When I Was Just A Little Girl Trivia Quiz

Answer: 1954

The difficulty of getting food and other imports into the UK during World War 2 led to rationing being quickly imposed. Petrol was the first thing to be rationed and by 1941 virtually all food was rationed and, other than food that made its way to Britain from from America and Canada, the UK was dependent on what it could produce. Many people took to growing their own vegetables, thanks to a very successful campaign called "Dig for Victory". Very soon rationing extended to clothing, soap, and even paper was in short supply. The very small civilian petrol ration was abolished with all fuel being diverted to military and official use. A survey revealed that by the middle of the war years children under the age of seven didn't know what a banana looked like, most didn't even believe they existed. Even goods not on ration, such as razor blades, were hard to obtain as virtually all factories were producing items for the military and the war effort in general.

Rationing did not end with the end of the war. Bread was not rationed until after the war. Disastrous weather ruined the wheat crop in 1946, which led to the bread ration. Especially hard frosts that ruined stored potatoes came in the 1946/47 winter, which lead to them being rationed.

By the time of the 1951 General Election the public were fed up with hard times and austerity. The Conservative Party campaigned on a getting rid of rationing platform and won the election. By 1954 rationing was over, although there were shortages and restricted choices on many goods until the early 1960s.

Answer: Mangle

Wash day was a major undertaking. With no washing machines to just throw everything into it was actually quite hard physical work. Delicate items, such as underwear or jumpers were washed by hand. Everything else went into a container called a copper. Cold water was put into it and this was then heated, usually by gas. As it heated up various loads were put into it. Soap flakes were added and the water agitated with a big stick to produce a lather. At pre-boiling point shirts, blouses, other non hand wash clothing went in. They were stirred around with the stick, pulled out and examined, any especially dirty collars or cuffs were given a scrub with a scrubbing brush and soap, this process was repeated until they were clean. Sheets and towels went in to be boiled clean. For the whites a thing called a blue bag was put into the water.

Rinsing was done by hand in the kitchen sink, using as much cold water as was necessary to remove all the soap. Everything was then wrung out by hand. The wet washing was then taken to the mangle, which was made of cast iron and often kept in the garden shed. It was put through the rollers to remove excess water. Mangles were hand cranked so this was extremely hard work. Anything with buttons had to be carefully folded first to avoid breaking the buttons. On many models the rollers, which were either wood or hard rubber, could be adjusted so that the washing could be put through two or three times to remove as much water as possible.

In summer the washing was then hung out on the line to dry. In winter it was dried indoors, which sometimes took two or three days for thick items. Wash day was followed by ironing day. Non iron fabrics were unheard of, and if there was not a good wind and you were not careful how things went through the mangle everything needed ironing to make it crease and wrinkle free. Most households in the UK did not have a washing machine until the 1960s. Although they started to become available in the late 1950s the cost of them was such that most families could not afford one.

Answer: Valves

The vacuum tube or valve powered broadcasting, radar, telephone networks, even the earliest computers. In the era before transistor radios they were what made radios work. Television had started in Britain before the war, but shut down during the war and resumed on a small scale in 1946. Even then very few households had their own set as reception areas were limited. The radio was the main form of entertainment and source of broadcast news. There were no commercial radio stations in the UK at that time. The BBC was the sole domestic broadcaster. The Light Programme was the most popular station, putting out a mix of music, comedy and light entertainment. The long running radio soap opera "The Archers" started life here, as did "The Goon Show", "Hancock's Half Hour", "The Navy Lark" and other much loved and fondly remembered comedies.

A popular lunch time show was "Workers' Playtime" which was broadcast three times a week from a factory canteen somewhere in the UK. This started during the war as a morale booster, but continued until 1964. "Housewives' Choice" was a record request show every morning at 9am, while "The Billy Cotton Band Show" was a Sunday afternoon favourite for many years.

While there was quite a broad scope of programmes on the Light Programme they did not really change for many years. A lot of the shows started either during or just after the war, and were still running in 1967 when the station was re-branded as Radio 2.

