When World War II broke out in 1939, my mother, Marion Legg, was 4 years old and lived in Sunbury-on-Thames.
She remembered the food rations (which changed at different times as the war went on) as 2oz butter per person per week; 4oz sugar; 1 shilling’s worth of meat which might buy some fatty mince or a pound and a half of lamb’s liver if you were in favour with the butcher. A bone for stewing was a treat if you could get it. A notice was displayed saying: ‘Please do not ask for offal for refusal offal offends’. You could get four cough drops without sweet coupons and buy a pickle for a farthing. Her father grew vegetables and they kept Road Island Red chickens. When she was 7 or 8 her job was to mix the evil-smelling Karswood in a saucepan to feed the laying hens.
For about a month during the War, my grandmother took her four children home to live in Wales, which was safer than Sunbury. They travelled by train to London and from there to Cardiff. Then they caught a bus to the village where my great grandmother lived in Argoed. The family was farmed out amongst the relatives who all lived in the same street.
They had no running hot water at that time. She remembers being bathed in the same ‘copper’ that the washing was done in. No one she knew had new clothes: everyone bought clothes from jumble sales.
Shared by Annette Reynolds, her daughter
Comments