meal.

The tastes of the Wall family for the drama vary as they do in most things. Both Mr and Mrs Wall have a liking for old-time variety while their older daughter Irene prefers something more highbrow, the ballet, or an orchestral concert. Young Florence has a soft-spot for the more stream-lined sophistication of Musical comedy.

But about this time of year most British families unite in going to that peculiar British function, the pantomime. Though it is technically a Christmas show the pantomime occupies the time of most of Britain’s variety artists (more generally called music hall stars) right up to Easter. For them it is the highest paid, steadiest job of the year. For British families it is almost a duty to attend.

Main shopping street in South Harrow.  South Harrow is 12 miles out of London, is a dormitory suburb for those who commute daily to London.  the building of factories on London’s Great West Road in recent years has done away with the need for commuting on the part of some of Harrow’s residents. Mr. Wall is one of them.

Because electric light is cut off from nine to twelve in the morning and from two to four in the afternoon, the walls have to spend the early hours of winter’s dusk by candlelight. Mr. Wall fills in the football pools (they were later all cancelled because of the weather), Mrs. Wall knits, Florence reads a book.

I hope you enjoyed the photos and the commentary (I imagine that funny radio voice of the 1940s when I am reading them) I find them absolutely fascinating, not just because it is my beloved Nana’s photo’s (Florence), but I really am obsessed with the 40s and 50s.