I am just about old enough to remember this time - it’s funny to think that security hinged on checking if the signature looked ‘right’. For cheques I remember here at least for yours to actually be accepted anywhere you needed a ‘cheque guarantee card’ which was basically just a debit card but with a fancy hologram - so a certificate of your ‘goodness’ - up to a certain limit per cheque. The shop would copy the details and this would supposedly guarantee they’ll be paid.

I was going to say that shops could have asked for ID - but at this time driving licences didn’t have a picture and weren’t cards - so no one carried them anyway. There was probably a lot of ‘subjective’ acceptance around the place (‘does this person look trustworthy, would they really be given a credit card or did they steal it?’) come to think of it…