How Greatly Were The Lives Of British Civilians Affected During World War II?By Laura Cleland
With
permission; Laura is a former pupil of Greenfield School -
this essay was done as piece of GCSE coursework.
Gas
(Start
of the war, A
nuisance, ...and
children, ...and babies,
Post boxes); Evacuation
(Emotional
effects, Evacuation
myths, ...and
adults, ...and
the children); Rationing
(Food, Effects,
Poor
and rich, Black
Market, Farmers
myth, Clothes,
Water);
Women’s
Work –
(Land Army,
Munitions work,
Women myth, Conscientious Objectors,
Effects on Women,
WVS, Air-Raid
Wardens); Home
Guard; Air-raids (Fires,
Carrying on…, Effects of the Blitz,
...and children,
Anderson Shelters,
Morrison Shelters,
School Shelters, Public Shelters,
The Underground,
Coventry – effects,
Myths of the Blitz);
Blackout; Conclusion |
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There
is no doubt that people had a hard time during the war, due to things like
rationing and bombing. But
just how much did each of these things affect the lifestyle of each
individual living in Britain. It
is impossible to say that everyone’s life changed in the same ways.
For example the lifestyle of a woman living in London would change
in a completely different way to that of a woman living in the
countryside. She would have
to put up with losing her children due to evacuation while the country
women would have to put up with gaining children due to evacuation.
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The
government were expecting to be bombed for years. They estimated that 100,000 bombs would be dropped on
London alone within the first fortnight.
They started to prepare for all the injuries and deaths.
Hospitals started to clear their beds to make room for all the war
casualties. Coffin factories
started to pour out cardboard coffins instead of wooden ones, as they were
cheaper and quicker to make. The
government ordered huge lime pits to be dug for mass burials.
These must have been quite upsetting changes.
Before the war people buried their relatives in a wooden coffin in
their own plot. Now, during
the war, they were going to have to bury them en masse, in cardboard
coffins, which would rot away very quickly.
It seemed as if the government did not care about the dead anymore,
only living people counted. This
was a great emotional change for people living during the war as well as
quite a. big physical change.
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Another
preparation for war was against gas.
The government issued over forty million gas masks. The masks were to protect the British people from the
horrible mustard gas, or Lewisite, that had killed so many troops in the
First World War. On Monday
4th September 1939 they ordered everyone always to carry their gas masks.
Everyone set off for work carrying the buff coloured cardboard
boxes on their backs. |
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Throughout
the war peoples’ attitudes to gas masks changed. When they first got them everyone carried their gas masks
from a sense of duty, but soon people began to get sick of lugging the
masks around. The lost
property at train stations became full of purposely forgotten gas masks.
To try and stop people from leaving their gas masks at home cinemas
wouldn’t allow people in if they were not carrying their gas mask with
them. This was a another
change but not such a big one. |
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To
begin with when you went to the cinema you had to take a gas mask with
you. However this did not
have a major effect on the public as they soon stopped not letting people
in when they weren’t carrying their gas mask.
The only place that kept up the obligation was the Shakespeare
Memorial Theatre, Stratford on Avon.
One land girl cycled to the theatre one afternoon and being
scrutinised by a commissionaire managed to pass a friend’s camera box as
her gas mask box. Another man
and his family were turned away because they weren’t able to be as
deceptive as the girl. |
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Having
to carry a gas mask around with you all the time was a nuisance if you
were an adult but if you were a child it was fun, if a bit cumbersome.
One boy remembers: |
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"The
rubber fitted really tightly around your
face. If you blew
into the mask you could make great
farting noises", |
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The
gas mask smelt of rubber and steamed up when you breathed into it.
One girl called Margaret, from Bishop Auckland, remembers
practising an air raid once: |
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"We
put up the seats and squeezed under.
The trouble was I held my breath
because no one had told us you
were allowed to breathe in the gas
masks, then when you did breathe,
you felt sick because of the build up
of fumes from the materials they
used," |
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The
gas masks were all very well for protecting people against the gas but
then the government found out about Arsine, in May 1940, and had to take
in all the gas masks and fit them with a Contex filter.
