The Jerry Under The Bed.

[Jabberwocky]

Are any of you old enough to remember the Po under the bed? Or the pot hot water bottles that almost burned your feet off if you touched it and smashed into a thousand pieces if it fell out of the bed?

What about the washboard and the Dolly peg? The rack that hung from the kitchen ceiling that you lowered with ropes to hang washing on then raised back up to dry? Or the kitchen table that could be flipped over to reveal a mangle?

What about lighting the fire in the mornings and stretching a sheet of the Star newspaper across the fireplace to help it to light?

Tin baths? Anyone remember those?

 

Im 47, and the washboard and dolly peg and the tin barrel to wash clothes in were things of the past by the time I was born, but my mother kept them in the coal house. We still had the pot hot water bottles and the Jerry though

 

We also had a little oven by the fire place that my mother used to make bread in, and I remember her disgust when the council ripped it out to replace it with a fireplace and gas poker.

[Plain Talker]

You mean the "guzunda"? yup we had an outside loo across the yard when I was young, and we had to have the "guzunda", my parents didn't consider it safe to let us go wandering across the yard in the middle of the night..

 

My father's house still has the pulley-drying rack, I want one, too!

 

Tin Bath? we moved out of a house with all mod-cons into an old terraced house, with the loo across the yard when I was about 9/ 10.My sister and I thought the tin bath was ace.

 

My parents would put it out in the back yard in summer, and we would use it as a paddling pool with my littlie- cousins. Fabbo fun!

 

and Yes I remember my mother "bleazing" the coal fire first thing in the morning, with the Draw sheet thingie, (that metal board) with a sheet of newspaper over it. The Old star was just the right size. Oh, but how many times, when the fire was "drawing", did it "draw" a bit too keenly, and catch the newspaper!!! lol I can smell that delicious smell of the coal, now, there was nothing to compare with the coal-fire. it was bliss to sit around it, all cosy, in winter, lights off, radio or tv on... It's funny; I lived in centrally heated houses, as a young kid, and my chest was bad. So bad that my sister and I were under the hospital for years. Yet, when we moved into that old house, with just a single coalfire, our health was never better.

 

Sadly, the yorkshire range was ripped out of the kitchen before we moved in.

 

we had a zinc "copper" boiler to heat water with! I remember that being in the built-in cupboard, and i used to have nightmares as a tot, thinking it was a robot!

[Sultana]

I remember using a pot hot water bottle at an old Aunt's house - you really had to be careful of your toes! The rack on the ceiling - marvellous thing, and drawing the fire with the newspaper - yup been there - done that as well.

[poppins]

I have my Grandmothers Guzunder, it's a full set which you don't see much of, po, water jug, soap dish, all in perfect condition, po a bit rough on the bottom, must be from all that strong urine , I passed it onto my son for his son to have....that'll be his great great grandmothers then

[me-and-pippo]

Remember the po, but when it got full it was so much trouble to go downstairs and across the yard to empty it.

So I use to slide the bedroom window up and pee through it.

[lazyherbert]

Pot hot water bottles,you must have been rich.We had fire bricks heated in the oven then wrapped in cloth.Sometimes we even had the steel shelf out of the oven,which was freezing in the morning if you forgot to take it out.A guzunder was no good for us because there were 4 of us in the bedroom we had a bucket.

[Jabberwocky]

I remember my dad lobbing the pot water bottles away when we got rubber ones.

 

 

I was in a market a couple of years ago, and they were selling them as antiques at about 50 quid each.

[SheShe]

I was picked to look after a catfish during the school holidays and the only thing we had big enough to put it in was the jerry.

The poor thing couldn't swim for 6 weeks till school re-opened

[hillsbro]

Well, I can remember the washboard and dolly peg, which were used in the washtub. The tub was made of zinc or some other light, non-rusting metal; it was about 2 foot 6 high with fluted sides - something like this: http://www.tynelives.org.uk/whitley/washtub.gif Whites were boiled in a stronger, smaller cast-iron tub that sat on top of a brick base, with a fire under it. That was at Woodland View in the early 1950s. Then we moved to Dykes Hall Road and had a washing machine (it was an English Electric "Ritemp"). But still no inside loo or bath, so the jerry was a fact of life (my standard joke with birdwatchers is "I always thought a nightjar was what you keep under the bed"). I was 30 before I finally moved into a house with a bathroom - what luxury...

[buck]

Do you remember the mangles that sat outside till ready for use. They would grab your fingers if you weren't careful when you put clothes through them. My Aunt owned one of the first electric washing machines in the area, almost every time she used it it blew a fuse, driving my uncle into a frenzy. He'd blame her for it, even when you told him that the fuse wasn't big enough. So he tripled the fuse wire, and the thing caught fire. Those outside lavs were OK till you got a major freeze up for days. My mother made the best yorkshire pudding I ever tasted when it was cooked in a fireside oven, never the same when she went to gas. The only electric outlets you had were the light bulb sockets.