Life Between World Wars

My guest today has written about the same era as my novel, Luminous. The 1920s and 1930s fascinate me. How little did people realize that they were living between two World Wars. Their everyday life was making history. Author Liz Harris shares some great insight into what it was like to live at that time. Check out her newest book, The Lengthening Shadow, to experience the building suspense as the world began to realize that another war was approaching.

Welcome, Liz!

~ Samantha

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Life Between the Wars

Guest Post by Liz Harris

The 1920s, the first modern decade, was the most exciting of periods. In this decade, there was not only economic growth, but also a boom in consumer goods. By the end of the decade, women’s lives had been transformed, and women had a voice at last!

At the start of WW1, when the men left the fields and the factories to go off and fight in the war, women stepped in to take their place. No longer was a woman limited to being someone’s wife, domestic servant or governess. The war had opened up to them the world of opportunity. And by the time that the war ended, they’d tasted freedom, and they’d liked it.

When the men returned from war, a large number of women were fired to make way for the men. But many women didn’t want to go back to domestic work, and didn’t. Shop work paid better than domestic work, for example, and gave them more free time. This had a profound effect on society.

So, too, did the fact that in meeting the needs of the war, the developments in technology had come on in leaps and bounds.

Take the changes in housing, for example. There’d been a shortage of housing before the war, and the destruction in the war had added to the shortage. The 1920s, therefore, saw a massive amount of house building, mostly suburban and privately financed. These new houses reflected the changed social situation. There was no longer a need for servant’s quarters as far fewer families had servants. And for the first time, houses were fitted with electric light and electric power, and with an inside toilet and hot running water.

Becontree housing estate built in the 1920s

And with servants being so difficult to get, the woman who, before the war, would sit at the table with the family and wait for the cook to serve the dinner, now found that she had to go into the kitchen and make the meals herself.

So the kitchen started to assume a far greater importance. They became brighter, less cluttered and more stream-lined, making them more pleasant for the woman who now spent a large part of her day in the kitchen. They were much more like kitchens today, in fact.

The larder, too, was the beneficiary of the demand for greater ease in producing meals. Technological advances aided the production of convenience food, to use a modern term, and throughout the decade, there was an increase in volume and variety of food, both imported and also home-produced.

If you opened the larder door in 1920, you’d see Cadbury Milk Tray, Bisto, Saxa Salt, Bird’s Custard and ketchup. And this was the decade of the first frozen peas. Later in the decade, you’d see Jaffa Cakes, potatoes in tins, and Smiths’ Salt & Shake crisps. Corn Flakes arrived from the US in 1924, and the British love of cereals at breakfast was born.

Cadbury’s Milk Tray

There was also a demand for a less fussy way of cooking. Pyrex arrived in the middle of the decade, streamlining the cooking and serving of food, and reducing the number of dishes involved. One-pot meals became very popular, such as fish steamed on top of a saucepan of boiling potatoes. The simplicity of boiled eggs and toast made it a favourite for breakfast.

Fish & Chips’ shops thrived. They were no longer popular solely with the working class, middle-class families, too, would take them home and serve them, still wrapped in newspaper, accompanied by ketchup and pickled onions.

Magazines soon caught on to women’s interest in their house interiors, and to their desire for advice with cooking now that they no longer had servants. The Daily Mail Cookbook appeared in 1920, to be followed two years later by Good Housekeeping. And the Co-op started giving away recipe cards in cigarette packets.

It wasn’t just the foodstuffs that fed the family in the 1920s that changed—there was a post-war spike in alcohol consumption. This was the decade of cocktails. American style cocktails were particularly popular, such as the gimlet, bourbon and the Bloody Mary. New bars and gentlemen’s clubs sprang up throughout the towns. The drinks’ trolley made an appearance in homes, and Bucks Fizz became popular at breakfast.

Accompanying cocktails were canapés. These were the years of egg mayonnaise sandwiches, tomato and salmon paste, smoked mackerel canapés, and salty crackers. People no longer always sat down to eat – food and drink might be passed around.

