It's best to have failure happen early in life. It wakes up the Phoenix bird in you so you rise from the ashes.
We had all these things to deal with- houses full of people and John going to jail, guys from New York saying 'don't worry about anything.' So it was really confusing.
There was no welfare state, and people had to rely mainly on the Poor Law - that was all the state provided. It was very degrading, very humiliating. And there was a means test for receiving poor relief.