It was a bit like a small tobacco tin fastened to the end of the
mask with adhesive tape. This
was another small change which entailed a lot of hard work during the war.
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Some
children were scared of the gas masks so the government made them look
like Mickey Mouse. They then
had to be changed to fit on the new filter.
The gas masks had quite an emotional effect on children as they
were very scared of them. They
were too young to understand how they worked and that is why they did
things like Margaret and didn’t breathe in them.
It was a big change for a child to go suddenly from only carrying
around their school kit to having to carry around a gas mask that they had
to keep practising putting on. |
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Babies
had to be protected from gas as well.
They didn’t have gas masks
like everyone else, they had a whole suit to wear.
Someone had to stand and pump air into the suit all the time
otherwise the baby would suffocate. My
Gran remembers how she got my Uncle used to his: |
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"I
would put him in it for about
half-an-hour each day, just after he
had had his tea.
At first he screamed and screamed
but he became use to it after
a while. The only
problem was that where we were living
at the time there was no fear
of us being attacked by gas so
I had to put my son through
that terrifying experience every night for
no real reason" |
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This
was a frightening change if you were a baby.
You would be used to your normal comfortable clothes then have to
wear a horrible suit that probably hurt, and would be very uncomfortable.
If your mother was not pumping enough air into it then it would
have been very difficult to breathe.
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Another
change that the government made to prepare Britain for a gas attack was to
paint the pillar boxes in a different type of paint.
Instead of the ordinary red pillar boxes they painted them in a
yellow paint. When there was
gas in the air it would change colour and the air raid wardens would know
that there was gas around and could warn people to put their gas masks on.
They would do this by walking through the streets with a clapper.
You had to wear the gas mask until the all clear was given.
Having the pillar boxes painted a different colour did not really
affect people at all. They
would still be able to post their mail the same way as usual but one thing
to do with mail that did affect people was that it was censored.
You could not send letter they way you used to be able to.
It was an invasion of privacy in a way but it was for the good of
the British people. If a spy
got a hold of important information about were the armies were stationed
then it could ruin a lot of things. My gran remembers how my grandad managed to tell her where
he was without anyone else knowing. |
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"We
used to have a secret code that
only I and you grandfather knew.
He would write me letters from
all over the place and I would
be able to tell exactly where he
was and what had happened to his
group" This
was quite a big change for the British population. Before they had been used to being able to write letters to
anyone saying whatever they liked. Now
nothing was really private. |
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Among
the preparations for the bombing of Britain was evacuation.
This had an enormous emotional effect on families.
It was a huge change for both children who were evacuated and hosts
who took in the evacuees. The
government made plans to evacuate children over 5, mothers with children
under 5, pregnant women and disabled people.
They decided that they would be safer in the country rather than in
the big cities. It would also
leave fewer mouths to feed and fewer injured and dead to deal with from
the bombing that was expected. The
government divided the country up into three different areas.
The areas were the evacuation areas, the neutral areas and the
reception areas. An
announcement was made on the radio on the 31st August 1939, informing all
parent’s that the following day would be the beginning of evacuation. A Jewish women remembers having to wake her children up at
5.30 am to get them ready. She
remembers the tears of her eight year old daughter and how her sister only
a year older took it so well. |
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The
emotional effect throughout the entire period of evacuation was gigantic.
Neither the children nor their mothers knew where they would end
up. Alan Burrell remembers
leaving his home town: |
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"I
thought it was a Sunday School outing
down to the seaside.
And I looked out of the bus
window and I saw my mother crying
outside and I said to my brother,
"What’s Mummy crying for?" and
my brother said "Shut up". ‘ |
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The
pain and fear that both mothers and children felt on September 1st 1939
would have stayed with them for the rest of their lives. |
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On
the other hand there is evidence that some children were really looking
forward to going away. One
boy remembers the train journey as being a great new experience for him.
He talks about the fact that he had never been out of his own town
before and now due to evacuation he was going on the journey of his life.
