Wartime rationing

At the beginning, there were gas masks for adults and children, but not for babies, as they were still being designed and produced. My parents went to collect theirs and asked what they should do to protect me.

"Just take off her nappy and hold it to her nose", they were told, "The ammonia will neutralise the gas." My mother was affronted that they thought she would leave a wet nappy on me long enough for it to turn to ammonia.

When the full-body baby gas masks did appear, they were a long lidded box that you laid the baby in (with a small clear window), and a valve with a hand pump attached. A parent had to keep pumping continuously to keep a supply of fresh air going in to keep the baby alive. They were like little coffins. The babies didn't like being shut in and made their opinion known by bawling, using up their pumped-in air supply even faster. Most parents found it more scary to think of the danger of their child suffocating than of the smaller risk of possible gas.

BlueBelle

I was born as the war was ending but I do have my mum and dads ration books in the archives somewhere It’s amazing how little the weekly rations were

You must have had a ration book book too BlueBelle. I was born in 1949 and I still have my ration book. I lent to a local museum recently as part of a WWII exhibition.

The only thing I heard from Mum was that she gave away her sweet rations because she didnt like sweets. She said the sirens would always go off in the night and every time, the whole family would have to get out of bed, go downstairs and huddle under the staircase for safety.

Thanks for the information on the baby gas masks Elegran.
Obviously I have no recollection of mine but was told that it was blue with a picture of Mickey Mouse on the outside. How true I don't know! But I did bawl and it was never used again after the try out.
Oddly, I have always disliked small spaces. Connection?

I remember that we still had gas masks after the war,I was born just before the war ended, if I remember correctly they were black rubber with a green part at the end, we used to play with them...I don't know what happened to them.

I remember rationing very well. My grandmother had a sweet shop and, when it ended in 1953, I remember the queues to get into the shop. They briefly took sweets off rationing in 1949 but the queues were so long they had to reintroduce it. It's the later date I remember most, being only 5 in 1949. The thing I hated about rationing was having to count the tiny squares from ration books for whichever authority the shop had to send them to. I still have the tin my grandmother kept them in. We had our own hens and a garden large enough to grow vegetables and fruit so didn't starve too badly.
When Covid broke out and shops had scarce supplies I reverted to rationing mode and bought accordingly. I still have a rationing book somewhere and my husband has his identity card from birth to prove he was entitled to receive rations.

It is interesting, I have read that us old uns that lived through food rationing are the most healthy sector of the population. We had limited sugar and fat, many had home grown vegetables and eggs. We also kept rabbits for food and ducks. We all walked everywhere and played outside, never in each other’s homes and roamed far and wide without parents panicking.

We used to get food parcels from an aunt in America. She sent them every month and they usually arrived in batches. They contained tinned food like ham and butter and fruit. I loved the swan soap and the dresses she sent.

During the time of rationing, America used to provide us with chocolate powder, I presume now that it was to make hot chocolate drinks but we ate it by the spoonful! Sometimes we were given lemonade powder. I have no idea who distributed thse treats but gosh the excitement they gave us. We were easily pleased as we had so little.

Our local grocers, who I think you had to register with to use your coupons, I remember so well. It smelt delightfully of bacon and butter and cheese. The butter and cheese were cut with a wire and the butter patted into an oblong with wooden paddles and stamped on the top, all that effort for a few ounces.

We queued for hours, me being a nuisance because I was bored and being given morsels of food to keep me quiet.

I lived in the suburbs of London and to this day my stomach reacts to the sound of a siren as my father was in the London Fire Service in the thick of the bombing.

Gin
I lived in the suburbs of London and to this day my stomach reacts to the sound of a siren as my father was in the London Fire Service in the thick of the bombing.

So did we and likeyou, the sirens tighten all the muscles in my stomach.. The German bombers who flew over us to bomb the docks and East London, sometimes could not drop all their load on the docks so as they turned for home, they dropped them randomly across South London. One was dropped on my grandmothers house, destroying it and a neighbours with limited damage to surrounding houses, the only bomb on the road.

The V1 rocket attacks, destroyed my mothers ability to sleep well for the rest of her life. Because you tensed when you heard them, and when the noise stopped you prayed that it wasn't directly over your house and you were not due to be killed in the next few seconds. When it wasn't over your house, you were so thankful you were saved and then felt guilty because you knew that your escape from death was someone else's death

My parents were divorced. But I used to be put on the train in Southampton going to Waterloo, all by myself. I was about 10 years old then.

But I do remember having my ration book and being told not to lose it and to give to mum on arrival.

I remember my Aunt telling me that her family and a few neighbours formed a ‘pig club’ they feed it scraps and shared the meat out when it was slaughtered. That was allowed under rationing rules!

