1930's Britain

1930's Britain

architecture and housing of the 1930;s
1. Architecture in the 1930’s changed drastically from older styles, with the new Art Deco style arriving to more modern houses.
  1. The new art deco look relied on geometric shapes as opposed to the flowing lines of the earlier style, art nouveau .
  2. The name art deco came from an exhibition held in Paris in 1925 called the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs.
  3. Whilst many new houses would be built with the art deco style, that's not to say everyone lived in them. many people still lived in older homes and different styles of houses
2. The state of housing in the 1930's
  1. Since the 1920s 4.3m houses had been built, and by the end of the 1930s one family in three was living in an interwar house and spurred on by low interest rates, there was also a rise in home ownership, from 10% of families in 1914 to 31% by 1939.
    1. the majority of new houses wouldn't be built in the crowded inner cities but instead be built on the outskirts of the city, or the suburbs, which at the time was a new idea.
      1. The new homes of 1930s suburbia featured a bathroom, inside toilet and a third bedroom. They also tended to be dry, better insulated, light and airy. The homes of this era featured a new style kitchen in which the cooking and washing were both done. The new kitchens would have gas or electric cookers and a freestanding hot water boiler.
    2. However, not everything was all good. In fact, many many houses would be ruled as unsafe for human habitation with around 40% of the houses in Hull and as much as 90% of the houses in Stepney listed as not having even a bath. There were also 350000 houses that were decided to be overcrowded
Effects of the Great depression on employment
1. The great depression was a global economic collapse, caused by a stock market crash. Stock market crashes happen when is a sudden dramatic decline of stock prices across a major cross-section of a stock market, resulting in a significant loss of Cash.
  1. The great depression started in 1929 in Wall Street, due to a global economic collapse. This had a devastatingly significant impact to Britain: since they were already in deep financial trouble from WW1.
    1. As well as that, Winston Churchill, who at the time was Chancellor of the Exchequer, who decided to restore the pound to its pre-war standard, making it exceedingly difficult to trade, further hurting the British economy.
    2. This in turn led to all-time highs in unemployment. In the first year, the numbers rose from 1 million unemployed people to 2 million: yet, still it rose to 3.5 million by 1935. Also at the time, welfare schemes were still in their ‘infancy,’ meaning they had not yet developed to a point of helping those who needed it the most – until august of 1931 their system worked where unemployment benefits were dependent on the recipient’s contributions to the scheme, so many working-class people who found themselves out of work may never have been paid well enough to contribute- and in turn a massive wave of poverty and homelessness
      1. thankfully the massive wave of unemployment would slow down a bit in the latter parts of the decade, due to the country re-arming itself again, creating many new job opportunities and things seemed to look on the up. these moves would certainly not recover all of the unemployment however. There were still 0.5 million more people unemployed in 1937, than pre-depression rates, but things seemed to improve.
    3. Slum living and homelessness became common, with malnutrition and its associated illnesses rife in certain parts of the country, particularly in the industrial north and Scotland, where a sudden lack of demand for products meant sweeping unemployment
Entertainment and leisure in 1930's Britain
1. in Britain it was a period of huge popularity for cinemas and films, where often times people went once, or even twice a week, The earlier films were mastered in grayscale, but later on, films would start to be mastered in colour. It would be quite some time before all were mastered in colour.
2. Public broadcasting
  1. Television began in Britain in 1936 when the BBC began broadcasting. Although at the time it was a relatively new, complicated and most of all, expensive medium of broadcasting public information, as well as that there were hardly any channels, for as mentioned before it was still VERY early days for commercial electronic TV (and even then the earlier mechanical devices were loud, inefficient and not mass produced.)
    1. It was very uncommon to find a TV set anywhere during the 1930's . yet despite that by 1933 alone, half of all British households had a radio.
  2. Radio broadcasting began in 1922 in Britain when the BBC was formed. By 1933 half the households in Britain had a radio.
3. Confectionery in 1930's Britain
  1. Sales of ice cream boomed in the 1930s ( originally ice cream was sold on British shores on small tricycles with refrigerated boxes on front of them.) As well as that, many new confectioneries were introduced. Some examples of this would be Milky Way (1935 in Britain, for in America it was introduced 12 years earlier), Crunchie (1929), Snickers (1930), Mars Bar (1932), Whole Nut (1933), Aero and Kit Kat (1935), Maltesers and Blue Riband (1936) and Smarties, Rolo and Milky Bar (1937). Meanwhile, Jaffa cakes went on sale in 1927.

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	Created by julien carrere over 3 years ago