Reading through some of the posts on this thread, I truly believe that I must have been brought up in a different town. I was born in the 1940's and I remember far different times, we lived up to nine of us at times in a house (if you can call it that) which consisted of three rooms in it's entirety, two bedrooms upstairs and one living room downstairs.
Diseases like Polio, Ricketts, TB, Whooping Cough, Congenital Heart Disease, and such were prevalent and every large family had their share of these diseases and other similar ones and it was only the introduction of the National Health that helped to eradicate some of these blights.
In our family (as in many others) money was practically non existent, being the oldest child I was reasonably lucky in as much as I didn't have to suffer the ignominy of hand me down clothes that once belonged to my siblings. Food was very basic and never enough the only decent meals we ever really got being the free school meals five days a week even during school holidays. We even did a tour on Sundays (different weeks) of those Sunday Schools that did "bring your own plate & spoon" meals it didn't matter what denomination they were, a hot meal for a few hymns was a good exchange.
I really was honestly and truly am grateful of the day it was decided that there just wasn't room for me any longer due to my age (10 years old) and I was sent to live my grandparents (shared time between both sets of grandparents) in the compared luxury of Balsall Heath & Sparkbrook.