Surviving the Home Front E-Book

Stuart Hylton

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 380

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Terrifying raids, thousands of bombs and countless petrified inhabitants of Britain's busiest cities. These are the prevailing images of the Blitz and the Home Front in the Second World War. However, for the people who experienced it, it was so much more and affected every aspect of their existence. Surviving the Home Front explores through contemporary newspaper reports and advertisements the effect the Blitz had on issues as varied as fashion, food, transport and more. It explores how facets of humanity showed themselves through individual tales of heroism, eccentricity and humour, but above all Stuart Hylton shows how the irrepressible spirit of the British people overcame a period of harsh austerity combined with the fresh terrors that appeared in their skies almost every night.

Leseprobe

Front cover illustration: London in the Blitz of the Second World War.(NARA)

First published 2012

This edition first published 2023

The History Press

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© Stuart Hylton, 2012, 2023

The right of Stuart Hylton to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

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ISBN 978 0 75249 087 8

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

  1   War is Good Business: Early Days

  2   ‘Better wear a little white’: The Blackout

  3   ‘So happy and contented’: The Evacuation

  4   ‘Angels are watching overhead’: The Blitz

  5   Ho! Ho! and Haw-Haw: Wartime Fun

  6   Woolton Pie: Food, Rationing and Salvage

  7   Don’t Panic! The Home Guard and Civil Defence

  8   Is your Journey Really Necessary? Wartime Transport

  9   Dressed to Kill: Wartime Fashion

10   Them and Us: Divided Nation

11   Divided by a Common Cause: Us and our Gallant Allies

12   What Are We Fighting For? War Aims

Select Bibliography

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the wealth of material provided by our local newspapers. I have acknowledged all the directly quoted material and have tried to contact the papers concerned to seek their agreement for its use. However, it would appear that a number of the papers are no longer published, at least under their wartime titles. If I have missed any, please accept my apologies. Please let me know via the publisher, and I will try to remedy matters in any future edition of the book. Quotes from the Oxford newspapers appear courtesy of Newsquest Oxfordshire. The copyright of all directly quoted material belongs to the relevant newspapers referenced in each case. My thanks also go to the librarians and archivists in libraries and records offices up and down the country, who look after this material.

Introduction

A word of explanation is needed. There is already a wealth of excellent books about what life was like in Britain during the extraordinary years of the Second World War. Why do we need another one?

The idea came up when The History Press decided to reprint my local history of Reading at War. This was based on local newspaper reports of the period, and through them I tried to capture a flavour of what it felt like to live in that community through these times. Many histories of the period are seen through one of two perspectives: either the historian applies his or her forensic analysis, nourished by the wisdom of hindsight, or they are the recollections of one or more individuals who lived through the war. Valuable, vivid and valid though both of these approaches may be, to my mind neither captures the full picture.

Journalism is said to be the first draft of history, and provincial newspaper reports of the period, whatever one may say about some of their journalistic shortcomings, sometimes capture the spirit of the times in a way that other chroniclers do not. Although the stories they carry are often rooted in their locality, their themes tend to have a much wider relevance. In them, we see the editorial efforts to stir the readership to greater war efforts or to seek out the bright side even in the darkest days of the war. We learn how the people looked for normality and diversion in such strange times; the mind-boggling detail of the bureaucratic control the authorities sought to exercise over wartime life (and sometimes their incompetence in doing so); the ingenuity or ineptitude of the criminal classes in trying to circumvent those rules (and the fact that a large part of the normally law-abiding population found themselves, wittingly or unwittingly, committing offences against the impenetrable jungle of wartime regulation); and the efforts of the business community to drum up new lines of custom from the war. The accounts were revealing and often (sometimes unintentionally) funny.

What I have therefore done is to start by drawing material from the three wartime histories of the Home Front that I have already written, and complemented them with similar accounts from more than twenty local newspaper reports covering other communities up and down the country. I hope in this way to present an anthology which gives some insight into what life was like for the British civilian population in those times.

The approach does not claim to be an authoritative or comprehensive overview of the period. Like all first drafts, press reports could be prone to error or misinterpretation. Some aspects of life which are of interest to us now might not have been considered newsworthy at the time, and vice versa. All other considerations aside, the censor’s pen could have a marked impact on what was reported and how it was covered. Nonetheless, I hope my book nicely complements the many fine books which give the grand sweep of that period of history, a selection of which are acknowledged in my bibliography.

