Ask the 1950s Style ex-Teddy Boy.
I did a search on your username using the word “teddy”. 
Not actually regulation but I would say children had more freedom than children today in terms of the amount of adult supervision they suffered. Born in '55 my memories are from the early 60s rather than the late 50s but I doubt there was much difference and, at the age of eight, I moved about London on my own on foot, on the buses, and on the tube in a way that most kids would not be allowed to these days. Nowadays, children are much more likely to be driven about by their parents.
(Thinking about it I am probably referring to middle class kids - working class kids still don’t get ferried around by doting parents.)
Yes, this is far too large a topic for my quick late night addendum to a post. I would say that not only were there far fewer black people in Britain of the fifties but they were less visible for all sorts of social reasons.
Born 1959 here, but I don’t think my experiences of the mid-60’s in east London are too far off the mark as regards the late 50’s.
Many signs of the wartime bombing were still evident, with quite a few derelict bomb sites and some prefabricated housing (which was meant to have been only temporary housing for those bombed out in WW2, but had still not all been replaced at that time).
People were much poorer, less likely to own a car, phone, or fridge. Many houses had only an outside lavatory, not all houses had a bathroom (there were public bathing facilities, though).
Foreign holidays were unknown, and many poorer families could only afford “working” holidays, (picking hops in Kent was a common one).
Food was much less varied, and remorselessly bland, with “spicy” food regarded with deep suspicion as “foreign muck”. It was, however, more likely to be fresh as most people did not have a fridge or freezer and therefore had to buy food every day instead of making a weekly trip to the supermarket. Supermarkets were unknown at the time.
There were far fewer ethnic minorities about but they do exist and their presence was beginning to become obvious in the cities.
Kids were much more free to play outside, and of course there were no home computers then to keep them inside. They were also kept in short trousers until they were about 10, regardless of the weather.
TV was getting more entertaining and popular - ITV was founded in 1955, giving some much-needed competition to the BBC - but many households did not yet own a set.
Education was more basic. University was for the rich.
Crime rates were lower, but that might be just because few people had anything worth stealing.
I was born in 1953. :eek:
We still had steam trains then. 
Now we didn’t have washing machines or tumble dryers, so my Mum washed clothes in the sink. Then she used a mangle to initially dry clothes, next hung them on a washing line with pegs from a wicker basket. So did all our neighbours.
If it then rained, the whole family rushed out to get the washing in.
We had dial telephones and didn’t get a TV (black and white only) until the 1960s.
There were just two TV channels.
Milk was delivered to the door and there were several postal deliveries daily.
And some still hasn’t! BBC NEWS | UK | England | Suffolk | Pre-fab house sells for £165,000
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I was born at the tail end of the fifties to a middle class family. Here’s a list of things we didn’t have that a lot more people have today:
car
telephone,
fridge
television
portable radio
means of playing recorded music
washing machine
central heating
Yeah but we did have:
Rickets
Rationing
Bomb sites
Mangles
Conscription
Powdered eggs
To name just a few earthly delights;)
I own a 1973 Raleigh with a three-speed hub gear. One of its charms is that the Raleigh company essentially made the same line of bikes for about sixty years - so this bike could have been made ten years later or a lot sooner.
Black, fenders, chainguard, rear rack. Mine has regular cable brakes, but to be period correct, rod brakes would have been more common.
This was basic transportation for most people, especially for short trips to the market or to the station.
Only the boys were kept in short trousers, girls often didn’t get to wear trousers at all (still banned in my school uniform code in the seventies. Equal opportunities chilblains for all.
Where spicy food was known it would be minced up leftovers from the Sunday roast cooked with a bit of onion and curry powder (of which pretty much only one type was sold).
Children were allowed out on their own at a much earlier age but unmarried adult children living with their parents could be subjected to a great deal more control.
One comprehensive I teach in has got away with only the most token of gestures, giving girls the option of wearing only one particular style of trousers, which are thoroughly unfashionable, universally hated, and therefore shunned completely.
Oops. I meant the *boys *were kept in short trousers, of course. Girls wore short skirts. The idea that kids’ legs needed “hardening” by exposure to the elements was widespread.
The only olive oil you saw was sold in very small bottles to treat ear disorders. Back then you only cooked with lard or dripping.
As for short trousers, at my school you had to wear them up till the third year of secondary school. That is until you were 13 or 14 years of age.
I noticed recently, in my local Lloyd’s chemist, that they still have a tiny little bottle of olive oil on the shelves, alongside all the other stuff. For about two quid. By quantity, it has to be the most expensive in the town, even more than the organic fair-trade gluten-free bollocks in some shops.
Worth buying for the handy little dispenser though. Just top it up with your favourite olive oil.
I accidentally put some garlic flavoured oil in mine a couple of years ago.:eek:
Then sell the bloody dispenser!!! They’ll sell reinforced toilet paper and cinnamom-flavour lubricant, fer god’s sake (yes, I am starting to make things up)
I highly recommend watching 84 Charing Cross Road, starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins.
“Based on a volume of letters between American writer Helene Hanff and Englishman Frank Doel, the screenplay by Hugh Whitemore abounds with pithy commentary on books, literature, and philosophy.”
Please tell me you had to Google for that…
For spooky and supernatural, how about the wreck of the HMS Gladiator in 1908.
It’s ghostly wreckage reappeared every 10 years. 1958 was the last “confirmed” sighting.
On the movie front, 1958 saw Hammer release Dracula and The Revenge of Frankenstein
The British TV series Heartbeat is set in Yorkshire in the 1960s; I don’t think it would be too far off the mark in regards to the UK in the 1950s as well, at least from an aesthetic point of view; the same could also be said for the early episodes of Coronation Street too.
If your RPG involves the military at any point, the British army were issuing bolt-action Lee-Enfield rifles and Webley or Enfield revolvers to the troops; except for a few units which had just received the L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle.
The Goon Show was broadcast on radio between 1951 and 1960; you might want to track down a few episodes (they’re very funny and can be seen as the forerunner of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, The Goodies, and all the other absurdist British comedies that we know and love.)
Hi-de-Hi! was set in a 1950s holiday camp, too.
Otherwise, the British made a huge number of Ealing Comedies in the late 40’s and early '50s which might help give you some flavour of the times as well.