The Blitz spirit
Life on the Home Front during the Second World War, including rationing and the Blitz, is brought to vivid life in a new book
Following the raid of November 14, 1940, people gather around a Ministry of Information van in Coventry to get details of how to get new ration books, clothing and other essentials if they had been bombed out of their homes. The man at the microphone is Godfrey Baseley, who came up with BBC Radio series The Archers. One scam following a raid was for people to claim to have been bombed out of their homes. They would then be issued with a new identification card and ration book. One man managed to pull the stunt 19 times before he was caught.
Retailers queue at Covent Garden for supplies of the 1942 crop of tomatoes. The previous year tomatoes had vanished from the shops by the end of June. At the beginning of the month they were selling at around 2s. 6d (12.5p) per pound (approx. £6.35 in 2019) so few people were buying, but a few weeks later. they became subject to a price control of 1s. 2d per pound and flew off the shelves.
A grocer’s window in Bristol in January 1940 shortly after rationing started on bacon, butter, and sugar. Many workingclass families could not afford butter or streaky bacon so stockpiles soon built up. The Government decreed double rations for everyone at no extra cost.
For those unable to afford butter, margarine made from whale oil with added vitamins was available at 6d (2.5p) per pound.
Half a dozen eggs for 10d (5p) is on the expensive side given they were usually 1s 3d a dozen. (Bristol Post).
City farming 1943 style comes to London as pigs and rabbits are reared for food in a tumbledown building under the shadow of St Paul’s Cathedral.
Households were rationed to 2.5 tons of coal (2267.96kg) a year, which may sound generous but houses then often had coal-fired water boilers separate from kitchen ranges.
It was usual to heat only one room unless someone was ill when a bedroom grate might be lit.
The weekly ration allowance per person was two ounces (56.7 grams) of tea, two ounces each of butter, sweets, and fats, four ounces (113 grams) each of margarine and sugar. Extra cheese was issued to workers with no canteen facilities and a special ration was organised for vegetarians, though they had to surrender their meat coupons. Prime cuts of meat were rationed at six ounces (170 grams) per person per day.
War workers w at a London factory factor organized a make do and andm mend centre. Miss Lillian Burry Bu tries on a remodelled remodelle hat. October 1943. When clothes clot rationing started, people were able to buy cloth, clothes, footwear and knitting wool using coupons from a surplus page of margarine coupons. Clothing for children under the age of four was exempt as was wool and silk thread for mending, sewing thread, and boot and shoelaces