On 2012-09-17 19:00, cctech-request at
classiccmp.org wrote:
telephones. And doesn't England still have
coin-op residential
>electrical service? When I heard this referred to on an old
When I was a kid,
one of my uncles lived in a council house outside
Nottingham. They had a coin-operated gas meter. No central heating and
only single glazing, of course, after all this was an English house
built sometime not too long after the war ;-). Eventually they were not
allowed coal fires either (probably after the Clean Air Act of 1968) so
then if you wanted to be warm as well as fed you needed the gas. I think
the electricity meter was coin operated as well.
Council estates were built to provide housing for the working class. My
uncle was reasonably well off, being a civil servant with the local
council, but some of the neighbours definitely were not, one saw gardens
with uncut grass, full of broken toys and with really unwashed children
in, the mother coming out in an nightgown and slippers with a cigarette
in her mouth. The reason for the coin operated meters was pretty
obvious, just getting the rent paid by those particular neighbours was
probably not easy.
And I had to learn to count in (rarely pounds) shillings and pence to
get by :-)
/Jonas