THE FLATLEY DRYER

[Tizer]

People who took in evacuee children during WW2 often found the kids weren't used to hot water.

[Stanley]

We only had a bath once a week on Friday night even though we had a fully equipped bathroom. We were taught that personal hygiene was served by a stand up wash with a wash cloth and soap paying close attention to the nooks and crannies. I still have the same habits and nobody has ever shied away from me because of body odour! In a temperate country the habit of sometimes multiple showers every day is unnecessary and actually damaging to the skin. One of the nurses at Airedale commented recently on how soft my skin was and I told her why, I didn't wash all my natural oils off with frequent scrubbing with hot water. Regarded as an eccentricity these days but who cares! I don't ever have to 'moisturise'.
I treasure the Florence Nightingale comment that any woman, given a quart of water a day and privacy, could maintain personal hygiene.
My mate Ken Sansome, a GP in a college town in Minnesota once told me about an outbreak of dry itchy skin in young men at the college. It transpired that a new germicidal soap was being successfully marketed on the premise that used frequently it attracted women. Some of them were showering regularly three times a day and more. Advice to cut out the strong soap and reduce the frequency of the showers cured all of them.
Besides, research has shown that clean body odour is a pheromone......

[Tizer]

I remember when Radox bath salts became available. My parents got some and Dad said it helped ease his aches and pains from work. I tried it - and came out in a rash over most of my body. Never again for me! I had a another time, in my 20s and 30s, when I had a scattering of red skin patches after taking a shower or bath. It eventually stopped and I suspect it was caused by an ingredient used in soap or shampoo at the time.

[Stanley]

Ken told me it was very common Tiz. He was doctor for two large colleges in Northfield and said that 50% of the skin complaints he saw were related to harsh chemicals in soap, shampoos and washing up liquids.
That's why I favour old fashioned bar scrubbing soap, still available in Barlick and while being the cheapest it doesn't seem to have any expensive additives.
I remember Radox.... never used it. I favoured pure soap flakes, it's years since I saw any....
I see they are still available at £18 for 3kg on the web. Sounds expensive to me!
We used to sell large tins of 'blanket soap' when I was Open All Hours. It was a very pure gel soap with flakes of camphor in it, used for the annual washing of heavy woollen blankets. I suspect that's a thing of the past now.
I was wrong! It is still made and is evidently used for horse blankets!

[Bodger]

I recall my owd fella taking Phylosan ? fortifies the over forties !

[Stanley]

Was that the one that said "Every picture tells a story" and showed an old cock skipping round?
Beecham's pills comes to mind. My mother took one every night, I think she was convinced she's die if she didn't!

[Tizer]

When he was a child Grandma gave my dad a spoonful of Owbridge's Lung Tonic every morning in winter before he went out.

[Stanley]

I remember it well and these old patent medicines had a lot of logic to them, they often worked, that was why they were so popular. If I have a cold I still revert to Covina Original Bronchial Balsam. Old fashioned ingredients, efficient and it tastes lovely!
The one that I could never understand was brimstone and treacle and its slightly less foul tasting cousin, the Sulphur tablet. When we got heat spots in the Spring it was given to us to 'thin our blood down'. Was there ever any logic to this?
Then there was the other stand-by, Fenning's Lung Healers, tiny little balls but very popular. Fenning's Fever Cure was another bottle that was always in the cupboard. I once nursed a dog through Distemper dosing it with that.
Lintox was the standard dog medicine.....

[Tizer]

There's not much evidence for any benefits: LINK

[Stanley]

Ah Tiz, but we were simple minded buggers and believed in them so they 'worked'. I suspect the same applies today to many products.

