radios in WW2 and afterwards
radios for pop music in the 1950s
vintageradios gramophones and radiograms televisions
at home recording from television libraries
pre-digital lending in
libraries
pre-digital
Types of library
early to mid-20th century UK
Why libraries were so popular
Guest contribution
People needed something to escape the horrors of wartime. There were very few magazines; and newspapers were restricted to two pages. Also there were few books at home because at the start of the war, we children were asked to bring to school any 'unwanted' books from home for pulping into newsprint. Badges were awarded to children who donated the most books. Such were the dire straits that country was in.
Yet people could escape into books. So libraries were the palaces of dreams.
Peter Johnson
While I was a child in the wartime Britain of the 1940s, and then a teenager in the 1950s, most people had a book on the go - invariably borrowed from a library.
Mobile libraries
Mobile library, courtesy of Tony Woods. The writing on the side reads 'Borough of Hendon Library Service'
In the late 1940s and probably into the 1950s, there was no public library where I grew up. This may have been because the building had been bombed in the blitz of the Second World War, or because my family lived in the newly-built London suberbia.
Instead, like numous other families, we made do with a mobile library. It was no bigger than a large caravan, so its stock was very limited indeed, although it was changed frequently. It came came round the streets once a week, and stayed in one place for only a short time and only in daylight.
Public libraries in purpose-built buildings
Public libraries did exist in their original purpose-built buildings in the 1940s. They were in the older towns and had been fortunate enough to escape the German bombs of World War Two. I remember them in Fore Street and Hounsfield Road, Edmonton.
Peter Johnson
In the late 1950s, my home town of Edgware got a new purpose-built library on the site of the prefabricated wartime British Restaurant.
Privately run subscription libraries
A private library, run as part of a shop. Photographed in the Lightbox, Woking.
Boots in Cheltenham in the mid 20th century, showing some of the magazines that would have been in its subscription library, courtesy of Ian Henderson.
Guest contribution
Charges at subscription libraries
Subscription libraries charged sixpence (old money) per week per book and catered for the middle classes who did not want to handle a book that had come from a public library as it might carry some contagious disease. Such were the times. Sixpence had a lot of buying power in the 1940s and 1950s, which put subscription libraries out of the grasp of most ordinary people.
Peter Johnson
There was a private subscription library in my home town of Edgware, which was open during normal shop hours. It was called Gainsborough Libraries, but my mother said we couldn't afford to join - which she said about most things at that time. The library was tiny, above a shop.
Boots the chemist also had subscription libraries above its shops in certain large towns.
Academic libraries
Academic libraries, such as the British Library and libraries attached to universities. were out of the reach of ordinary people. Anyway, their stocks was moved to safer stores during the war.
If you can add anything to this page or provide a photo, I would be pleased if you would contact me.