* Reading at War (Sutton 1996, The History Press 2011), Kent and Sussex 1940: Britain’s Front Line (Pen and Sword 2004) and Their Darkest Hour (Sutton 2001, reprinted as Careless Talk, The History Press 2010).

1

War is Good Business: Early Days

This is what is known as ‘the silly season’ when, apart from Hitler (who is in any case one of the silliest creatures in the world) the newspapers can’t find much to write about. Slough appears to be suffering from the complaint as much as anybody … hardly a single good meaty subject in the news worth getting one’s teeth into …

Slough Observer editorial, the week before war broke out

The First Days of War

The hope that war could be avoided was shared by a large proportion of the population, right up until the end of peace. As late as 24 June 1939 the Illustrated London News was carrying an advertisement from German Railways, promoting tourism:

Seeing is believing. Come and see Germany.Visitors from Britain are heartily welcomed at all times.They will find that friendliness and the desire to help are the characteristics common to every German they meet.

London Illustrated News, 24 June 1939

The film The Great Dictator finally got released, despite fears that it might offend the Führer.

For its part, Picture Post in late July carried a piece, written in both English and German, entitled ‘We want peace – Britain does not hate Germany’. Readers were urged to send a copy to their contacts in Germany. Even the Americans got involved, their State Department bringing pressure to bear on Charlie Chaplin to delay production of his Hitler satire The Great Dictator, for fear of offending the real dictator. A survey at the end of August suggested that only 18 per cent of the British public thought war would break out. Most thought Hitler was bluffing, and would step back from the brink. When it became clear that Hitler was not bluffing, the feeling was that he had made a massive miscalculation in assuming that he could win a lightning victory over the Poles before the Allies could mobilise support for them. There was a third, equally misplaced, hope:

The German people themselves may revolt against the black act that is being done in their name. If they do, the people of this land will be the first to come to their aid to secure the re-establishment of law and order in their country.

Swindon Advertiser, 2 September 1939

But readers of the letters page of the Hampshire Chronicle had more than hope to rely on:

As an Associate of the Federation of British Astrologers I think it unlikely that war will result from the present crisis. Astrologically, the chances are no more than two in six.

Letter to the Hampshire Chronicle, 26 August 1939

On the very same page, a spiritualist wrote in to report that several séances had revealed to him that there would be no war. In one, no less a figure than the newspaper magnate Lord Northcliffe (who died in 1922) had been in touch with the medium and had described the following scene to him:

I see a very high mountain with a vast plain at the foot … the plain is filled with legions of armies, all armed ready for war. They rush up the mountain but at the top they are halted … The white-robed and radiant figure of Jesus stands before them. On each side are white-robed figures bearing palms … and rejoicing in the great victory of peace.

Letter to the Hampshire Chronicle, 26 August 1939

By the end of September, the latest edition of the magazine Psychic Review was being advertised in the same paper; its cover story? ‘False “no war” prophesies exposed: Enquiry demanded.’

Some of the impacts of war were felt immediately. The blackout was imposed and the mass evacuation of major towns and cities swung into action. Petrol rationing was introduced and sports venues and places of entertainment were closed down. It was soon recognised that these latter distractions would become more, not less, important in wartime and this last measure was rapidly reversed.

The closure of places of entertainment at the outbreak of war prompted widespread criticism and was soon rescinded.

Every community had its own local reaction to the war. Maidenhead and Bray Watermen’s Regatta blamed the decline in the number of both competitors and spectators on a mixture of bad weather and the outbreak of hostilities. The declaration of war also came right in the middle of Oldham Wakes Week, forcing many of the revellers at Blackpool to return home early. In St John’s parish hall, Hollington, the usual round of domestic talks about cake-making and embroidery was interrupted by one on how to protect your baby from poison gas. Hitler already had a lot to answer for. Looking on the bright side, the Twilfit Corset-fitting Week at Paulden’s department store in Manchester was able to proceed without interruption – the shortage of spring steel and elastic would not become an issue until much later in the war.

On the day that war was declared and Mr Chamberlain made his momentous speech on the radio, something else was preoccupying the ladies’ page of the Oxford Mail:

How to behave beautifully – a mannequin tells our readers how to exercise graceful control of our bodies. Among its most timely advice:

Women destroy their charm by some of the ugly and fussy acts they frequently commit. Avoid running in the street. You have no idea how running detracts from your poise and personality. Don’t trip either – frankly it looks just silly. A very bad habit is continually putting your hand up to your mouth. While sitting down, avoid arranging your clothes too punctiliously. It looks so fussy. Keep control of your face. Don’t jerk your nose, forehead and lips about. Your eyes should express enough without obvious facial contortions. Don’t blow your nose as if you’re wreaking vengeance on it and don’t clear your throat too often.

