Page 24 - RVM-HB-KTHFB
P. 24
Keep The Home Fires Burning
The Last Blast Of War
The war had started with panic buying, with people stocking up. The development of the
U boat meant that as food became scarce whenever there was a rumour of food arriving
at a shop a queue would form this meant long waits in ‘ inclement weather, the Food
Control Committee Wanted to abolish the ‘the queue evil’ and introduce rationing.
Voluntary rationing was adopted by Redditch in December 1917. This followed the method
used by Birmingham, were people had ration cards they used in the own shops. Sugar
rationing had started early in the year, and food committees had been set up. These
committees had power to prosecute hoarders and take any land into cultivate they
thought appropriate. The Redditch committee did prosecute a house wife who went to six
different shops and buy a pound of margarine in each. It was pointed out that she had
only a husband and two children to feed. An apology was required from a family who had
written offensive remarks on sugar forms; forms were the method of getting your sugar
rations. Shortage of sugar meant much of the fruit picked by school children and others
in summer 1918 went waist.
The rations for tea and margarine was to be 4oz of margarine a week and 1 ½ oz of tea
a week. Britain had to grow more not only by farmers but town’s people as well. unused
land in towns were taken over. Redditch already had a large acreage under cultivation,
but an old cricket pitch and play ground was added to the allotment stock. By 1918 with
the introduction of conveys more food was getting through and more food was being
grown by farmers and allotment growers. The spectre of starvation had not disappeared
but it had faded a little.
The Temperance hall canteen was opened in 1915 by Mrs Newton it provided cheap
economical meals. These were on the same lines as the dishes that were taught at the
economy cookery classes at the Domestic Science School in South Street. In 1917 a
National Kitchen was set up in Enfield, this was cooked food at fair prices. A group of
women who had also been set up in the town also in that year helped out, the Women’s
Institute.
Even as the war ended disease had not finished with Redditch in the last months of 1918,
Spanish Influenza killed 67, (world wide 27 million people died from this strain of flue).
Out of that number 43 were women mostly between 15 and 40 years of age. It seems
likely that the women’s immune system had been weakened by the rationing of food to
themselves.
By late summer of 1918 the German attack had been stopped, the fresh troops from
America were now flooding into France and meant the allies could consolidate. There was
a glimmer of hope and by November that was realised, the armistice not yet peace but as
good as.
In 1927 at the Redditch Memorial dedication, it was said “probably no town or city in the
country had contributed more (per ratio of to population) in the provisions of men
munitions and money, then Redditch in the war”. Redditch by the 1920s had returned to
a fairly normal life not realising that in the following decade the world would stand on the
edge again
Page: 24 Source: Sue Tatlow
The Last Blast Of War
The war had started with panic buying, with people stocking up. The development of the
U boat meant that as food became scarce whenever there was a rumour of food arriving
at a shop a queue would form this meant long waits in ‘ inclement weather, the Food
Control Committee Wanted to abolish the ‘the queue evil’ and introduce rationing.
Voluntary rationing was adopted by Redditch in December 1917. This followed the method
used by Birmingham, were people had ration cards they used in the own shops. Sugar
rationing had started early in the year, and food committees had been set up. These
committees had power to prosecute hoarders and take any land into cultivate they
thought appropriate. The Redditch committee did prosecute a house wife who went to six
different shops and buy a pound of margarine in each. It was pointed out that she had
only a husband and two children to feed. An apology was required from a family who had
written offensive remarks on sugar forms; forms were the method of getting your sugar
rations. Shortage of sugar meant much of the fruit picked by school children and others
in summer 1918 went waist.
The rations for tea and margarine was to be 4oz of margarine a week and 1 ½ oz of tea
a week. Britain had to grow more not only by farmers but town’s people as well. unused
land in towns were taken over. Redditch already had a large acreage under cultivation,
but an old cricket pitch and play ground was added to the allotment stock. By 1918 with
the introduction of conveys more food was getting through and more food was being
grown by farmers and allotment growers. The spectre of starvation had not disappeared
but it had faded a little.
The Temperance hall canteen was opened in 1915 by Mrs Newton it provided cheap
economical meals. These were on the same lines as the dishes that were taught at the
economy cookery classes at the Domestic Science School in South Street. In 1917 a
National Kitchen was set up in Enfield, this was cooked food at fair prices. A group of
women who had also been set up in the town also in that year helped out, the Women’s
Institute.
Even as the war ended disease had not finished with Redditch in the last months of 1918,
Spanish Influenza killed 67, (world wide 27 million people died from this strain of flue).
Out of that number 43 were women mostly between 15 and 40 years of age. It seems
likely that the women’s immune system had been weakened by the rationing of food to
themselves.
By late summer of 1918 the German attack had been stopped, the fresh troops from
America were now flooding into France and meant the allies could consolidate. There was
a glimmer of hope and by November that was realised, the armistice not yet peace but as
good as.
In 1927 at the Redditch Memorial dedication, it was said “probably no town or city in the
country had contributed more (per ratio of to population) in the provisions of men
munitions and money, then Redditch in the war”. Redditch by the 1920s had returned to
a fairly normal life not realising that in the following decade the world would stand on the
edge again
Page: 24 Source: Sue Tatlow
