Skip to main content

Food shortage during Second World War

Food rationing was introduced on 8 January 1940 and ration books soon became the norm. Everyone had to register themselves at a local butchery, bakery and grocery store and soon there were along queues outside the Co-op. Personal allowances per week were 4 oz. bacon, 4 oz. butter and 12 oz. sugar. Each person was allowed 16 points per month, later increased to 20, to buy foods such as biscuits, breakfast cereals, dried fruit and tinned fruit, though these were not always available. Fresh

Allotments were brought into full use, encouraged by the 'Dig for Victory' campaign.

There was also an element of illegal 'black market' trading.

Some shops would sell 'under the counter' goods without asking for coupons, but you needed to know the code words if you wanted something of that nature.

There was also an informally organised and not altogether legal 'Pig Club'. Certain families kept a pig bin in which food scraps were placed.

On 1 June 1941, Clothing Coupons were introduced. Ladies were very adept at turning old clothes into new and the 'make do' spirit was strong.

Coal rationing began on 4 July 1941 and even soap was rationed to 3 oz. per person in 1942. Nothing was wasted. Encouraged by government advertisements and learnt rhymes, paper and used clothes were collected as 'Scrap for Victory'. Food scraps were placed in dust bins labelled 'KITCHEN WASTE' which were placed at street corners and went to feed pigs and poultry. Scrap metal was also collected and unwanted metal kettles and teapots were offered up. The chains which linked the iron bollards were cut off and taken away for salvage.

Raising money for the War Effort was one way in which everyone could 'do their bit'. People were encouraged to invest in the nation through Savings stamps and Savings certificates.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Does pearls reproduce by itself through time

At the request of several families he and Mrs Legge gave a home for some months to a young Dutch girl, a granddaughter of the first Dutch governor of the Straits Settlements. She had several pearls of which the Dutch residents were great collectors, got from oysters found in a river of the Malay Peninsula, when she left them she gave Mrs Legge a small box containing a large pearl the size of a pea, with a blue spot on it, and two others not so large. This box was then put away and locked up. Several weeks later he took it out and on opening it discovered more than a dozen pearls, most of them very small. Astonished at the phenomenon he called his chief servant, a Portuguese, who happened to enter the room and who expressed no surprise but declared it to be a common occurrence. On enquiry he found that many of the Dutch people had jars of pearls, large and small, which had accumulated in this way. Some years later he related the incident at dinner on board ship. The captain was a cautio...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bidmas, Bedmas, Bodmas, Pedmas And Christmas

This BBC GCSE Bitesize post says, BODMAS stands for 'brackets', 'other', 'division', 'multiplication', 'addition' and 'subtraction'. It's the order in which we carry out a calculation. But another article says, the order of operations in Maths called BIDMAS. BIDMAS stands for Brackets, Indices, Division and Multiplication, Addition and Subtraction. The difference is that the second substitute 'o' with 'i', and we can understand that teacher normally chooses easy way to explain whose pupils can understand, exponent or power or indices are out of reach of foundation students, so teachers uses 'other' instead. And in this article , 'o' actually stands for 'order', as far as my memory can go, my English teacher never teach me 'order' actually means 'Powers and Square Roots, etc.' In United States, the mnemonic fo Order of Operation is PEMDAS, because brackets are called pa...
Post a Comment
Read more

Panic or panick

There is only one spelling for panic ; the verb is inflected 'panic, panics, panicked, and panicking’. The form panick is used for progressive tense, past tense and past participle. We don't write panick today, though English speakers from a few hundred years ago might have (in the same way they might have written musick). When the alternate spelling “panick” is used for the past participle: "I panicked last night at the disco." When it’s use for progressive tense: “Invariably, when markets are panicking, they sell the stocks quickly.” It's the rule for root words ending in "c" is that you have to add “k”, so the spelling is related with the pronunciation. If we don't add the <k>, it looks as if the <c> has to be pronounced /s/. If the "k" was not there, “panicing” would look like the word which is supposed to be pronounced as if it is ended in "sing," while “paniced” would be pronounced like “panised”. The same ...
1 comment
Read more