My Mum was born in 1931. She always says that she wasn’t allowed bananas during rationing, but her younger cousin was because he was under 7.

Very few people were overweight in those days!!

I was born in 1954. My mother, who used to smoke, found it nigh on impossible to get the cigarettes she usually smoked during the war, due to supply issues etc. Instead the only ones the local shops stocked were called 'Pasha' and they were apparently foul, being made with all sorts of cheap stuff. She and her best friend persevered, even though they were horrible (hello nicotine addiction!!), and then when the war was over and rationing ended, her preferred brand - Woodbine- came back into the shops. However, she was by now so used to Pasha that the 'proper' cigarettes tasted odd to her. She eventually gave up smoking aged 70!

My parents left UK in 1947 and one of the reasons prompting their departure was rationing as well as housing shortage in London due to wartime bombing.

I still have my Mum's special ration book that she was issued with when she was getting married in January 1948. There are coupons for a double mattress (not a bed!), linoleum, blankets, a pair of sheets and pillowcases and an eiderdown, as well as 1 saucepan and 1 frying pan. Because Mum and Dad were moving in with his parents, the coupons were never used - except the one for curtain material - which Mum made a maternity dress out of as I arrived 9 months after they got married..! 😄

I was born in 1951 and my parents once told me they only had me to get an extra sweet ration! (I think they were joking)

I watch a You Tuber who followed the war-time ration book diet for a week. She lost a couple of pounds.
Just shows how normal diets have changed.

Looks like there are loads of us who remember rationing, watermeadow. I was born at the end of August 1939, just days before the start of the war so rationing was part of virtually the first decade of my life. Bananas were a complete mystery, never saw one until the war ended, but being so very young, had no idea that we were eating such small amounts. I do remember my Micky Mouse gas mask and the horrible rubbery smell of it. Someone mentioned it earlier, but to this day, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up when I hear the siren at the end of Dad’s Army! (However, I’m sure it’s down to early sugar deprivation I still have virtually all my own teeth!)

before my time but from what I have learned though the allowances were small most houses then kept at least chickens, often a pig. My gran used to have the chickens for meat obviously but also the feathers were for making mattress' and cushions.
Also of course the Goverment were then encouraging everyone to grow vegetables so one way and another there was plenty to pad out the rations.

I too was born in 1943 . We were lucky in that my Grandfather and my Uncle were market gardeners and so we did have extra seasonal vegetables and occasionally eggs. The one thing I do remember apart from sweet rationing is there was always a small lidded pot of saccharin tablets on the tea tray. I hated them and still refuse anything with artificial sweetener. Also the other thing I hated was margarine back then it was awful stuff. I remember getting my first grown up bed and the mattress had the cc41 symbol on it as did a lot of other household goods and clothes. I remember the excitement of running to the sweet shop when my Grandmother gave me one of her ration coupons for 2 ounces of jelly babies. The same Grandmother would also send me to the shop for a quarter bottle of brandy, had to be VSOP and no one refused to serve me, how times have changed!

I didn't have to navigate it myself obviously as I was too young but I do remember when my mother who had felt starved of chocolate for so long started keeping a cupboard exclusively for sweets and chocolate it was always full!

Strangely, enough I do not remember the British side of my family talking of rationing, although they must all have had to deal with it.

My mother's family in Nazi-occupied Denmark had plenty of stories during my childhood , after the war, of only being able to heat one room of the house in winter, summer sandals for women and girls that had wooden soles and tops made of tanned skin of flatfish, gas and hot water only available for a couple of hours each day, washing floors in cold water without soap, as the soap ration certainly could not stretch to cleaning if a family were to have clean clothes. french knickers that a friend of my mother's had come down in, believe it or not, the City Hall Sqare in Copenhagen because the buttons holding them up, elastic being unobtainable in 1944, popped off, dresses sewn of curtain material, bicycles with rags or newspaper tied round the wheel-rims, as neither inner tubes, tyres or rubber valves were obtainalbe, and much, much more.

Cadbury continued to advertise throughout WW2 to make sure people didn't forget about it.

I was 8 when rationing stopped 1954.We had chickens, loads of fruit and veg home grown. Went berry picking in hedgerows in the autmn. The one thing I remember and was down to rationing is blackcurrant jam. Father had loads of blackcurrant bushes and in spite of also having strawberries, raspberries, goosberties it was always blackcurrant jam my mum made. Can't eat anything black currant flavoured now. Suppose it was all down to the high level of vitamin C in the ftuit.
Also, had aunt who had a really sweet tooth. When rationing stopped she started hoarding sugar. When she died in the esrly 60s my cousins discovered the floor in a walk in cupboard had collapsed due to the weight of the bags of sugar she had piled up over the years just in case rationing came back.

I remember my MiL telling me that meat came off ration on the day she got married, I think that was 3rd July 1954.