Answer: 78rpm

Records came in 78rpm only. The early ones were made out of shellac and were very fragile, it was very easy to chip or break them. The sound quality was fairly awful as well, they were full of hisses and pops. Gramaphones, as the early record players were called, were originally hand operated. You turned a handle inserted into the side of the machine, which operated a clockwork motor designed to keep the turntable revolving at 78rpm, and then put the needle on the record. It needed rewinding after approximately two sides otherwise some interesting sound effects emerged as it slowed down. The introduction of a simple electric motor eventually did away with the necessity for hand winding. The needles had to be replaced frequently and came in tin boxes. There was a choice of hard or soft needles, and which you chose was supposed to change the sound of the record.

45rpm singles and 33.3rpm albums were first produced in the late 1940s, but they needed new equipment to play them and very expensive, so the 78rpm stayed in production for many years. Even some of the early rock and roll records such as "Rock Around The Clock" and some of the early Elvis Sun label recordings were released on 78rpm as well as 45rpm. By the late 1950s the new vinyl formats finally overtook the old 78rpm recordings and they ceased production. Many are now collectors' items, even though the equipment to play them is not readily available.

Answer: Jousting practice

The very earliest known predecessor of the rocking horse was the rocking cradle. This was designed to simulate the movements of a horse and allow knights to practice mastering their lances on horseback for jousting tournaments. The rocking horse as a toy did not appear until sometime in the 17th century. All of the very earliest examples were hand made. Some are very intricately carved and were obviously done by a craftsman, probably for the child of the lord of the manor or a rich merchant. Others are just crude blocks of wood nailed together as a home made toy. By the 19th century production became industrialised and the format of the rocking horse as we now know it was established.

There are two types. One has the horse mounted on curved rockers such as you would find on a rocking chair. The other has the horse hanging from straps on a rigid frame. The horse moves in relation to the frame, but the frame itself does not move.

The quality of the saddle, reins, mane and tail varies according to the price of the horse. The dearer ones used real hair for the mane and tail and high quality leather for the tack. Cheaper ones had artificial hair, a shorter mane and tail and low grade leather. The horses came in all the colours you would find on a horse in nature. This was achieved by applying a layer of jesso to the wooden horse and then colouring it.

They remain ever popular toys and many a little girl has nagged for her first pony after experiencing rides on her rocking horse.

Answer: Slate

It might seem odd now to hand a five year old a miniature version of a blackboard and a piece of chalk to start learning to write, but in the days after World War 2 paper was still in short supply and certainly was not to be wasted on infant scribblings. Slate had the advantage of being almost indefinitely reusable and was the perfect medium for learning how to form letters and make words out of them. Using coloured chalk it could also be use for drawing lessons, and was certainly less messy than paint.

Exercise books were generally given out at the start of the second year of primary school, and each book was expected to last a complete term. Ink was reserved until you made the age of eight or nine, everything was done in pencil until then.

School was a lot more formal in the early years in the early 1950s than it is now. You learnt by rote, "a is for apple", the times tables, that sort of thing. Learning through play was not something that was in the curriculum. By the end of the first year of primary school you were expected to know the alphabet forwards and backwards, be able to write and spell words of up to seven or eight letters, read a simple primer book, tell the time correctly and do simple addition and subtraction. By the age of 8 most children could write in joined up writing and could read a reasonably complex book, as well as including division and multiplication in their arithmetic skills. Mental arithmetic was then introduced as well as the basics of grammar, nouns, verbs etc. We sat the 11+ (eleven plus) exam and by that stage had included some early geometry lessons as well as long division, being able to work out compound interest and had even started on reading some of the classics, "David Copperfield" being one I particularly remember.

Answer: ABC Minors

ABC Minors was a Saturday morning cinema club started by the ABC Cinema chain. You got a membership card, and at the start of each Saturday the ABC Minors song was played, with the lyrics displayed on the screen with a big red bouncing ball to help you keep up. There were cartoons, a serial such as the Lone Ranger or Flash Gordon. These often ended on a cliff-hanger so you needed to go back next week to see what happened. Strangely, we never noticed that we never actually saw how this was resolved. At the end of one episode our hero would be hanging off a cliff edge clutching a tree that was about to give way. At the start of the next episode he would be back on top of the cliff.

In addition to cartoons and the serial there was usually a sing along in the interval, led from the organ that rose mysteriously from the depths of the cinema, and then a short film - Zorro, Roy Rogers, always something adventurous.
It cost sixpence in pre-decimal currency to get in, and most children were given a shilling, (5p in UK decimal coinage), so that left sixpence for ice-cream, lollies or sweets.

