Bit of a specific question, I know, but it's mostly to help logic out how I should age my main character in a novel I've been planning.
For specific dating, I currently have the book set post WWI, early 1919. Now I'm not really looking for what was like, a common and societally acceptable age, because I know it was very uncommon for any unmarried folks to live alone prior to the 50s iirc, I'm just looking for what would have been like legally acceptable I suppose? Like, could rent a flat sort of acceptable.
Currently planned, my character is 18 (born October 1900) from a fairly upper middle class family of tailors and dressmakers over in France. Around 1916/17 ish he moved to London with the very romanticzied idea of becoming an author because he adores Victorian Gothic novels. With him he brought a very large sum of his inheritance to pay for expenses while he attempted to get his writing off the ground.
So my general questioning, I suppose, is if a well dressed 16/17 year old waved around enough money could he have been able to live alone (regardless of social expectations and societal acceptability)
Now if that was totally a no go, what options could there have been for him? I know mid wwi London received quite a lot of children refugees from countries on the front lines, but I've never really researched what happened with them. Could that be an option for him?
I also have a bit later on when he'd just turned 18 (a little bit before the novel picks up, actually) His parents patience has run out (they didn't expect him to stake out in England for so long) and he's not been very successful in his publishing still, so he's quite quickly running out of money and actually moves in with a 25 year old veteran who does a large mix of whatever work he can, but lives alone until they become roommates. (said 25 year old is the sole surviving member of his family, so the very small home he grew up in is his own)
So if he would have been unable to really find any housing when he moved to England, I could tweak things around with his future roommate and have them move in together earlier than planned (just move the vet's service years back a little bit, he had been dismissed anyways)
Anyways. Sorry for this very convoluted and specific question, but my many Google searches weren't really helping me. Also I'm very sorry if this isn't the best place to ask this, but I don't know where else I could have asked it!
Hi there - we're happy to approve your question related to your creative project, and we are happy for people to answer. However, we should warn you that many flairs have become reluctant to answer questions for aspiring novelists and the like, based on past experience: some people working on creative projects have a tendency to try to pump historians for trivia while ignoring the bigger points they were making, while others have a tendency to argue with historians when the historical reality does not line up with what's needed for a particular scene or characterization. Please respect the answers of people who have generously given you their time, even if it's not always what you want to hear.
Additionally, as amazing as our flair panel is, we should also point out that /r/AskHistorians is not a professional historical consultation service. If you're asking a question here because you need vital research for a future commercial product such as a historical novel, you may be better off engaging a historical consultant at a fair hourly rate to answer these questions for you. We don't know what the going rate for consultancy work would be in your locality, but it may be worth looking into that if you have in-depth or highly plot-reliant questions for this project. Some /r/AskHistorians flairs could be receptive to working as a consultant in this way. However, if you wish for a flair here to do this work for you, you will need to organize this with them yourselves.
For more general advice about doing research to inform a creative project, please check out our Monday Methods post on the subject.