He was seeing things like cows and living in the country he was
learning where milk really did come from.
"So it’s no just made in a bottle then?" Being
evacuated to some people was the best experience of their lives while for
others it was the most traumatic one ever.
One girl was very grateful for evacuation: |
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"/
thank God I was evacuated: not because
I avoided danger… But because it changed
my way of thinking.
It made me love the country.
I could never live in town again.
I know that I found refuge...
after an unhappy home life." |
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Many
children became homesick. It
was a big change for them to go from their ordinary everyday life to live
with strangers. They did not
know how they would be treated, what was expected of them.
Carries War is a book about an evacuee and her brother.
They go to live with a family in Wales.
The man is very strict and tells them off a lot.
They are only allowed to walk on the stair carpet once a day as it
might wear it out. They are
not used to this but the girl tries her best to keep the man happy. Although this book is fictional it is written by an evacuee
and she shares some of her experiences in it.
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Evacuation
changed throughout the war. In
the beginning there were millions of children evacuated but then when
there was no bombing between September and Christmas parents took their
children home. Some children
were evacuated again the next year while others who hadn’t come home
stayed out in the country for all of the war.
Some children came home themselves: |
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"Micky
and I walked home with the odd
lift we thumbed. My
mum opened the door and nearly fainted.
"What you doin’ here," she said.
"Your Dad’ll kill you!" (Jim
Willis, London.) |
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There
are a lot of myths about evacuation.
One of them is that the evacuated children were all dirty, and that
they never used the toilet. |
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"The
children went around urinating on the
walls. Although we
have two toilets." |
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This
is not true about all evacuees as some children were very clean and were
disgusted with some of the hosts views of evacuee’s: |
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"How
I wish the common view of evacuees
could be changed...
It is just as upsetting for a
clean well-educated child to find itself
in a grubby semi-slum as the other
way round" |
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There
is also a myth about most hosts treating their evacuees as slaves: |
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"A
few hosts... treated
their evacuees as guests or as they
were their own children but the majority
treated the girls as unpaid maids".
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This
may have been true in a few cases but there are plenty of memories to say
that this was not generally the case.
In Carries War, Carrie talks of working in her host’s shop.
She says that she really enjoys the work and loved helping her
hosts stack the shelves. |
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Another
over-exaggerated myth was that people only picked the pretty girls and the
big strong boys. "Children
were picked if they were the cleanest
and the poorest were always left
till last" |
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"Big
boys who looked sensible and useful
were quickly chosen".
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Obviously
when a farmer needed a big boy for his farm work he would take him but a
woman MP describes how women in moorland villages in Durham |
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"Went
home weeping because they had not
a child allocated to them" |
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Also
a man MP recalls how he would regularly see fights e.g. one time, on North
Wales station two men fought for the privilege to take home two Liverpool
boys. |
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Evacuation affected people in different ways.
It had a great emotional impact on the mothers who were sending
their children away, not knowing whether they would ever see them again,
or whether they were going to be looked after properly.
The hosts were also greatly affected.
They had been used to sharing their house with family and then
suddenly they had an extra child or two living with them.
They could be a very dirty family and get a very clean child or
they could be a very clean family and get a dirty child.
One quote that sums up evacuation came from a headmistress at
Chepstow school: |
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"One
half of Britain at least is learning
how the other half lives’. |
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The
people that were affected the most by evacuation were the children.
They were torn away from their families at such a young age.
They had no idea what was happening to them.
They were scared not only by the journey but little things like the
labels they had to wear. It
made them feel as though they had lost their identity: |
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"Our
labels were pinned on and I felt
sick... I felt I
was leaving my name and identity
behind when we left." |
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How
a child of 5 was expected to cope with the change they faced through
evacuation is hard to imagine. Evacuation
affected most people a great deal. |
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At
the two extremes there were a few children who were not evacuated at all
and a few who where evacuated completely out of the country for example to
stay with relatives in America. Evacuation
was not compulsory but at the time it seemed like the best thing.
