Birthday parties

The places that now offer parents ready-planned and catered birthday parties for their children were not in existence in this period. The more fortunate children had parties, but they were usually held at home.

Janes memories "My mother used to make an effort to give us enjoyable birthday parties. The fashion was to have a programme. My mother was a very good organiser. She baked all the food herself and wrote out a programme of activities. There was a variety of games, both active and passive. There were competitions, a little like a school exam. We played the memory game where we were shown for a short time a tray full of small objects and then had to try to remember as many as possible of the things on it. Then we had to see how many words we could make out of the letters in a word, Marmite for instance. We used to have to think of the names of flowers as answers to puzzles, or to put together the pieces of a picture, like a jigsaw puzzle. We were blindfolded to pin the tail on the donkey. There were always prizes.
"The party foods included bread and butter with hundreds and thousands on it, fruit salad, jellies and cream, pikelets, meringues and other little cakes, and a birthday cake with candles."

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