Rationing

Tale of two different families. My mum and her family lived in south east London, no garden to grow fruit or veg just what you could get from the greengrocer who had his favourites or the black market. My future father in law was basically a spive and my mother in law said regarding food you wouldn’t know there was a war on she had plenty of everything.

You were allowed eggs on ration but sometimes they were impossible to get hold of. My gran told me she queued for an hour to get one egg for me as I was a sickly child and she thought it would do me good. She soft boiled it and persuaded me to eat it, I was instantly sick and she was so upset.

I can’t really remember rationing as I was born in 1947, but I do remember the chickens we kept in the garden. We lived in Abbey Wood in London. We also kept rabbits for meat. My granny killed the chickens and rabbits but when my dad came home from the war, he had to do it. He skinned the rabbits and cured the skins. I had rabbit skin covers on my pram and a rabbit skin bonnet. My godmother worked for the then Ministry of Supply and brought home the concentrated orange juice and malt, which my brother and I loved - probably why I have such rotten teeth!

I’m virtually 80 and remember ending of sweet rationing,
I dont remember anyone being overweight at all!!!!

Let's hope that remains an unused skill, M0nica.

MissAdventure

Ooh.. who killed the chickens?
Needs must, I know, but I'm squeamish (and hypocritical) about that kind of thing.

My mother got a local odd job man in. He knew what he was doing. He wrung the chickens neck. It was dead within seconds and then plucked it and eviscerated it.

Years later DH's aunt showed me how to skin a rabbit so that I did nt damaage the bile duct. Improtant, as if it bursts the bile fluid makes the rabbit uneatable. Thankfully I have never had reason to exercise the skill.

"I suppose you had to make sure the pigs didn't squeal on you."
Ha ha, good one, MissAdventure

I suppose you had to make sure the pigs didn't squeal on you.

A few chickens were good because they will eat almost anything, the hens laid regular eggs and you eat the cockerels, so a very useful source of protein. There were also lots of wild rabbits, catching those was good money for those good at ferreting, pigeons and rooks also ended up in pies too.

Pigs were very controversial you couldn’t really hide them, the local constable was sure to find out, so not declaring it would get you into a lot of trouble in wartime.

Daffonanna

What lovely stories and memories , thank you. Can I ask , how were fruits such as blackberries preserved when sugar was rationed ? I’ve been telling my grandchildren that blackberry picking was a valuable way to prevent rickets .

Mum made jam. I believe she must have saved rationed sugar. I've no idea how much sugar was allowed, but I remember mum used sugar sparingly - apart from jam, jelly, and holiday treats.

Mum made bread as well, apparently flour wasn't on ration?

We'd plenty of healthy food, eating better than appears normal currently. Perhaps reverting to vegetables, fruit, nuts, quinoa, lentils, pasta, rice, potatoes filling out meals might be a healthy idea....

Allira

MissAdventure

Ooh.. who killed the chickens?
Needs must, I know, but I'm squeamish (and hypocritical) about that kind of thing.

Uncle!

My Mum said she'd never seen anyone pluck and draw a chicken faster than her MIL (the grandmother I never met because she died before I was born).

One year in the 1980's my husband was given a goose for our Christmas meal. We didn't know until he brought it home that it was still intact, with innards and feathers. Fortunately my mother was staying and dealt with all the drawing and plucking - I think that she would have dealt with killing it too, had this been required!

My mother was a farmer's daughter and was married to a farmer during the war, she always says that they had enough to eat as her family shot rabbits and kept chickens. However she was frugal with food all her life until she died in 2010, she never wasted anything and the weekend joint lasted for days, with generous amounts of vegetables and potatoes.
I had a ration card when I was born (1952) though I don't think that my sister did (1954). I do remember the delicious super-concentrated orange juice that we used to get from the baby clinic to supplement our still-limited diet in the early 1950's. Many children had a teaspoon of Virol every day, though we didn't, I'm not sure what was in it but it was delicious and sweet.

Rationing ended when I was eight and I remember it; still have a Ration book.

I started nurse training in 1953, we had a ration of butter and sugar each week.They were stored in a cupboard in the dining room in old, handleless tea cups with our names on sticking plaster on the side. Heaven help any student who took someone elses ration!