Oxford Mail, 3 September 1939

By the following May, their ladies’ page would be reconnected with reality. Recognising that huge numbers of women had by then been mobilised into the armed forces or other war work, their focus had moved from how to behave like a debutante to care of the feet, in acknowledgement of those many readers who were now on them all day.

This is not to say that every ladies’ page was oblivious to international events. In the Henley Standard they were looking at different diets and their effects on personality, and they offered readers this unusual insight into the origins of the war:

‘Figure perfection’ would not be an option once shortages of rubber and spring steel hit the corset industry.

Little Hitlers, it seems, are filled to the brim with sodium and the cause may be too much celery, spinach and cucumber. ’Tis a pity we cannot put the dictators on a diet – a diet say of prunes. This would be a pleasant little act demonstrating the natural law of compensation. We would retaliate on these eaters of celery, spinach and cucumber who are striving to drive iron into our souls by driving iron into their bodies … the biochemical effect of an undue proportion of iron is to produce a love of the arts!

Henley Standard, 25 August 1939

War work needed to be done. In the week before hostilities broke out, Manchester Corporation announced plans to recruit some 6,000 Air Raid Precautions (ARP) staff – 2,000 wardens, 2,000 first-aiders and 2,000 volunteer firemen – who would be needed to deal with the estimated 300,000 people who would be trapped in the city centre in the event of a daytime air raid. Over 250 private basements were identified as being suitable for conversion into public air raid shelters. Against this bonanza of new employment, around 2,000 Mancunians were put out of work by the closure of places of entertainment that September. For others, war was good business:

With their usual enterprise the shopkeepers have ‘jumped to it’ and are showing all kinds of articles which war conditions call for … A roaring trade is being done in identity discs.

Liverpool Echo, 11 September 1939

This company recognised at the outset that food production would become a major preoccupation for the duration:

War! Rear more poultry! The nation depends on YOU for MORE EGGS! Keep birds fighting fit – produce MORE EGGS with JOHNSON’S TONICS. 7½d, 1s 2d, and 5s. Corn stores everywhere.

Berkshire Chronicle, 6 October 1939

The most surprising retail opportunities were thrown up by the war. Ironmongers offered incendiary bomb scoops and rakes, or paraffin stoves for your air raid shelter. Car dealers had headlamp shields to comply with the bewildering new Motor Car Lighting Regulations. Opticians offered gas mask sides for your spectacles and there were builders who would gas-proof any room in your house. All sorts of ploys were tried to get people to shop. Some retailers warned of the return of the inflation and shortages that were a feature of the First World War and urged their customers to buy before it was too late. Even the threat of invasion could be good business for some. By 1940, the advertisements for Jeyes Fluid dwelt upon the outbreak of typhoid that had occurred in Holland after it had been invaded, due to the disruption of public health and sanitary services. Householders were advised to have copious supplies of a reliable disinfectant around as part of their ARP precautions. But for some retailers, patriotism (sometimes misguided) overcame profit, like the Portsmouth jeweller who refused to carry out repairs on a watch because it was of German manufacture.

But the war was far from being a golden age for retailing, and some shopkeepers would go on to feel that they were particularly hard done by: accused of profiteering on the one hand, and faced with bewilderingly complex price limiting and rationing regulations on the other; forced out of parts of their business by the non-availability of luxury goods to sell, and by competition from cheapjack street traders who disregarded all the rules; their trading areas reduced by requirements to remove anything flammable from their top two floors against the threat of incendiary bombs, and by the loss of their basements as air raid shelters. There was also the fact that there was virtually nobody about during the blackout hours to come and shop. Last but not least, there was the fact that a lack of coupons encouraged shoplifting, even by those who could readily afford the monetary cost of the item.

Identity discs – another new line of business thrown up by the war.

For the true patriot wishing to do his bit for the war effort, there was only one possible course of action:

It brings us together

The Chancellor of the Exchequer demands of all of us ‘moderation in all things’. We must ‘pull in our belts’. And we are doing so.

