Woman’s Weekly May 1960 Part 1

I recently acquired from the internet an old copy of Woman’s Weekly for 14 May 1960 and I thought it would be interesting to look and see what was inside.

The magazine was launched, would you believe, in 1911 and, so far as I know, it is still going today and can be brought in the newsagents. The magazine has its own website which describes the magazine as Help, advice and inspiration for mature women. That is a description which, I believe, fits the magazine in the 1960s as well. From the website you can also download a high res image of a recent magazine cover to see what is inside.

What I want to do is just to go through the magazine and bring you any interesting articles, adverts, or other information and also to give you my opinion on content in general and the market at which it was aimed.

Cover
The magazine cost four and a half pence and to convert that into decimal and look at it today makes the cost meaningless but it is, I think, at around the same price today.

However, the actual cost to a mother in 1960 was probably a lot more. Money was tight in those days, there were no credit cards, and most people had to watch carefully what they spent and only spend money on other goods once they had purchased food and other necessary items. Therefore, the real cost of a magazine each week was probably quite high.

There is not a lot of difference in the cover of the magazine then and now, both show images representing articles that are inside and which are designed to act as an inducement to buy the magazine and thus be able to read the articles. On the particular current cover of the magazine that I have (10.10.2010) there are drawing of woman’s underwear, something that I think would not have appeared in 1960. However the other items are similar with details of articles and of cooking and knitting type howtos.

The 1960 magazine promises articles about ‘The luxury of silk – for you to sew’, ‘For a bright girl’ (this relates to a sewing article and ‘girl’ in this context means a child) and ‘For a busy man’ which is a knitting article about a pullover.

The cover construction is simpler and a lot less colourful and eye-catching but it does the job in a restrained and somehow dignified way.

So we have made a start on the magazine, next week we will open it and see what we can find inside that will be of interest.

Website note
Since writing this I have discovered that the magazine is also represented on the goodtoknow website where you can see the current issue and also read more about some of the articles. It looks a good website so a link is here.