ABSTRACT
In twentieth-century Britain, for the first time in history, it became normal to grow old. The Mass Observation respondents quoted here provide valuable expressions of how individual women perceived and experienced the major changes in the lives of older people over the twentieth century. When state pensions were introduced in Britain in 1908 they were payable at age 70. This was the first time in modern history that the British state had defined old age as such. It was argued that both men and women varied widely in the ages at which they became incapable of earning a regular income and that the pension should be paid at the age of incapacity for regular work rather than at a single universal age. Old age continued to be popularly associated with poverty throughout the twentieth century, but as in all centuries, by no means were all old people poor. Old women were more likely to be poor than old men.