But in one way we can still enjoy ourselves with a clear conscience. And that is – in the pub – over a round of beer.

Beer is good for your health. Its barley malt gives you strength – its hops give you good appetite. And it is the most economical of all drinks and yet, with every glass you drink – Britain’s revenue benefits.

Beer, too, is the drink of moderation. In days like these, when the nerve and stamina of each one of us are of importance to the country, stick to beer. It comes from our own soil, that is why it suits us best. It heartens without harming. It brings us together in that cheerful democratic freedom of the pub – the freedom for which we are fighting. Beer is best!

Maidenhead Advertiser, 24 January 1940

A record retailer promotes sales of a German composer.

However, not everyone agreed with the sentiments of the brewing industry, which paid for that advertisement. The Friends Temperance Union wanted to ration beer, in order to turn the land released over to the production of foodstuffs. They also called for all pubs in areas likely to be bombed to be closed during blackout hours. They challenged Quentin Hogg MP on the matter and he replied:

The Temperance Council must understand that the national emergency is not a moment to introduce temperance propaganda under the cloak of national security … Beer is the innocent pleasure of many millions, especially among those who bear the brunt today. Chocolate and confectionery are other people’s pleasures and may have to be limited, but I am not going to be a party to discriminate against any one of them.

Oxford Times, 11 October 1940

For some communities, the impact on the local economy was swift and dramatic:

WHAT THE WAR MEANS TO SOUTHSEAEverything is closed downAs a seaside resort it is now stagnant

Headline in Portsmouth Evening News, 5 September 1939

With the declaration of war, holidaymakers had left Southsea in droves. Everything closed down – within days, dancing around the bandstand, the miniature railway, the children’s paddling pool and motorboat trips became mere memories. They would not reappear until peace returned. A number of those Britons taking continental motoring holidays in the last days of peace faced the loss of their cars – hundreds had to be abandoned at the French Channel ports in the rush to get home. The main ferry operator, Southern Railways, undertook to do all they could to repatriate them, but the main fear was not of them falling into the hands of the enemy, but rather the French authorities commandeering them.

A number of brewers emphasised their products’ health-giving qualities.

Petrol rationing led to some changes in people’s shopping habits. Before the war, middle-class shoppers had got used to having everything delivered to their homes, but individual retailers did not get an individual petrol ration. Such arrangements were replaced by a communal delivery system, used by all retailers, that might only deliver to your area once a week. Some shoppers were furious at such privations and threatened to take their custom elsewhere (a futile threat when all retailers were tied to the scheme and not even separate deliveries by horse, bicycle or handcart were permitted in order to free up as many delivery staff as possible for the war economy. One Hastings woman insisted (fruitlessly) upon the instant home delivery of a single small cake of soap that would have easily fitted inside her handbag. After 1942, as petrol shortages got worse, some shoppers living within half a mile of the retailer were deprived of any delivery service at all.

The disappearance of petrol meant that bicycle sales were booming. Sales of holidays to the continent were less healthy, though excursion trips to Germany were still being offered in the week preceding the outbreak of war and residents of both nations inconveniently found themselves in the territory of the other. An International Youth Camp was being held in Marple, and the contingent from the Free German Youth League declared themselves to have no more love for the fascist cause than their English hosts, which may not have boded well for their reception back in Germany. At the same time, a party of Manchester schoolgirls were on an exchange visit to Germany. Frantic calls went out for them to return home but some were uncontactable, having gone on holiday with their host families. Eventually they were all rounded up and returned home, most of them oblivious to any world crisis in the making and some even sporting swastika badges.

Oh no it isn’t, but it caught the reader’s attention!

Wanted: strong girl as general

Berkshire Chronicle, 1 September 1939

This small ad was placed not by the War Office promising fast-track promotion but by a Kent householder looking for a general domestic servant. Before the war, it was still quite common for middle-class households to have live-in domestic servants. But the mobilisation of women to contribute to the war effort would do much to end the practice. The war industries not only generally paid better, but also gave their employees greater freedom and the sense of doing their bit towards the war effort. Views about domestic servants were to change rapidly, until it became positively unpatriotic to employ them. By the time the following advertisement appeared in a newspaper in 1944 (presumably not their own) it prompted editorial comment from the Manchester City News:

Man and wife wanted: Man to assist in house: wife as cook: wages £5: family of two.

Reported in the Manchester City News, 21 April 1944

Bicycle sales boomed, partly on the rationing of petrol and the overloading of public transport.

