Why I Love the ... 1940s

Art gallery and museums expert Simon Hedges  has a passion or the 1940s.

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I always think the 1940s must have been a period of unparalleled contrasts, he says.

It was a decade which started with some of the most memorable events of World War Two – both the Dunkirk evacuation and the Battle of Britain took place in 1940 – and ended with the country finally at peace, and optimistic about the future.

It was already busy planning for the Festival of Britain in 1951 – but still enduring hardships and deprivation that are almost unimaginable today.

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Even in the midst of lockdown it’s easy to forget that some foods were still rationed until 1954.

There’s so much to love about that period – perhaps I wouldn’t feel that way if I’d lived through it – but I’d like to talk about just two of them here.

The first is the demob suit. In my younger days I was partial to a demob suit – in the 1980s, the ’40s still surrounded you – it was only 30-some years ago.

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It was still possible to pick them up fairly cheaply in charity shops.

I think back then it was just vanity for me, but in retrospect, thinking about what these suits meant and what they were actually for has greater and greater impact: today I find myself reflecting on it more than I did at the time.

I was buying them for just a few pounds back in the late 1980s and ‘90s – today they belong in a social history museum.

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For younger readers, ‘demob’ is short for demobilisation – the theory was that most servicemen who went through the war in uniform probably didn’t actually have many civilian clothes left, so as they left their service, they were given a set of ‘civvies’ to help get everyday life started up again.

This included a felt trilby or a flat cap of course. This was the 1940s, everyone wore hats, shoes, a raincoat, a couple of shirts – with matching collar studs – one must keep up standards, you know – a tie and that all-important suit, which had such style: the cut and quality was really high.

Demob suitDemob suit
Demob suit

They made you feel like a 1940s Hollywood film star: the classic tailored, nipped waist, big lapels and double-breasted, with small armholes, giving you posture. You can tell if a suit is a demob: it has a tiny little black-and-white ‘Pacman’ type symbol stitched into the lining of the left arm.

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My other favourite thing about the 1940s has to be the founding of the National Health Service, now more commonly known just as the NHS.

What a stroke of absolute genius that was, what a sign of an exquisitely civilised society, how bold and brilliant. A democratic system that made decent healthcare – the bedrock of a life well lived – available to all.

The NHS has had a fair few knocks over the years – only a year or so ago, it seemed every other news story was about overcrowding of wards, or how the whole system was creaking and couldn’t survive.Today – and quite rightly – we view our NHS workers as the true heroes in an unprecedented situation that’s affecting every one of us.

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It all started on 5 July 1948 when Minister of Health Aneurin Bevan visited the first NHS patient in a hospital in Manchester.

Bakelite phoneBakelite phone
Bakelite phone

Thirteen-year-old Sylvia Diggory, who was suffering from a serious liver condition, years later said: “Mr Bevan… told me it was a milestone in history – the most civilised step any country had ever taken.”

Simon Hedges is head of curation, collections and exhibitions at Scarborough Museums Trust. He answers his phone at home on a black Bakelite Ericsson landline that dates from around 1948, but complains about how long it takes to dial a number on it.

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