[Tizer]

When I worked at Boots in the 1960s the small packets of sulphur tablets were kept in one of the multitude of little drawers on the wall behind the pharmacy counter. There would always be a broken pack in the drawer and we'd pick one out now and then and eat it as a sweet. I can't remember anything about the taste but there were yellow ones (natural sulphur colour) and red ones (possibly raspberry flavoured). That brings back memories of the shop. We had a long pharmacy counter leading up to the dispensary and the counter was covered from end to end in all sorts of medicines etc. There was less worry in those days about people picking up medicines from the counter and probably less shoplifting. In the back of the counter there were cupboards filled with more stock. The wall behind had drawers to about chest height and running the full length and likewise shelves above up to the ceiling. There was a wooden stepladder that we moved along to reach the higher shelves. All of this space was filled with stock and had to be kept replenished from the stores in the basement. When I first started it was intimidating to see these hundreds of items and I had to keep asking others where to find stuff. Eventually you get used to it and in those days at least the items didn't often change.

In the dispensary there were all the shelves and cupboards for the stronger tablets and medicines and the little cupboard under lock and key for the `DDA' items - Dangerous Drugs Act, such as opioids. Behind the dispensary there was an attached outbuilding, still with a flagstone floor and a stone sink, more shelves and a heavy old table. That's were we made up medicines, handled acids, caustic compounds, inflammable ones such as meths, and - especially - smelly chemicals (we always rated oil of valerian as the worst). Although usually we didn't still make up tablets, powders, ointments, creams, suppositories etc on site, doctors sometimes prescribed them and as an apprentice I had to learn how to do these tasks, standing on the cold stone floor in that back room. Happy days!

[Stanley]

I can remember chemist's shops like that Tiz complete with the rows of drawers with mysterious labels like 'squill' and 'Armenian Boll'. In those days you could go in there and buy things like mercury and acids and not long before that drugs like opium and laudanum. I forget the date of the DDA but it's all there in 'Drugged to Death' the articles I did for the BET.
I think I've mentioned this before but the law that said Methylated Spirits couldn't be sold after I think it was 5PM on Friday used to apply. Thus always intrigued me and I suspect it was to cut back on its use at weekends to make 'Red Biddy'. (See THIS excerpt from Hansard in 1937.)
Something else that is missing from the chemists and other shops (I am thinking of grocers and anywhere dealing with leather) was the smell when you walked in from the solvents and chemicals.....The last time I experienced it was in a Greek shop in Perth WA which sold spices from open sacks on the floor. The pepper corner was hazardous! I started sneezing as soon as I got near it. You don't get this now there is all this packaging.

[PanBiker]

I think I've mentioned this before but the law that said Methylated Spirits couldn't be sold after I think it was 5PM on Friday used to apply. Thus always intrigued me and I suspect it was to cut back on its use at weekends to make 'Red Biddy'. (See THIS excerpt from Hansard in 1937.)

What a daft rule, couldn't you make Red Biddy at 2pm on a Friday or any other day of the week?

[Stanley]

Well.... yes. That occurs to me as well but the regulation did exist. If you're interested in the subject look up THIS in Wikipedia and follow the external link to the Gutenberg Archive. I first became aware of him when I helped Chris Aspin with digitising his work so that the Helmshore Historical Society could re-publish it. He is one of the most accurate reporters of life in the textile districts in the mid 19th century.



I don't know who did his illustrations for him but this one grabbed my attention from his travel book on the wine districts of Garronne in France. They are full of information. Take the time to examine this one closely and note all the different activities that are illustrated. It reminds me of the illustrations in Bewick's books on birds, accurate and packed with detail.
Sorry for that diversion! Back to Reach and the Textile Districts. One of the reasons that make it relatively easy for me to relate to his descriptions of the 19th century slums is the fact that remnants of them still remained in Stockport during the war years. One street back from the main shopping street, Prince's Street, was a street of the worst 19th century jerry-built terraced houses complete with dirty kids playing in the gutters and dreadful dilapidation. I remember particularly a young lad about six years old dressed in nothing but a short vest and it is burned into my brain. I wish I could download that image on to the page, it shouted of the worst abject poverty. Much of the property down Brinksway along the river was as bad and after the war they were all swept away as new housing was built. Moving out of there into a new council house must have been like heaven. We forget things like this and that's why it is a good idea to seek out Angus Betune Reach's Morning Chronicle articles.....

