What generation of Irish people have had it the toughest?

SafeSurfer

Since independence which generation of Irish people have endured the toughest time? Since independence, because obviously the great famine would be No.1 otherwise.
I think anyone born in the 1930s had it pretty bad. The Great Depression, rationing during the emergency, mass migration and hopelessness in the 1950s. Also those born in the 1970s. The mass unemployment of the 80s, crash of the late noughties, just when they were deep in debt.
What do you think?

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup

all the 1950s, late 1980s

mansize

Imagine the 40's during the Emergency

failinis

It's very hard to quantity how shíte life was for different generations because each one goes through shíte and all think they had it worst.

ArnoldJRimmer

The people who could only afford one house during the Celtic Tiger. The shame of it all

tomwaterford

Those born circa 1910.....lived and could recall the war of independence,civil war,great depression,stagnation of new state taking off and world war 2 by the age of 35

Letree

Famine

Mongfinder General

failinis wrote: »

It's very hard to quantity how shíte life was for different generations because each one goes through shíte and all think they had it worst.

1920's. Country was in ruins after the war of independence. The Civil War split whole familes and poisoned that generation. Poverty, unemployment, emigration were endemic.

mansize

failinis wrote: »

It's very hard to quantity how shíte life was for different generations because each one goes through shíte and all think they had it worst.

I don't think I've had it worst. The 80's were shït on a stick but I imagine it was a damn site better than the 40's

mansize

Letree wrote: »

Famine

That was pre-independence

Mongfinder General

ArnoldJRimmer wrote: »

The people who could only afford one house during the Celtic Tiger. The shame of it all

****ing peasants. An embarrassment to the rest of us😀😀😀

Stheno

SafeSurfer wrote: »

Since independence which generation of Irish people have endured the toughest time? Since independence, because obviously the great famine would be No.1 otherwise.
I think anyone born in the 1930s had it pretty bad. The Great Depression, rationing during the emergency, mass migration and hopelessness in the 1950s. Also those born in the 1970s. The mass unemployment of the 80s, crash of the late noughties, just when they were deep in debt.
What do you think?

I was born in the early 1970s finished education in the very early nineties, just as the country started to recover and started a career in IT in the late nineties when the boom really started here, and went on to 2008

Are you living in a different country?

jester77

Those born in the 70's have had it very good. The sh*t only hit the fan for the ones coming after.

Mahony0509

I Would say those living around the 1900-1930 timespan.

DEFTLEFTHAND

tomwaterford wrote: »

Those born circa 1910.....lived and could recall the war of independence,civil war,great depression,stagnation of new state taking off and world war 2 by the age of 35

Some men born during the 1900s probably saw action at two world wars.

Edit: revise that and say around 1900-1902

kildare lad

any generations that was born before the 50's... ive two uncles who have a 20 year age gap between them and the difference in the upbringing the older one had compared to the younger one is huge, the older one was born in the 40's. They had no electricity,running water, outhouse for a toilet, as soon he could work he had to leave school,no family car, fairly harsh catholic bogtotting schooling, grew all there own food, went to england at 18 etc... compared to his brother who was born in the late sixties who had it a lot handier.

You have to admire the women back then when it came to rearing families. Many had large families and to rear the kids and take care of the house, with none of the utililies we take for granted now they had it real tough. The type of women like my 2 nannies is sadly long gone in Irish society.

Mint Aero

kildare lad wrote: »

any generations that was born before the 50's... ive two uncles who have a 20 year age gap between them and the difference in the upbringing the older one had compared to the younger one is huge, the older one was born in the 40's. They had no electricity,running water, outhouse for a toilet

This was the case for many rural house in the 60''s, 70"'s and 80"s

Zxclnic

kildare lad wrote: »

any generations that was born before the 50's... ive two uncles who have a 20 year age gap between them and the difference in the upbringing the older one had compared to the younger one is huge, the older one was born in the 40's. They had no electricity,running water, outhouse for a toilet, as soon he could work he had to leave school,no family car, fairly harsh catholic bogtotting schooling, grew all there own food, went to england at 18 etc... compared to his brother who was born in the late sixties who had it a lot handier.

You have to admire the women back then when it came to rearing families. Many had large families and to rear the kids and take care of the house, with none of the utililies we take for granted now they had it real tough. The type of women like my 2 nannies is sadly long gone in Irish society.

From Monty Python scetch:

MP: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!

GC: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!

TG: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.

EI: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, (pause for laughter), eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah."

MP: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.

ALL: Nope, nope..

