Those Bands Men Used To Wear

[hc4361]

to hold their sleeves up - what are they called, please?

[EDDIE51]

For those not 'in the know' back then shirts had separate collars . You could just put a new clean collar on the shirt each day rather than wash the entire shirt which would have been considered wasteful. No washing machines and wash day was once a week you got a clean shirt on Sunday and it had to last the week!
I was the eldest of 3 brothers bath day was Saturday and we took turns to be first in the water . If it was your turn to be first one week you were 3rd the next week and 2nd the week after that. This was because hot water was a luxury, it needed to be heated in the back boiler above the coal fire and coal was expensive . We were better off in that respect as miners families got cheap coal as part of the wages.
And people wish the 'Good old days' could be brought back ( along with rickets , polio and TB )

[FredPuli43]

They are armbands. The black mourning band is a "black arm band" or a "mourning arm band". They were the sign of an engineer; my father always wore them, necessary or not, as a symbol that, even though he was the boss, he was still ready to clear his arms to get oily and dirty as an engineer. It was like Bernard Weatherill, a Savile Row tailor, and Speaker of the House of Commons, always carrying a needle in his lapel.Never forget where you came from and what you are.

I wore stiff collars with studs all my working life. We had to, but we had to have specialist cleaners for the collars because they required extra starch and a gloss finish. We have wing collars for in court and cutaway collars for outside. Fitting a new collar, fresh from the laundry, is quite a skill, but after a few dozen goes you can do it with your eyes shut.

[wolf63]

I did my annual dust of my living room today. I have a round leather box which has collars in it. The words "mother" and "sale room" spring to mind - she loved a bargain.

When you think about it quite a lot has changed over the course of our lives. I will be clinging on to my forties for a couple of months so I am not really old.

Female train drivers initially traumatised my dad, but he accepted this intrusion into his train quite quickly. I don't suppose he would have felt that way back in steam train times.