[Tizer]

I remember particularly a young lad about six years old dressed in nothing but a short vest and it is burned into my brain. I wish I could download that image on to the page, it shouted of the worst abject poverty.

There was a photo of a child with no pants in a back alley in that Don McCullin TV programme. I found this online which is different but I think is a McCullin photo...

[Tizer]

I can remember chemist's shops like that Tiz complete with the rows of drawers with mysterious labels like 'squill' and 'Armenian Boll'. In those days you could go in there and buy things like mercury and acids and not long before that drugs like opium and laudanum. I forget the date of the DDA but it's all there in 'Drugged to Death' the articles I did for the BET.

I've just remembered that the chemist's shop on the corner of Penny Street and Regent Street in Blackburn is where I used to buy all my chemicals and apparatus for my chemistry experiments in my early teens. It had at least three windows, two of them on Regent St, and one of these was filled with chemistry apparatus - you don't see that these days! The pharmacist got to know me and helped me choose things to buy and to avoid anything too dangerous. The young chemistry teacher who taught me was also excellent and supportive and advised me to buy a book called `Chemistry Experiments at Home for Boys and Girls' (note the words `and girls', it was ahead of its time!). Following the book's advice I started out by using sodium bisulphate as a substitute for sulphuric acid, it's much safer. Then the pharmacist let me buy dilute acids and later I graduated to concentrated acids. My parents were tolerant and patient and put up with the smells! In my bedroom I had an old set of cupboards with an old door lying on top as a work surface. I even managed to get my parents to have a gas line put in so I could use a Bunsen burner. That worried my mum more than the acids and poisons! All of that help and tolerance put me well ahead of my schoolmates in chemistry and gave me a lifelong interest in science.

[Stanley]

Never seen that pic before Tiz but it's a cracker.... Look for old Bert Hardy pics......
I had a chemistry set but no expert guidance like you Tiz. It would be classed as a WMD today by the police!
Me and my mate decided to make soap. We put it on the painted window cill in the outside lavatory to dry and found we had made some extremely powerful paint stripper! (Do they call that 'Empirical Testing?)

[Tizer]

You must not have neutralised the residual caustic soda!

[Stanley]

Yup!! Definitely.
I always used to get in trouble with my chemistry master at SGS, Mr Boake. He said that I always used 'industrial quantities' of chemicals in my experiments. He was one of the masters who tried to persuade me to stay on for the Sixth Form and University entrance but I knew my parents couldn't afford it..... I left early in 1953 and thereby hangs a tale!
(Never regretted it)

[PanBiker]

Interesting question, if a lad stayed on for sixth form and then went to university did that make them exempt from National Service? Or did they grab them when they finished their course?

[Tripps]

I think there was was 'deferment' for university students.
It makes me think of Mr (lah di dah) Gunner Graham.

[Stanley]

Theoretically they had to be called up after getting their degree but in practice found it easier than most to get deferment.
What is often forgotten is that one you had done your compulsory two years you weren't totally free. On demob you were transferred to the Reserve for I think it was three years. (Could have been longer, I forget)
I was reminded yesterday of Manger's Sugar Soap. Once again I checked and it's still alive and well!

[Tizer]

National Service Act 1948 LINK

[PanBiker]

I would tend to agree with Prince Harry and Michael Caine.

[plaques]

I was deferred but registered for service in 1960. In all events they stopped the call up one month before I was due to do my bit. I didn't fancy learning how to kill anybody. Prince Harry should keep his mouth shut his opinions count for nothing. He may want to fight to keep his family in a privileged position that should be as dead as the Dodo but I've no wish to do so.