Bizarre toll of the wartime blackout
FROM glow-in-the-dark dogs to boosting your night vision with carrots, a new book is to reveal what life was like during thewartime blackout.
The study looks at how the blackout affected Hull – which was one of the country’s most bombed cities.
The Hull Blackouts, by historian Mike Covell, shows both the funny and tragic side. “There is a group of individuals who were killed in Hull between 1939 and 1945 that do not appear on any memorials,” he says. “They have been forgotten, killed as a result of the blackouts.”
Hull was a maritime and industrial target for the Luftwaffe and before the war there were already weekly drills to test whether the city was “invisible” during darkness, with local airfields sending up planes to check for lights.
With war declared, the blackouts became nightly and the first to die, ironically, was Firstworldwar veteran and air-raid warden Charles Briglin,
43. He was on his bicycle carrying out ARP duties when he was in an accident with a car. More tragedies followed as people were run over, died in falls, or drowned after falling off the docks. Ellenwray, 40, came home drunk and fell from her bedroom window... as she tried to close her blackout curtains.
There were stories that dogs had been covered with luminous paint to make them visible on the ground – but the pets had licked it off, poisoning themselves.
As carnage continued on the roads, thewar Office even ordered people to eat more carrots to improve eyesight.