The dangerous playgrounds and parks that Boomers used when they were children

Every so often, there are complaints by older people in Britain that modern playground equipment is boring and unexciting, There is good reason for this.

In the early 1970s a doctor called Cynthia Illingworth was working at the Sheffield Children’s Hospital in England. She began to be concerned about the dreadful injuries suffered by young children attending the hospital; injuries which she said were comparable to those seen in the victims of severe road accidents. Severed fingers, crushed limbs, shattered skulls, broken legs and eye injuries were among the most noticeable injuries that Dr Illingworth encountered. The picture was pretty much the same at other hospitals across Britain at that time. The strange thing was that most doctors and nurses simply took this carnage for granted; seeing nothing at all out of the ordinary about the numbers of casualties among the under 11 age group. It had, after all, been like that for as long as anybody could remember.

One of the discoveries that Cynthia Illingworth made was that when children under the age of 11 lost the tips of their fingers, these would re-grow without any medical intervention. This is in itself curious; wherever did she find so many children with parts of fingers that had been cut off? It is, after all, an incredibly rare childhood injury today. The answer lies of course in the habit of playing out in playgrounds and parks. These days, you would probably not have much scope for investigating the re-growth of chopped-off children’s fingers, but in the 1960s’, there were plenty to look at. Dr Illingworth wanted to know why that was.

Before looking at Cynthia Illingworth’s findings, a word or two about playgrounds and parks might not come amiss, otherwise nobody under the age of forty will be likely to understand what follows. There were two factors in the accidents that Cynthia Illingworth investigated. The first of these was that the majority of the injuries seen were a result of accidents taking place during play; particularly in playgrounds. The second was that in most cases, the accidents had taken place when no adult had been present.

Modern British playgrounds are safe and inviting places, where few children come to harm. The equipment is, wherever possible, made of, or covered with, plastic, nylon or rubberised material and the surfaces beneath the roundabouts and swings are almost invariably soft and a little springy. Roundabouts have governors fitted to them which prevent them from travelling too fast and all moving objects present plastic surfaces in the direction in which they are travelling. In 1974, when Dr Illingworth was conducting her research, playgrounds were very different places. Much of the equipment had remained unchanged for almost the whole of the twentieth century and there was little plastic to be seen. The playgrounds and parks of the baby boomers were constructed of concrete, steel and wood.

These days, when children trip up in a playground, they are likely to land on a rubberised surface whose specific purpose is to soften the impact of a fall. Even a grazed knee is a rare occurrence. Until the 1970s, the ground in playgrounds was as likely as not to be an expanse of concrete. Not just any old concrete, but that strange mix containing many pebbles and stones was a popular foundation for playground equipment in the years at which we are looking. Falling onto this from more than a couple of feet meant running the risk of a broken bone. Stumbling onto it with bare knees, which all children displayed then, often drew blood. This was a minor inconvenience compared with what happened if a child landed head first on the concrete at high speed; something which was sure to happen to at least one child during an afternoon of playing in such an environment.

The equipment in children’s play areas has changed out of all recognition since Cynthia Illingworth carried out her research. The swing boats are no more; gone are the rocking horses; even the witch’s hat has been consigned to the dustbin of history. These devices were seriously dangerous. Take the swing boat, which consisted of a quarter of a ton of steel and wood, suspended from a metal frame. Along the centre ran a wooden beam, with rungs attached to it. Some children sat on this, while others hung on the side. Others pushed the massive structure back and forth; slowly at first, but with gathering speed and force. Sometimes, children ran in front of the moving swing boat and had teeth knocked out or broken. On other occasions, they would be struck on the head or arm and bones would break or skulls fracture. Sometimes, smaller children would lose their grip and fall off. If they were not careful, the swing boat, with its cargo of children, would then swoop down and knock them over.

On the face of, the rocking horse was one of the gentler rides to be found in the playgrounds. A long, wooden box, with metal seats which one straddled; and a crude, metal representation of a horse’s head at the front. This was essentially something for the smaller children, half a dozen of whom could sit in a line on top of the rocking horse. The mechanism which was hidden beneath the base allowed the thing to move backwards and forward with a swinging and bouncing action. Once it was going, the rocking horse could move very quickly and there was always the chance that the child riding at the front would be hurled forward, over the horse’s head and onto the concrete. One recalls Cynthia Illingworth’s shrewd observation in her 1975 report on playground injuries;

The younger children were at particular risk on equipment such as the

wooden rocking horse or roundabout, when the speed of operation could be

controlled by older children.

The playground environment and equipment was hazardous enough in itself, but this could have been ameliorated by the presence of responsible adults; ready to step in and call a halt to especially reckless actions on the part of the older children. Unfortunately, many of the very small children were being looked after only by siblings who were themselves of primary school age; that is to say 11 or under. It was a recipe for disaster. If the rocking horse were pushed to its limit, it was very difficult for the small children to hold on. Remember that there might well be three and four year-olds sitting on the rocking horse and there was a certain amount of competition on the part of the older children, especially the boys, to see who could make it buck the most.

A type of injury seen again and again in children at that time was crushed fingers and hands; which was how Dr Illingworth gained her data on severed fingertips. The chief culprit implicated here was that old favourite, the witch’s hat. Imagine if you will a conical structure made from lengths of steel piping welded together into a rough imitation of a tall witch’s hat. This contraption, about eight feet high, was placed over a stout metal pole planted in the concrete. It was fixed to the pole at the top by a universal joint which allowed it to swing back and forth and rotate freely. One may be seen above. Children clung onto the skeleton frame and kicked off with their feet; causing the ‘hat’ to move crazily around the pole. As it did so, the heavy steel construction banged hard against the metal pole from which it was suspended, crushing the hand, and occasionally severing the fingertips, of any child hanging onto that side.

Because the frenetic activity of the playground was led by children, there was little restraint or common sense to be found. An older child might rock the wooden horse back and forth with increasing violence until a child was hurled off onto the concrete, sometimes breaking an arm or fracturing his or her skull. The same thing happened on the roundabouts, which could reach very high speeds. This resulted in four year-olds being thrown head first onto a concrete surface at thirty miles an hour. Little wonder that some of the injuries seen in British hospitals at that time among children who had been playing in the local park resembled road traffic accidents!

Those who were at school during this period will know that the sight of a child with his or her arm or leg in plaster was a common one. It was a ritual to get all one’s classmates to sign the cast. Today, it is very rare to see a child struggling to school on crutches with a leg in plaster up to the knee. Playgrounds, and life generally, is a lot less risky for children compared with the way that it was half a century or more ago.

Many older people are sentimental about this awful state of affairs; denouncing efforts to create a safer play environment for children as being symptomatic of the ’Nanny State’. They reminisce about the swing-boats and witch’s hats, bemoaning their loss, while quite forgetting the havoc they wreaked and the misery which was caused to the victims of such dangerous pieces of playground equipment. Gradually though, over the course of a few decades, soft surfaces replaced the concrete and the more dangerous swing-boats, roundabouts, witch’s hats and rocking horses were quietly pensioned off. Playgrounds today are infinitely safer and more welcoming places for children than once they were. These improvements, combined with the fact that one seldom or never sees gangs of 10 year-olds ruling the roost in playgrounds these days, and regulating the speed of the roundabouts and swings on which very young children are riding, means that casualty departments are no longer crowded with five year-olds with broken arms, crushed hands and feet, missing fingers or fractured skulls.