The paper responded sarcastically:

It just shows you what hardships people will suffer in the cause of the war effort. Here is a family of two, content to muddle along with only two people to look after them … What more magnificent inspiration could our men fighting in Italy want than the self-sacrifice evident in that advertisement?

Manchester City News, 21 April 1944

The outbreak of war seemed to provide everyone with a bee in their bonnets to redouble their efforts. As we saw, teetotallers lobbied for restrictions on alcohol for the duration of hostilities. In a disturbing parallel to Hitler’s anti-Semitism, a Mr Walter Mayo tried to persuade the Protestant Reformation Society that the war had been started in defence of a Catholic nation (Poland) and that there was biblical evidence to show that the Roman Catholic Church was anti-Christian. Others were simply openly anti-Semitic. Posters appeared at Capel-le-Ferne, just outside Dover, calling for all Jews to be conscripted: ‘It’s their war! Let them fight it, not finance it!’ A self-styled ‘lover of animals’ called for all pet owners to have them put down now, rather than subject them to homelessness and starvation when the inevitable apocalypse came.

The Women’s League of Unity announced that it was forming a worldwide organisation that would bring the war to a speedy and honourable end (by means of which their advertisement did not specify). The Hants and Berks Gazette tried to clarify their policy in their editorial coverage, but the reader was left little the wiser. Apparently their primary object was:

To recruit and maintain a peace army of women that will be sufficiently powerful to override any issues that might threaten the future peace of the world.

Hants and Berks Gazette, 12 January 1940

In the Bucks Herald, a long-standing campaigner against fox-hunting saw the outbreak of hostilities as a new argument to add to his case:

… to follow the hounds at a time like the present would be extremely bad taste, an act entirely opposed to the spirit of sacrifice that is expected of all.

Bucks Herald, 22 September 1939

Leaving aside the quantities of food consumed unnecessarily by horses and hounds in wartime, there was the damage to farmers’ property and production caused by the hunt and the claim that hunts actually encouraged the breeding of foxes to provide them with their winter entertainment. Without the hunts, our campaigner alleged, foxes would by now be extinct. But the hunts were undoubtedly feeling the pinch: in Hampshire, the Vine Hunt announced that it was reducing down to a skeleton staff and pack to keep the costs down, and that they would no longer be paying the handouts and compensation they were accustomed to giving to the local landowners over whose property they hunted. Even with all of these cutbacks, the Garth Hunt decided that they could not hunt over their patch twice a week with a budget of less than £2,500.

The Women’s League of Unity announces an early end to hostilities.

In some quarters it seemed to be felt that the fox was the wrong target, and that they ought instead to be declaring war on rabbits. The government was busily issuing instructions and paying incentives for thousands of acres of grassland to be ploughed up and sown with cereals. Countrymen warned that if something was not done about the rabbits first, then the only crop this was likely to produce would be a lot of very well-fed rabbits.

Wartime farmers were told to plough up huge areas of grassland for crop production.

The outbreak of hostilities led to a flurry of hurried weddings. The Ramsgate Register Office reported a three-fold increase, and in Portsmouth the register office staff were working until 10.30 p.m. to keep the backlog down. Some of the arrangements were very hurried indeed; one member of the armed forces was given just one hour’s leave to get married, which must have seriously interfered with any honeymoon plans he might have had. But once the initial panic had subsided, members of the armed forces were generally allowed four days’ leave to tie the knot, which came to be known as ‘passionate leave’.

As the war proceeded there would be increasing criticism of the rash of wartime brides, often very young women. They were advised to wait until after the war and some saw the bridegrooms as having dubious motives:

Many war marriages are simply a commercial transaction and there is not that sincere feeling which ought to exist between couples. Many marry simply to obtain the marriage allowance for the wife. If the man were in a civil occupation, they would wait until he had established a position for himself. Fear of unemployment and low wages would keep them from marrying.

Swindon Advertiser, 19 February 1941

The humourists picked up on this. One newspaper cartoon had a serviceman embracing a young girl. She asks: ‘You’ll never stop loving me, will yer?’ He replies: ‘Course not. What’s yer name?’

Britain’s early efforts to prosecute the war effort combined incompetence with an almost comical gentlemanliness. A bombing raid on the German fleet descended into farce, with a third of the attackers missing the target entirely; some missed it by as much as 110 miles, bombing neutral Denmark. Three bombs that were dropped on the Admiral Scheer failed to explode and the Emden was only damaged when one of the bombers accidentally crashed into it.