SafeSurfer

Stheno wrote: »

I was born in the early 1970s finished education in the very early nineties, just as the country started to recover and started a career in IT in the late nineties when the boom really started here, and went on to 2008

Are you living in a different country?

I suppose it's all relative. Each generation has different expectations. What was a luxury in one generation, eg electricity, wifi, becomes a basic in the next.

Stheno

SafeSurfer wrote: »

I suppose it's all relative. Each generation has different expectations. What was a luxury in one generation, eg electricity, wifi, becomes a basic in the next.

But your statement about those born in the seventies and a recession in the late nineties is factually incorrect?

Losty Dublin

Defo the Generation Snowflakers, that have to get by on less than 10 meg broadband. Like OMG, I so can only go on just Snapchat and Insta at once; it's so not tote amazeballs that some of us have to live in this new two channel land :rolleyes:

Fluffy Cat 88

My grandparents generation definitely lived through tough times. They were born pre-independence but lived through civil war, The Emergency, the big snow of 1947, and general poorness we couldn't even imagine nowadays.

I remember my Grandfather telling us that when he was a lad one of his peers said "one day a man will earn £1 a week wages" they laughed at him!

mansize

Fluffy Cat 88 wrote: »

My grandparents generation definitely lived through tough times. They were born pre-independence but lived through civil war, The Emergency, the big snow of 1947, and general poorness we couldn't even imagine nowadays.

I remember my Grandfather telling us that when he was a lad one of his peers said "one day a man will earn £1 a week wages" they laughed at him!

Had they no concept of inflation?

Academic

Bronze age. Really, really awful.

Cheers,

Ac

Your Face

Probably the mid 1700s.

JupiterKid

I was born in the mid 1970s and whilst the 80s were pretty crap I was only a young child and it didn't really affect me. I left college just as the economy was taking off and got a good career.

My grandparents, born in the period from 1900 to 1915, had it so much, much harder. World wars, rationing, much lower standard of living, no TV, central heating etc. But then what you never had you don't miss.

Capt'n Midnight

Academic wrote: »

Bronze age. Really, really awful.

Cheers,

Ac

Some say the late 1840's were worse

Armchair Andy

I was born in the 70s and I remember well going to bed or being in school hungry in the 80s. Always had a good dinner but as hard as my father worked or my mother tried, if porridge wasn't there we were fvcked.

fatknacker

The generations who got sent off to industrial schools and laundries to have pure awful things happen to them.
Suppose the famine and workhouses weren't great either. I'd have taken the soup or hopped on a ship, for sure. At least those were options.

Lingua Franca

Frank McCourt and his brothers surely had it the worst.

ArnoldJRimmer

ArnoldJRimmer wrote: »

The people who could only afford one house during the Celtic Tiger. The shame of it all

TheBiz

Well the famine wouldn't have been great

Tigger

mansize wrote: »

I don't think I've had it worst. The 80's were shït on a stick but I imagine it was a damn site better than the 40's

The 80s were sound every year things got better
Can't imagine the 40s were much fun

Tigger

TheBiz wrote: »

Well the famine wouldn't have been great

Yes but that was before the independence

unfortunately

Losty Dublin wrote:

Defo the Generation Snowflakers, that have to get by on less than 10 meg broadband. Like OMG, I so can only go on just Snapchat and Insta at once; it's so not tote amazeballs that some of us have to live in this new two channel land

F uck I'm sick of this "Generation Snowflake" s hite. It doesn't exist, how can you characterise the personalities of tens of thousands of people born over a couple of decades.

SafeSurfer

Stheno wrote: »

But your statement about those born in the seventies and a recession in the late nineties is factually incorrect?

I never mentioned a recession in the nineties. I said the late noughties https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/noughties

Relax

SafeSurfer

unfortunately wrote: »

F uck I'm sick of this "Generation Snowflake" s hite. It doesn't exist, how can you characterise the personalities of tens of thousands of people born over a couple of decades.

You can't. But there are shared experiences and comparing them to other shared experiences in time is useful.

CrabRevolution

I'd imagine the earlier the worse. Bad and all as the 70s or 80s were in economic or social terms, if you were born in the 20s you had all those problems plus little electricity, rampant diseases like TB, isolation, trade wars, only about 10% of people going on to finish secondary education etc.

Kinda relative too, while they mightn't have appreciated it at the time, in the 20s they also lived in one of the few stable democracies in Europe. The idea of a certain faction winning independence and peacefully handing over power in an election afterwards was nearly unique to Ireland at the time.

unfortunately

SafeSurfer wrote:

You can't. But there are shared experiences and comparing them to other shared experiences in time is useful.