Daffonanna

What lovely stories and memories , thank you. Can I ask , how were fruits such as blackberries preserved when sugar was rationed ? I’ve been telling my grandchildren that blackberry picking was a valuable way to prevent rickets .

I wondered that, too. Perhaps they saved up the sugar rations for jam-making.

Certainly only home-grown produce was available plus the food parcels sent by the good people of America and Australia, some of which ended up at the bottom of the sea.

My brother told me that American soldiers were billeted
nearby and they used to offer the children chewing gum and
sweets when they walked past.

Fruit may not have been rationed, but imported fruit such as oranges, lemons and bananas could no longer be imported, and the same must have applied to melons, and peaches and apricots.

In my 1950s childhood, onions were still sold by French "Onion Johnies" as we called them, and I believe onions had been hard to obtain during the war.

People living in cities had no particular joy of the fact that game was not rationed, and the game laws regarding when you may shoot game applied, so even in the country game did not contribute greatly to stretching the meat ration.

If you raised a pig yourself, you were supposed to declare it and wave good-bye to part of your meat ration.

Flour was rationed too, and fuel - so cooking was made more difficult. Older hand-written cookery books abound in recipes for "eggless cakes" "macaroni pudding" (Ugh) baked treacle pudding, that according to my grandmother could go into the oven on a lower shelf than the roast, as boiling a steamed pudding was impossible due to the fuel rationing.

What lovely stories and memories , thank you. Can I ask , how were fruits such as blackberries preserved when sugar was rationed ? I’ve been telling my grandchildren that blackberry picking was a valuable way to prevent rickets .

My mother worked for the Food office throughout the war, and having read the list of shipping casualties every day was relentless in pursuing anyone who tried to operate on the black market. For some years after the war she would point out various people who had been convicted and in some cases served time for profiteering. It wasn't a joke.

I remember my family and friends of the family used to give me all their sweets when they were on ration, there is no wonder I still have a very sweet tooth :-)

My mum said one of their neighbours used to alter their ration book, and iron it flat.

Then it was mums job to go and present the book to the shop.

She used to quake at the thought of getting discovered

My mum killed the chickens, MissAdventure, I remember watching her go into their run, pick one up and wring it's neck then cut it's throat.
I became the chief feather plucker when I was a little older and still remember the smell and the dusty feathers.

My Cumbrian Granda kept a couple of pigs, as well as hens and turkeys and grew lots of fruit and vegetables. My mum said he had to declare having the pigs and give so much of it ( to where I’m not sure). However they had a small cupboard on top of the stairs, with a big hook in it. Apparently after the pig was slaughtered, it was hung in there and hidden. My parents were married in 1942 and their wedding breakfast was at my grandparents home. Mum always said it broke her heart to leave all the good food, coupons saved up for weeks, to catch the train for their honeymoon at my other grandparents home, where they had bought a trifle from the Co-op!

The family of my best friend at the time (1950s) kept a number of hens so they always had eggs and chickens. Right upto the 1960s it was common for people where we lived (Liverpool suburbs) to have hens in the back garden.

Allotments were also a thing well into the 1960s when I left home. We used to call them "the plots".

Apparently (before I was born) during the war years, my older brother used to breed rabbits for food for the family. He would have been about 9 when he started doing that. My mother grew vegetables, but she never did any gardening after Dad left the Forces.

MissAdventure

Ah, good old uncle.
Was there a "black market", too?

Good grief no!

I do remember my mother being very angry because one of our neighbours was a black marketeer (a spiv, she called him) and he was very rude about my Dad being in the Forces. Horrible man.

l wasn't born until 1956 so no direct experience obviously.however it did affect my family . My grandfather and my grandmother served in France in WW1. During WW2 he worked as an inspector or some sort for the ministry of food. They lived in a city which was heavily bombed so l guess food was even tighter. It came to his notice that my grandmother's brother's wife had far more butter than one could get for a children's birthday party. Further transpired she had stolen it. To this day that part of the family have refused to have anything to do with my granny or descendants. My gran would explain that grandpa had no option but to prosecute and it was made worse by being a relative. Imagine my surprise when l attende VE day celebrations in my Wiltshire village one of the farmers chuckled and said they did not have any rationing and "what the ministry didn't know wouldn't hurt them" l was totally shocked as l had always believed everyone was rationed and played by the rules.