Yes, I agree barbaric GD - well it was extremely painful.. Illegal? Nope - things like that were common place in errrr--umm..... 1940s. Happy Days!!! :D
jjordie my friend, It sounds a lifetime away from the life we all enjoy today, If you had no electricity what did you for lights? I think sometimes it may be easy for people to look back with rose tinted specs and just remember the good things, I used to work with a chap who told me of the "long drop" toilets that used to be in abundance!!! my God i am glad i wasn't around then. I think perhaps the pace of change in the latter part of the 20th century has been at olympic pace and perhaps people who lived in post war Britain and Europe will have seen more change than any other generation before them. I am lucky to be young enough not to have lived in the "dark ages"
:eek: School Dentist!...I still have vivid memories of them,full of absolute horror. Imagine,at the tender age of ten..no Mum with you..sitting in a caravan waiting for your turn in the chair and the lad already there being actually slapped around the head in an attempt to make him open his jaws and stop biting down on the drill,then hearing him screaming as the dentist prised the drill bit out of his teeth :eek: I actually ran home to the next village and was found hiding in the coal shed sobbing in fear!This happened in the mid sixties but still now just going for a check up puts me in a cold sweat. Kids today :rolleyes: ........ :D
That sounds awful, I was born in the sixties just about. "world cup year" Why did parents permit this barbaric practice?
I dont remember the school dentist doing any work on my teeth, but I do remember the check ups and the hook like implement they used to dig around trying to find a soft spot. When they did find one it hurt like hell and they told you to go and make an appointment with your own dentist, which was usually quite a while later.
There is one thing we had at school that really should be re-instated - the Nit Nurse!! For those of you who don't have small children - nits are at epidemic proportions now. I'll guarantee that within the first week back at school, at least one of the spawns will come home scratching!! :eek: Never had nits in my day..... :D :D
My school years were from 1953 to 1966 and I can't remember ever being visited by a school dentist. Various embarrassing medicals, foot inspections and even a nit nurse, yes, but not a dentist. In my early teens I started to go to an NHS dentist regularly - you could find them then - and still have the fillings to prove it. A friend of my age tells me that dentists often used to perform this sort of work unnecessarily in order to increase their payments from the system. As I have very strong teeth, it infuriates me to think that some of them might have been damaged merely to increase the dentist's bank-balance
They still do it, when my NHS dentist turned private I registered with another private dentist and he told me that they used to make fillings bigger than they needed to in order to prevent the remaining enamel from rotting! When I was at school the optician and the nit nurse used to come together, the nit nurse also checked for verucas! Tea tree oil is supposed to deter nits if that's any help to anyone.
Thanks Celia - my youngest is lagged in Tea Tree everyday - bless her!! It does seem to work quite well - she doesn't get them as often as other kids :rolleyes: As for dentists - ours dumped us in favour of private patients and it took me 3 years to find another I don't care about myself, but surely they have a duty to treat the kids I had to watch my eldest have 3 teeth out-broke my bl**dy heart. So come on - if there's any dentists on here, I'd like an explanation as to why my children had to suffer because of your greed Sorry, but I think it's appalling.
It was only when we lived in the country for a few months that we didn't have electricity GD and we had paraffin lamps on the table. Remember my 3 year old brother knocking it over and setting fire to the table cloth. Dangerous times :rolleyes: Didn't know they still had dentists in caravans in the 60s Pal - and as you say, no wonder we were terrified of having anything done to our teeth.
I could well be wrong about the years but not the sound of that drill!I never had treatment after that at school. And the half day off to visit one was welcome too.
Going back to Jjordie's comments about the knickers by the open fire in the classroom - we had that too - and the milk for having at break used to sit by the fire too - made it horrible!
Yes, remember that too Dendrobium. It's a wonder we weren't permanently ill but perhaps it made us tougher.
Knickers by the open fire in the classroom, Dendro ... please explain? :confused: I think it's why I didn't drink milk for about forty years ... and now it has to be ice cold!
we use to toast bread on our fire at school,bought from the local bakery,that mixed with the aroma from the girls knickers made for an interesting lunch