However, most of the early bombing raids did not even involve the use of bombs – instead they dropped leaflets, over 6 million of them on the day war broke out alone. Squads of Hitler Youth were apparently employed to collect them up before they fell into impressionable hands. This policy attracted much ridicule; Noel Coward put it about that the government’s policy was to bore the Germans to death and Aneurin Bevin suggested they might do the same thing to our side. When an American news reporter asked for a copy of one of the leaflets he was refused, on the grounds that it contained ‘information that might be of value to the enemy’. Given that millions of copies of it had already been dropped on Germany, it is hard to see what state secrets it would have given away.

By the end of September, the air force had dropped more than 18 million leaflets on the enemy; the Ministry of Information spoke very highly of them:

The value of these paper raids has proved to be considerable. Pamphlets have given millions of people in Germany the opportunity to receive authoritative presentations of the allies’ case. Flights have also been most useful reconnaissance.

Portsmouth Evening News, 26 September 1939

A real bombing raid had been proposed to Minister Kingsley Wood as early as September 1938; it involved setting light to the Black Forest (which, being full of arms dumps, was a legitimate military target). His response had been: ‘Oh we can’t do that, that’s private property. Next you will be suggesting we bomb the Ruhr!’ Such was the resolve with which the war effort would be pursued under Chamberlain.

However, both sides would bring the leaflet offensive on to home territory. On Christmas Eve 1941, shoppers in central Manchester were terrified by the sound of three bombers, flying low over the city centre. Everybody ran for cover but it later transpired that they were ours, being used by the chief constable of Manchester to drop 10,000 road safety leaflets. The initiative was not widely appreciated. For their part, the Germans came over in August 1940, dropping copies of Hitler’s final attempt to get Britain to sign a negotiated peace. One bundle failed to open and landed on the head of a policeman guarding the entrance to the civil defence control and report centre in Salford.

As far as the original war aim, aiding Poland, was concerned, the initial Allied offensive did no good whatsoever. It took five weeks simply to get the 158,000 men of the Expeditionary Force over to France, by which time Poland was virtually conquered. The French briefly occupied some 21 square miles of German soil, but this was relinquished by 4 October without the Germans needing to divert a single soldier or tank from the Polish front. The British public began to steel itself for what could be a long and hard war, and the local press faced up to the challenges of reporting it.

2

‘Better wear a little white’: The Blackout

Two rules the walker must obey

If he would reach his home today;

On roadway always keep the right,

On footpath, just the oppo-site;

And, if by chance, he walk at night

He’d better wear a little white.

A Surrey coroner waxes poetical, after hearing the case of a pedestrian killed in the blackout, Swindon Advertiser, 13 September 1939

The blackout was introduced two days before the outbreak of war, and people were given one day to comply with its daunting requirements. As one historian of the war put it, the blackout transformed conditions of life more thoroughly than any other single feature of the war. It also gave rise to some of the most formidable regulation of the war. The Lighting Restrictions Order ran to thirty-three articles and innumerable sub-clauses that even Lord Chief Justice Caldecote described as ‘incomprehensible’.

Not everyone initially saw the need for a blackout. In the week war was declared:

A good deal of indignation was expressed to the Observer over the extinguishing of the Front Line illuminations and those at Alexandra Park, as well as the general reduction of lighting in the streets. Correspondents declared that this was creating an unnecessary atmosphere of war panic, particularly in the minds of elderly people, and this was doing as much to harm the holiday season by scaring people as the crisis itself. They argue that the lights could surely be switched off in an instant if the need arises, and it was reprehensible to aggravate an already grave situation by carrying precautions to such an apparently absurd length.

Hastings and St Leonards Observer, 2 September 1939

The Blackout Death

The blackout was responsible for many of the first casualties of the war. In December 1939 alone there were 1,155 deaths on the nation’s roads, compared with 683 the previous December. Of these fatalities, 895 occurred in the blackout. The king’s surgeon, Wilfred Trotter, was highly critical of this aspect of the blackout, claiming that by:

… frightening the nation into blackout regulations, the Luftwaffe was able to kill six hundred British citizens a month without ever taking to the air, at a cost to itself of exactly nothing.

