From my hometown newspaper’s 75 years ago column, last week:
There was the most hilarious party in Ilkley on Saturday night. It was described as a “poverty party” and a gathering of about 20 people assembled in a well-known house with their shabbiest garments, sat about on orange boxes and chairs without backs, with tallow candles as the only illumination, and for refreshments ate fish and chips without knives and forks, cheese, and bread and water.
Everyone declared it had been one of the jolliest gatherings they had known.
In 1932.