Today you would not even consider packing a five year old’s
suitcase and sending him or her off on a long train journey to somewhere,
hoping that they would find a home. |
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Evacuation
also affected children’s education.
The schools had to close down in areas where there was heavy
bombing expected. Some
children would only be at school for half a day a week.
Also children had to stay off to look after younger brothers and
sisters as their mothers would be out at work.
The war disrupted children’s education.
When they were evacuated they would have to share schools with
other children. Sometimes
they used chapels and churches to hold lessons. It
was difficult to go from a class full of all your friends to a class where
you hardly knew anyone. Sometimes
the other children would be nasty to you.
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"They
are not friendly when you start going
to their schools" |
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So
evacuation was a huge change, with great emotional and physical effects on
people and it also carried an awful lot of myths with it.
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Throughout
the course of the war British imports became disrupted. This meant that food, clothes and other materials that
Britain imported became more and more difficult to get a hold of.
The price of food rose making it possible for only the rich to
afford. The essential foods
were snatched up by the rich very quickly leaving the poor people with
very little choice but to starve. The government decided that the only way to stop this was
to make sure all the food was shared out equally. It was called rationing and it was used towards the end of
the First World War. |
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At
the same time the government took steps to make Britain more self
sufficient by producing more of it’s own food which could be then shared
out equally among the British population.
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The
government set up a Ministry of Food.
People who worked there knew a lot about food as they were already
from the food industry. They
knew how long things could be stored and how to store them. Stuart Robertson, worked for the Ministry of Food in London
and he thought that "it was a very practical
ministry" It had a radio programme that was on every morning after
the eight o’clock news, it was called Kitchen Front.
Mothers would sit and listen for all the tips on how to cook
healthy meals with very little. They
tried to get people to eat as many potatoes and carrots as they could.
There was no shortage of root vegetables and plus "carrots
help you to see in the dark,
so they would be very useful during
the Blackout". |
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Before
rationing was enforced the government sent out application forms to every
household asking them to fill in details of every person living in that
house. When the forms were
handed in at the local food office you would be issued with a ration book
was issued for each person. During
the war everyone was issued with an identity card, or national
registration number. This was
one way the government made sure that there were no spies about.
This was yet another change although it did not affect peoples’
lives very much. On the front
of the ration book would be a number that corresponded to the owners
national registration number. The
ration book also carried a serial number and a stamp which was the region
and local office number. D.Fuller
remembers his mother’s ration book’s: "My mother’s
ration books were L86. L for London and 86 for the
food office in Wimbledon" |
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Rationing
was a massive change and it greatly affected almost the entire population.
Both adults and children. You
could no longer go to a store and get whatever you wanted.
You had to carry your ration book and get it
stamped.
If you were pregnant then you could get extra things.
You could get an extra pint of milk for only 2 pence and special
orange Juice, which could be used on pancakes instead of lemon juice.
Children were the most greatly affected by rationing, or a least
they though that at the time. They
actually weren’t really affected all that much. Sweets were rationed.
They were allowed 2 ounces (56.7g) per week. One girl remembers |
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"We
ate them all right away, but my
brother Gerald used to hoard his
in a cardboard box.
We used to drool over his box,
but he wouldn’t let us have any.
Then he got a girlfriend and
he gave her a bar of chocolate!"
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Children
thought that rationing was hard as they couldn’t eat as much as they I
wanted when they wanted |
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Rationing
affected the rich and the poor in different ways. For poor people rationing was a saviour.
Suddenly from being very poor and not being able to afford enough
food for their families they had adequate food and a healthy diet.
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"‘The
poorest people in Britain were best
off during the war”.
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For
rich people it was not a good time. They
were used to being able to go into a shop and buy everything they wanted
whenever they wanted it. Due
to rationing they could no longer do this.
They had to live the same way as everyone else.
They had to share the food around.
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This
was obviously a great change for them.
It didn’t hurt them to share the food around.
In fact it was they probably had a healthier diet.
One quote sums up what happened during rationing |
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"The
poor became richer and the rich became
poorer" |
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One
way for people to obtain extra food was the black market.