British Medical Journal, 1940

His opposition would have had the support of the Medical Officer of Health for Swindon, who was reported as saying in January 1940 that the blackout was bad, and a cause of depression. In his judgement, the chances of being bombed were remote in the extreme. On the streets, white lines were painted down the centres of the roads, on lampposts and car running boards. One motorist was fined for failing to apply white paint to his car, despite the fact that the entire vehicle was cream coloured. Even pillar boxes were part-painted yellow (though this doubled as a gas detection measure, as the yellow paint changed colour in the presence of poison gas). One disgruntled Aylesbury resident described his newly decorated town centre as looking like ‘a blessed milk bar’. Manchester tried painting its bus stops with luminous paint, for the benefit of staff and passengers alike. Sartorial elegance became one of the first victims of the war, as men were advised to leave their shirt tails hanging out when they went walking in the blackout, in order to be more visible to motorists with dimmed lights. For those not prepared to commit this crime against fashion, the Portsea, Southsea and District Drapers’ Association (who knew a new market when they saw one) suggested white cloth armbands. Carrying a rolled-up newspaper was also suggested (not by the newspaper industry, but by a coroner, while adjudicating on the fate of someone who had failed to do so). Those who favoured wearing something white were advised by the marketing men to ensure that whatever they wore had the maximum visibility, by being whiter than white – that is, Persil-white. Luminous armbands were also introduced for pedestrians to wear.

Pedestrians who failed to make themselves visible and then got knocked down were deemed to be partly responsible for their misfortune. Leading Aircraftsman Geoffrey Allport tried to claim damages from the motorist who ran him over but the judge, hearing that he had been in military uniform at the time, told him that this made him into ‘a camouflaged object’ and dismissed the case. Pedestrians were officially warned by magistrates that it was dangerous to drink and walk in the blackout. In support they could quote the case of Marcus Woods, a soldier from Withington, who was first seen in the evening drinking in a pub, then seen falling over in the road outside – and finally found dead, covered in tyre marks. Two women in Reading were run down and killed by a bus one Sunday night. The baby they were pushing was hurled out of its pram but, by some miracle, caught by its grandfather (despite the blackout) before it hit the ground. The coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death and cleared the bus driver of all blame.

Pedestrians in Slough faced another equally lethal threat:

In the pitch blackness of the darkened streets pedestrians in Wellington Street have learned to be careful of the sentries standing on the narrow pavements outside the Drill Hall. The bayonet slopes forward just at the right height to cut the throat of any person clumsy enough to stumble into them.

Slough Observer, 8 September 1939

The very operation of bus services in the blackout was problematic. Buses could not show an illuminated display of their destination, which made it difficult at stops serving several routes to see which the right bus was. Conductors could not see to give change and there was an increase in the number of foreign coins passed to the conductors in the dark. Added to that, the passengers could not tell when to get off. The local press encouraged conductors to shout out the name of each stop as they reached it (though how they were better able than the passengers to see where they were was not explained). One additional challenge the crews were fortunately spared was having to drive a bus in the pitch darkness while wearing a gas mask, given their tendency to mist up. Silent-running electric trams had the additional problem that passengers could not always tell whether they had come to a halt, and so stepped off moving vehicles with dire results. Even worse were the fates of those passengers whose trains stopped outside the station, and who mistook a bridge parapet for the platform. Thomas Gillings of Blaydon did so and fell 20ft into the icy waters of the River Tyne. He at least managed to swim to the bank. Another man in Denham, Buckinghamshire, thought his train had stopped at Ruislip station. He was at least half right – the train had stopped. He stepped from the carriage and disappeared over the side of an 80ft viaduct, with no water to break his fall.

Motorists were equally disoriented. A common mistake was to confuse the kerb with the newly painted white lines in the middle of the road. One Wokingham motorist who made this error was surprised to find first a lamppost and then a tree in the middle of what he thought was the highway. He demolished the first and came to a shuddering halt, embedded in the second. This motorist may have been relatively unscathed, but disorientation could have far more serious consequences. The driver of an army lorry in Reading thought he was going along the main Oxford road, which ran uninterrupted through the town. In fact, he was on the road running parallel to it, which suddenly came to an unexpected halt in the form of a brick wall. In the crash which followed, two of his passengers were killed and another thirteen injured.

Passengers are asked to stop their fellow travellers falling from the train.

