Spare a thought for the 1950s housewife

Life in 21st-century Britain is far from perfect, but spare a thought for those far-off days, the 1950s. A new book by Virginia Nicholson, serialised in the Daily Mail, reminds us how tough life was for women in that unglamorous decade. Nicholson's mother had herfirst child in 1952, a time when most households didn't have central heating, washing machines, food-mixers, steam irons, toasters, electric kettles,vacuum cleaners or television sets. A woman's work was truly never done.

One survey in 1951 found that housewives in the London suburbs were spending an "incredible" 15 hours a day on domestic activities. Even middle-class households still used "much of the same basic equipment and materials" their ancestors had been using 300 years earlier. And there was a vital difference: unlike in the pre-war days, most households couldn't afford cooks, parlour maids or housemaids. "The war had put paid to that," says Nicholson. The staff "had found better-paying jobs and weren't coming back to domestic service".

Yet Victorian standards persisted. Houses had to be spruce, doorsteps spick and span. Indeed, doorsteps were often "donkey-stoned", the donkey stone used for scouring them being a tablet of ground stone-dust, cement water and bleach. "On weekday mornings, you'd see rows of women in wrap-around pinnies their bottoms bobbing as they genuflected in front of their doorsteps."

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Nicholson quotes a man who grew up in the Pennines. "You could tell whether you were going into a house-proud woman's abode by glancing down," he said. "If [the step] was donkey-stoned, you were very likely in for a good tea If not, you might have to make do with a cream cracker and a Rich Tea biscuit."

In those days, blankets, sheets, curtains and clothes were all hand-washed, with even relatively well-off housewives refusing to send their linen to the laundry. "The explanation is a moral one," says the social historian Caroline Davidson.

"Woman's sense of righteousness was bound up in washing in an almost religious way." Visiting the 1950s, as Nicholson says, is like visiting another planet. It was a simpler, less competitive world but it was a tougher one, too, no doubt about that.

Free lunch for a rock legend

The four original members of The Kinks seemed to spend more time fighting with one another than enjoying the fruits of fame, says Will Hodgkinson in The Times. Ray Davies was brilliant but difficult, says Hodgkinson, reviewing a new biography. He was also tightfisted, always fearing he would tumble back into poverty.

"When I met Davies in Highgate he relayed gloomily his fears of being made homeless and asked whether I was OK with paying the restaurant bill. It was terrible to see the man who wrote Waterloo Sunset in such dire straits." But when Hodgkinson saw Davies wandering off "to his manor round the corner", he realised he'd just been spun a hard luck story for the sake of a free meal.

Tabloid money: just what is a "fat cat" anyway?

"Whatever your political persuasion, most people will agree that the policies of the Green Party are barking mad," says Tony Parsons in The Sun. "Get rid of borders. Ban the Army. Build, oh, half a million houses and worry about the cost later. This is not a great era for political leaders. But in Natalie Bennett, the Green Party has the leader it truly deserves."

"When asked by parliamentary inquisitors if he was a fat cat', HSBC boss Stuart Gulliver said he'd like to know what one was," writes Brian Reade in the Daily Mirror. "I suppose someone who declares himself a non-dom while living in Britain for more than a decade, diverted his bonuses to a Swiss bank account registered to a Panamanian company and has an annual limousine bill of £88,000 gives you a clue. But I'll put it another way. As Sky News reported that Gulliver had picked up £7.6m in a year when his bank's profits fell 17% and was embroiled in a tax scandal, these words ran across the bottom of the screen: The Low Pay Commission has recommended a 20p rise in the minimum wage to £6.70.' Which means, if it is introduced, that a cleaner or canteen worker at HSBC would need to work 1,134,328 hours or 129.4 years non-stop to earn what their boss earned in a bad year. That definition good enough for you?"

"After Labour's note warning there's no money left', did you see how much Gordon Brown blew in his crazed attempt to reinvent the economic wheel?" asks Trevor Kavanagh in The Sun. We lost "a colossal £230bn thanks to errors, fraud and inefficiency", according to a new analysis. "Most was squandered by HM Customs and Revenue after its two branches were merged into one world of chaos. A staggering £20bn enough to pay for the jets and carriers to defend the kingdom was simply written off. Just think of this: but for Gordon's mangled management we might be floating along with no deficit and a big chunk off our humongous national debt."