It sold illegal, stolen food.
People would break into factories and steal thousands of pounds’
worth of goods. |
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"We
had a well known factory broken into
one weekend. Thousands
of pounds’ worth of stockings were
stolen, and they found their way
on to the London black market"
(J. Joiner, Leicester
CID), |
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People
stealing things from trains became very common. "In 1941, about £1 million’s
worth of goods was stolen".
People just wanted to have that little bit extra.
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With
rationing came a lot of hard work. To
begin with people had to grow their own food and keep their own animals in
their back gardens. Women had
to say goodbye to their beautiful flowers and hello to an ugly vegetable.
This had no emotional effect on people but it left them with more
work
to do as they had to look after their vegetables because if they didn’t
they’d have nothing to eat. This
was part of the Dig for Victory. |
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There
was meat available but it was rationed.
Bacon was one of the first foods to be rationed along with sugar
and butter. The government
said "that people can do without some
things but in order to live needed
others". Because
meat was a food that you had to eat some of to stay healthy it was
rationed. If you wanted to
have more meat then you had to look after your own animals.
People would keep chickens, ducks, geese and hens at the end of
their gardens to kill and cook themselves.
This was quite a big change and more hard work as people had to
feed the animals and look after them.
Often when it came to the time to kill them they had become so used
to having the animals around that they found it difficult.
The animals became family pets instead.
One woman remembers |
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"We
had a chicken living in our back
garden. The children
and I became so fond of it that
when we went to kill we didn’t
have the heart. We
had too eat loads of vegetables to
make up for it" |
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One
myth was that farmers were hardly affected by rationing. The petrol rationing was the only thing that affected them.
This was not true at all. Sir
Emrys Jones, a War Cultivation Officer, said that during the war farmers
went through "...more changes probably than
in the whole history of agriculture,"
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Before
the war Britain imported 60% of it’s food.
During the war this number changed dramatically.
By 1945 Britain was only importing 30% of its food.
This left even more work for farmers.
They had never been so busy. "Plough
Now! By Day and Night’ was a slogan
used to encourage farmers to work harder and longer hours.
This caused a change to the machinery that the farmers used.
The ploughs were fitted with lights so that the farmers could work
later at night and earlier in the morning.
A lot more farming machines were invented, which made farmers more
productive. |
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It
was not only food that was rationed during the war clothes were also
rationed from the 1st June 1941. You
would get coupons and have to buy an outfit using the coupons, for example
a shirt was five coupons and a jacket was thirteen.
You had to use your coupons not only for clothes but linen as well.
Each person would get 60 clothes coupons a year which changed
through the war to 48. You could get children’s sandals without coupons.
Betty Brown remembers: |
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“On
Saturday mornings, we used to queue up in front of Doggarts to see if
they
had any sandals in.
They used to get them in once
a week. You could
get kids’ sandals without coupons"
(Bishop Auckland) |
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People
would only be able to buy a few outfits a year. They were told "One simple jersey
can do the work of several if
you wear a necklace one day, none
the next and with rolled up sleeves’.
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People
swapped clothes and mended old ones.
Once a jumper became too small you made it into something else.
My gran remembers buying her son some trousers in the winter time.
When they became too short for him to wear as trousers she simply
cut some of the legs off and made them into summer shorts.
With the remainder of the material she fixed patches on other
clothes. You didn’t throw
things away. One slogan that
was put out by the Board of Trade was "Make-Do and Mend"
If something could be fixed then they fixed it.
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This
was quite a big change for people who before the war had been used to just
throwing things out when they were too small. They now went to clothes swap shops and swapped an old
small coat for an old big coat. It
was actually quite a practical solution.
Obviously when your child is growing they are going to need a lot
of new clothes. It meant that
you didn’t have to keep buying new clothes since you could keep swapping
for sizes which fitted. |
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Another
thing that was rationed was water. This
was because there was a shortage of fuel, which was also rationed, heated
water had to be rationed. |
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"As part of your personal share in the Battle for Fuel you are asked to NOT exceed five inches of w |