I know but there is a certain class of twat that uses the phrase to patronise young people or make out that my generation are overly sensitive whenever they criticise the established order.

The flying mouse

Don't think no one has the monopoly on what was hard times and what was not as its all relevant, Sure looking at reeling in the years and you will see its all just swings and roundabouts that's still going on.

CrabRevolution

CrabRevolution wrote: »

I'd imagine the earlier the worse. Bad and all as the 70s or 80s were in economic or social terms, if you were born in the 20s you had all those problems plus little electricity, rampant diseases like TB, isolation, trade wars, only about 10% of people going on to finish secondary education etc

On this point it should be borne in mind that they never had electricity etc so they wouldn't have missed them. As a businessman I know put it in recent years when comparing the 1980s recession with the recent one, this is much worse because we never had as much to lose in the 80s.

andekwarhola

Whatever generation are currently bitching about the previous one.

Because, you know, they're all going to end up destitute in workhouses and dead by 30, naturally.

suicide_circus

This one. We force our voluntarily homeless to live in four star hotels. The humanity.

petrolcan

jester77 wrote: »

Those born in the 70's have had it very good. The sh*t only hit the fan for the ones coming after.

Hah! Born in '72 and moved to the UK in '91. Didn't move by choice (don't regret it though)

Zxclnic

suicide_circus wrote: »

This one. We force our voluntarily homeless to live in four star hotels. The humanity.

Wrong thread. Public stoning on the one with 'fraud' in the title, you can't miss it, hurry on now before you miss some more cutting invective..

conorhal

Lingua Franca wrote: »

Frank McCourt and his brothers surely had it the worst.

All of Frank McCourt's misery falls on the head of his alcoholic father, who gets off very lightly in the book for a man who drank while his family went hungry. You'll see the same deprivation today in children raised by junkies and alcoholics and over the past few years there have been some horrible stories in the papers about the condition of some children taken into care from such homes.

I'd say the very worst generation to have been born into in this country would have been those born in the 1850s. The were born in the teeth of the famine, if they lived till their 70's they also saw grinding poverty, the first world war, a brutal war of independence, a civil war and things get worse economically before they died. Truly the worst period of Irish history to have had to live through before you have to go back to the likes of Cromwell's decimation of the population.

It must be something to do with the internet and access to information, but unless you were rich all down the ages most people just survives fed themselves and the family and that was it even for middle class family until recent times it was the norm to just get by.

In an Irish context anyone born from say 1945 to 1960 appeaser to have done well, for example if you got a job in the lower ranks of the public service/civil services/post office/ the Garda, and so on, in the fifties and sixties it means you were in a position to purchases a house in a decent area bring up a family and retired on a pension that is now greater that what you earned when you worked.

Or if you were a farmer and managed to be cute enough to do well from the money you made, when thing were good in farming in the late seventies and early eighties, you invested in more land or brought property.

Those sort of people have done well for themselves, but it was an accident of time and birth.

Widdershins

In many ways we are better off now than people were in the past but there's a big trade-off for all of the 'improvements'.People sometimes talk about a sense of community that's not there so much, and the difference in/effect on the natural world is staggering. I can do without a lot of mod cons and gadgets and would probably prefer a simpler lifestyle, but I'm appreciative of a lot of modern developments at the same time.

LordSutch

SafeSurfer wrote: »

Since independence which generation of Irish people have endured the toughest time? Since independence, because obviously the great famine would be No.1 otherwise.
I think anyone born in the 1930s had it pretty bad. The Great Depression, rationing during the emergency, mass migration and hopelessness in the 1950s. Also those born in the 1970s. The mass unemployment of the 80s, crash of the late noughties, just when they were deep in debt.
What do you think?

Every decade since independence right up to the mid 90s I guess.

Then things suddenly got much, much better. Almost as if the country finally woke up!

Zxclnic

LordSutch wrote: »

Every decade since independence right up to the mid 90s I guess.

Then things suddenly got much, much better. Almost as if the country finally woke up!

It was Italia '90 what did it!

Rubberlegs

My Dad was born in the late 30s, and went to work on the building sites in London in the early 60s, for 20 odd years. He never said much , but it definitely wasn't a great time to be Irish in London. He wanted to come back home and came back here to find work in the early 80s, and it was struggle to find anything reliable. Unfortunately like quite a few other men, the years spent on the buildings working hard for us all, were spent exposed to asbestos dust, and he passed away within 4 months of being diagnosed with mesothelioma 6yrs ago. There was a brilliant book written on the men who went to England in the 50s /60s , and for the life of me I can't remember the name of it,.but it is s fascinating insight into a generation that didn't have it easy at all.