As petrol rationing began to bite, a new blackout problem arose in the form of increased horse traffic. The blackout regulations were silent on how to illuminate a horse (painting them white presumably was not an option – though one pet owner in Herne Bay painted white stripes on their black cat and an Essex farmer did the same with luminous paint on his cattle). But lack of regulation did not prevent a court in Basingstoke fining a gypsy who failed to provide suitable (if unspecified) lights for his horse and cart, while a court in Slough dismissed a charge against a cowman for herding unlit cattle across a road. A related issue concerned what you did with your horse if the air raid warning sounded while you were travelling. Official guidance was issued on this, but at least one householder disregarded it and shared their air raid shelter with not just the milkman but also his horse.

Nobody was safe in the blackout; the Regional Commissioner, Sir Auckland Geddes, was run down by a lady cyclist whilst inspecting ARP measures in Hastings. In coastal areas there was the added hazard of falling into the docks, making drowning a further blackout problem. This was not entirely restricted to harbours; in Pencester Gardens, Dover, they dug an air raid trench on the site of an underground spring and it spent most of its time full of water. A similar problem arose with one in London, and a 22-month-old child drowned in it. There was even a case where an elderly lady was knocked down and killed by a hurrying fellow pedestrian, prompting a campaign in the local press for pedestrians to keep strictly to the left of the pavement (assuming they could see which side was left). Doncaster was one area that actually introduced such a scheme, complete with pavement white lines.

As ever, helpful official guidance was on hand. This included closing your eyes before leaving a lighted room, in order to enable them to adapt to the darkness. (How many people, following this advice, injured themselves by tripping over the furniture on the way out?) In fact, a Gallup Poll in January 1940 found that one in five of those surveyed had already suffered some kind of major or minor blackout-related injury.

Blackout: The Mother of Invention

The initial reaction to the blackout regulations for vehicles by the maintenance crews of the Hampshire and Dorset Motor Services was to take a crowbar to the headlamp brackets of their buses and bend them to point downwards. This was entirely successful, except that the drivers could not see where they were going, while German bombers probably could. They were forced to revert to the approved methods. Even the government had to concede that this part of the blackout regulations was a particular problem and allowed a relaxation of the rules for headlamp dimming. These regulations are a good example of the minute rules to which the wartime population were subjected:

Headlamp dimming

A suitable type of mask for motor car lamps has been devised by the Ministry of Home Security, and will be placed on the market as soon as possible.

Until the new mask is available, the following simple method of screening headlamps will be allowed under the Lighting Order. The bulb must be removed from the offside headlamp. An opaque cardboard disc must be fitted immediately behind the glass of the nearside lamp and must cover the whole area of the glass except for an aperture of a semi-circular shape 2 inches in diameter with the circle uppermost. The centre of the base must coincide with the centre of the lamp. The lower part of the reflector must be completely blacked out to a distance of half an inch above the centre line of the reflector. If these regulations are observed, no hood will be needed.

Berkshire Chronicle, 15 September 1939

One garage bravely claims to have understood the emergency car-lighting regulations.

That was just for the headlamps. There were equally minutely detailed regulations governing each of the car’s other lights – how much (if any) of the light could be visible at all, how far it needed to be dimmed with layers of newspaper, and so on. Rear number plates were not to be illuminated at all, and direction indicators (the old semaphore arm versions) were not allowed to display an illuminated strip more than 1/8in wide. This latter regulation became the cause of a number of accidents, as it rendered a car’s indicators all but invisible in the daylight; the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents was forced to issue an appeal for motorists to paint the blacked-out part of their indicators white, to make them more visible by day.

However, even with minute regulation there could be unintended consequences. It was reported that Oxfordshire police were running spot checks on motorists because:

In some cases, the angle of the headlamp has been altered, with the result that the beam is lifted above the regulation distance from the road. The result is a blinding glare infinitely worse than the light which came from the unscreened headlamps in the days before the new mask was introduced.

Oxford Mail, 2 May 1940

Things got simpler when the air raid warning went, at which time all the car’s lights had to be turned off – or so people thought. In October 1940, the Minister of Home Security found it necessary to issue a clarification to the effect that only the headlamps needed to be extinguished in an air raid – and if the car was engaged on official business, even these could be kept on. In addition, a 20mph speed limit during the blackout was introduced from 1940. Quite how motorists were meant to observe it in the pitch darkness is not immediately clear, but the police enforced it by cruising the streets at what they hoped was 20mph (insofar as they could see their speedometer) and waiting for someone to overtake them. The first person to do so was the driver of a hearse.