Looking back it must have been a nightmare for the staff. We certainly were not the quietest of audiences, cheering the goodies, booing the baddies. It was one of the few places children went completely unaccompanied by any adult to restrain their behaviour, and we certainly made the most of it.

Answer: Tin Bath

Whilst some larger towns and cities had communal bath houses left over from Victorian times these had largely fallen out of favour in the post war era. Baths were taken once a week in a tin bath, in winter in front of a fire. The water had to be heated in kettles and pans and poured into the bath, then cooled to the required temperature with cold water. Very few working class houses had hot running water at that time. Often the water was shared by more than one person. Father first, then mother, then children. On week days it was a strip wash at the kitchen sink. A usual routine was top half one day, bottom half the next. Hair washing was done over the kitchen sink with water heated either by an over the sink gas heater or on the stove, into a jug, then cooled as necessary and poured over the head. The same soap that was used for bathing was also used for hair washing.

Most houses had a tin bath hanging either in the kitchen or in a shed, and many hung onto these even when they had indoor bathrooms. We went from the post war era into the cold war era with hardly a pause in between, and many people were wary of getting rid of those things that they had used during the war in case they needed them again.

Answer: The toddlers' truce

From the time television broadcasts resumed after the war until ITV started in 1955 the BBC had a complete monopoly. It was their policy to close down for one hour from 6pm once children's programmes had finished. This was known as "the toddlers' truce" and was designed so parents could get their children to bed without any distraction from television, and then be settled down themselves for the evening programmes. (Children's bedtimes were much earlier than now). When ITV started in 1955 they had to operate under the same policy as the BBC, but they challenged this. They were dependent on revenue from advertising, and the close down was costing them a lot in lost advertising time. The BBC of course were funded by a licence fee so the hours they broadcast were irrelevant to their revenue.

The BBC however did not want to discuss even a compromise on the shut down policy, so in the end Charles Hill, the Postmaster General, who was responsible for overseeing television, asked Parliament to decide on the matter. In October 1956 Parliament agreed that the shut down should be done away with. Even then the BBC and the fledgling ITV companies could not agree on a date for this to happen. Charles Hill therefore stepped in once again and set a date of Saturday 16 February 1957. That Saturday saw the first broadcast of what was to become a ground breaking music programme on the BBC, "Six-Five Special". During the week the hour was filled with "Tonight", a news magazine programme.

Despite the abolition of the shut down the BBC continued to cease transmission from 6.15pm to 7pm on a Sunday because this was the time of evening church services. This continued until "Songs of Praise" was launched in 1961. Until the early 1990s this 6pm to 7pm slot on a Sunday was reserved for programmes of a religious nature on all channels. For some time now that time slot during the week has been reserved for early evening national and regional news broadcasts by both BBC and ITV, although the expansion of channels in recent years does now mean that those not interested in the news can find a soap opera or some form of light entertainment instead.

Answer: The Chalet School

From 1925 onwards Elinor Brent-Dyer wrote some 60 books in the "Chalet School" series. They started in Austria, moved to Guernsey, the England/Wales border and then Switzerland. Many characters grew and matured from schoolgirls to parents throughout the books, which gave them a nice feeling of continuity. In many ways they were typical of their time, having a strong emphasis on doing the right thing, telling the truth, having Christian values. Girls came to the school with problems, caused trouble, often got into some sort of life threatening situation, but in the end all was well and they became a credit to the school.

The last Elinor Brent-Dyer book was published in 1970. Since then others have written "Chalet School" books. Some follow on from the last book, others fill in gaps by picking up on a particular story or one person and giving more details. Many of the books have been re-issued in paperback with more modern language, although some of these have also been quite heavily abridged. It is a testament to their enduring popularity that today many are still in print and that stories about the school continue to be written.

The "Malory Towers" series was written by Enid Blyton, and had quite a bit in common with the "Chalet School" books in that there was emphasis on values and doing the right thing.

Greyfriars was the school attended by Billy Bunter. The books were turned into a television series starring Gerald Campion as Bunter.

Eton is of course a real school where the aristocracy and rich of the UK send their sons to be educated.