Some of this may have been influenced by America. Increasingly, people now had a ‘wireless set’, which brought world events and entertainment into the sitting room for the first time. The BBC was founded in 1922. The cinema industry was booming, dominated by Hollywood, which gave a glimpse of a glamorous world across the ocean.

Around 1920, radio broadcasting started to become popular.
A group of women gathered around the radio at the time.

There was a change in social attitudes, too. Social barriers were slightly breaking down, and the way the family lived was altering. It was becoming less formal. The pre-war parlour became the dining room, and the family had a sitting room, in which a chaise longue was frequently seen, as was anaglypta wallpaper, rugs, and standard lamps with a fringe.

It wasn’t just within the house that changes were reflected. Fashions changed, too. Knee-length dresses came into vogue, shoulder-bare dresses and tops, loose cardigans, cloche style hats. But women still wore gloves.

Actress Louise Brooks, with short bobbed hair beneath her cloche hat.

Hair was shorter, and wavier. Think ‘Flappers’ and ‘Roaring Twenties’. Bar and nightclubs thrived, and the taste was for jazz, fast and furious, and American Dixieland music.

I’m going to end by mentioning three Acts which benefited women in the 1920s, and which influenced greatly the lives of all women in the years that followed.

After the Sex Discrimination (Removal) Act, 1919, gave women access to professions such as Law, in 1919, a woman took up a seat in Parliament for the first time. That was Nancy

Astor. From October 1920, Oxford University for the first time admitted women to full membership of the University.

The second Act related to the reform of the Divorce Law. The Matrimonial Causes Act, 1923, put women on an equal footing with men.

Prior to 1923, men could ‘petition the court’ for a divorce on the basis of their wife’s adultery, which would have to be proved. But a woman who wanted a divorce would have to prove not only her husband’s adultery, but also an aggravating factor such as rape, incest or sodomy. The 1923 Act said that a woman no longer had to prove an aggravating factor. It would be sufficient to prove adultery. Of course, I might add, she could still lose the right to her children and also the property she’d brought to the marriage, but it was a step in the right direction.

The third milestone for women with the Equal Franchise Act, 1928, which gave the vote to all women over 21. Prior to this Act, only women over 30, who owned property, had been allowed to vote. The Act also brought equality in inheritance rights and unemployment benefits.

By the end of the 1920s, women had a voice! I think that’s a pretty good achievement for a decade, don’t you?

The Lengthening Shadow by Liz Harris

When Dorothy Linford marries former German internee, Franz Hartmann, at the end of WWI, she’s cast out by her father, Joseph, patriarch of the successful Linford family.

Dorothy and Franz go to live in a village in south-west Germany, where they have a daughter and son. Throughout the early years of the marriage, which are happy ones, Dorothy is secretly in contact with her sister, Nellie, in England.

Back in England, Louisa Linford, Dorothy’s cousin, is growing into an insolent teenager, forever at odds with her parents, Charles and Sarah, and with her wider family, until she faces a dramatic moment of truth.

Life in Germany in the early 1930s darkens, and to Dorothy’s concern, what had initially seemed harmless, gradually assumes a threatening undertone.

Brought together by love, but endangered by acts beyond their control, Dorothy and Franz struggle to get through the changing times without being torn apart.

Available now on Amazon UK and Amazon US!

Connect with Liz

Born in London, Liz Harris graduated from university with a Law degree, and then moved to California, where she led a varied life, from waitressing on Sunset Strip to working as secretary to the CEO of a large Japanese trading company.

A few years later, she returned to London and completed a degree in English, after which she taught secondary school pupils, first in Berkshire, and then in Cheshire.

In addition to the nine novels she’s had published, she’s had several short stories in anthologies and magazines.

Liz now lives in Oxfordshire. An active member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Historical Novel Society, her interests are travel, the theatre, cinema, reading and cryptic crosswords. To find out more about Liz, visit her website at: http://www.lizharrisauthor.com

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