1) What has been the most significant change in Waltham forest?
Amount of cars, North Birbeck road (the road I lived on from birth) there was two cars in the road.
Milk, coal, bread was delivered by horse and cart. Children could play in the streets safely. Also shops have changed dramatically. There were no supermarkets all individual small shops.
There were no juganult lorries they used trains and the canoes and rivers. Technology, no mobiles, working class people didn’t have house phones. No television. All news was through newspapers and radio. Working class people did not travel to foreign places for their holidays.

 


2) How have the houses changed science you were younger?
I didn’t have a bathroom, we bathed in a tin bath. And shared a toilet with three other families. After I was twelve we moved onto a big priefab estate. Priefab’s where built because of all the houses that had been blown up during the war. London always had a housing storage my mum and that were on the housing list for fourteen years before we moved to the priefab. A massive change in the borough happened in the early nineteen-sixty’s. Because of the huge housing shortage tower blocks were invented. The assumption was if the council built upwards this would take away the shortage in housing. Central heating, houses when I was a child was heated by a coal fire in the living room. Kitchen appliances, I did not have a washing machine, fridge or freezer. One of the reasons why women stayed at home.

 

 

3) Has the amount of crime increased since you was 15?

 

I find this a difficult question to answer because gang crime, burglary and murder are in the news constantly now. When I was a child and young teenager gang crime, rockers and mods, cray twins, type of gangsters were all over the area I lived in. The difference in the amount of knife crime and gun crime has been raised but, there has always been crime.  
 

by Clarissa Struthers