If someone had £123 pounds in 1953, would they be considered middle-class?

Question

I am comparing class representation within the films Alfie and Genevieve. In Genevieve they talk about having £123 savings, would this represent the middle-classes? More obvious in the film are the vintage cars and the rally, and of course the characters all being well-spoken. Has anyone else seen it and have any opinions on it ? (not if it is a good or bad film thanks :-)

Answer 1

I think they were quite lucky back then to have £123 but I don't think means they would be considered middle-class as there would be many other attributes to take into account.

Answer 2

A hundred and twenty three pounds of savings in the 1950s would not mean a person who owned those savings was middle class.

It was possible in the 1950s to buy houses for £1,500 to £2,000 but these would certainly have been beyond the means of the working class but available to anyone with savings of £123. It would do as a deposit, and the rest paid off over the usual 25 years.

When I joined the British Army aged 16 in 1957, I had a total of £5 in savings, equal then to about 2 and a half weeks pay which was then equal to £1.50 in present day money.

I had a friend at school who went into the Welsh coal fields as a face worker. In 1957 he was earning £17 a week. A typical middle class income would have been from about £20 per week.

Have seen the film Genevieve, not long after it came out, sometime around 1962. I think the release date was early 1950s. In the final scene in the movie, when they cross Westminster Bridge, you can still see the tramlines, long after the last tram by the way.

Alfie, a 1960s 'kitchen sink movie', was one of many working class movies which hit our screens during the 1960s class revolution here in UK.

Back in the 1950s a concerted effort was being made by movie makers in UK to re-establish the dominance of the middle classes. Lots of wartime POW escape movies with lots of middle class toffs with posh accents.

All that was thrown aside in the 1960s when we got "It's been a Hard Days Night". There's even a Peter Sellars version of him speaking the words in an upper class trit voice of Lawrence Olivier.

The class revolution certainly hotted up from the late 50s onwards.

Do people really believe that Harry Enfield is a common working class oik? Listen to his dad. He speaks with the well to do middle class [glass cut] accent of the 1940s and 50s.

Answer 3

Genevieve and Alfie were made a ten years apart.
In the early fifties Britain still had rashening books WWII was less than a decade ago and the motor car was not available to the common man. To own your own house made you middle class, to have savings made you postively affluent.
Alfie is about a working class man who is of another generation when Britian was getting back on it's feet and for the first time young people had a bit of cash in their pockets. A good suit and a silver tongue enabled him to cross certain social boundaries. Yet he was still trapped by the confines of moral laws, i.e. sex, contraception, etc. Back street abortion still existed.
I started work in the '70's, apprentices at Ford's were earning about £25 a week and as a hairdressing apprentice I earned £9 a week.
In fairness you would be better to choose 2 films within the same period to compare because the social boundaries, class and economic climates changed a great deal within that decade.

Answer 4

They would be able to put down a 7% deposit on a new house, which would now be worth around £184,000 now (see link below for table of values).
If the house had been somewhere like Ealing or Kingston on Thames it would be worth nearer half a million. Saving to buy your own house is just the sort of aspirational thing young people did in the early fifties. And with the rebuilding post-war and the move to the suburbs from the run-down/bombed out city centres, the young people (i know they look old now, but try and ignore that) featured in Genevieve would have aspired to somewhere a bit more countrified and away from their parents - don't know if that makes them middle-class. The people in Genevieve seem young and relatively carefree - affluent, but still building a life for themselves, they seem to behave in a relatively classless way, but throw someone in there with a strong accent and the wrong shoes, and you would soon see the class divisions rise up - unless he was a good mechanic of course. And then he would be a jolly good chap, and they would buy him a pint of ale for his trouble - its basically the Famour Five for grown ups. There is also a post-war hangover of mutual respect between the classes, based on wartime shared experiences between men and women of all classes.
Now Alfie, he was a different kettle of fish altogether.

Answer 5

Yes it would mean you were middle class. Genevieve by the way is a great film. It is about the London to Brighton rally and is very funny.

Answer 6

Is it all the money he had in his whole life? THen he is the third class, if it was current money like he had 123 pounds in the year 1953 then yeah he's middle class low.

Answer 7

In 1953 if my parents and £123 they would have been classed as bloody rich

Answer 8

That would be a lot of money then. The average wage was about £7 a week.

Answer 9

I'm not sure but I found this really cool website that might help. Check it out.
http://fx.sauder.ubc.ca/etc/GBPpages.pdf

Good Luck!