Manchester at War, 1939-45

by Graham Phythian

  This fellow said, ‘Ee Jenny, you know, you refusing to work like that,’ he said, ‘that’s sabotage!’ [laughs]

  I said, ‘I don’t care, I’m not going.’

  Anyway they eventually moved me to the bombsight. I didn’t do the bombsight but I worked in the, you know, the bombsight’s only small, I worked in there, and they used to put the louvers [air slats for ventilation] in the side and I worked on those. And then, the little window in the side of the plane, you had what you call a jig [tool used to keep drilling specifications consistent]. So you put this jig on and you drilled a hole, then you put a clip in to keep it steady, then you drilled all round inside this jig, knocked it out, then you had to put a window in, and put Bostik all around to keep the window in.

  ENGLAND BEAT SCOTLAND 8–0: LAWTON’S FOUR

  By Casual

  The tenth war-time meeting of England and Scotland today this time at Maine Road, Manchester, saw the visitors overwhelmed by a much stronger team.

  An all-ticket match, there were 60,000 spectators when the teams lined up.

  (Manchester Evening Chronicle, 16 October 1943)

  CAN BE DONE!

  I read with interest of the Manchester Transport Department catering for between 30,000 and 40,000 football fans last Saturday. Buses moved off from Piccadilly at the rate of six a minute.

  How nice to have the same facilities coming home from work during the week. It proves it can be done.

  E. N. N., Manchester

  (Manchester Evening News correspondence, 23 October 1943)

  A bomb crater in the middle of the cricket pitch at Old Trafford, perilously close to the test wicket! The tower in the background is part of Stretford (now Trafford) Town Hall. (Manchester Evening News/Allied Newspapers)

  EILEEN TOWERS

  There was the Voluntary Land Club, because we used to go out to help the farmers. Now I don’t know who started it, or how it was started, but I used to meet the group at Northenden, near the Church. We’d be divided into different groups of four, and they’d say, ‘oh, well you go to such a farm today, and you go to another farm’, and we used to go on our bikes: definitely, I remember two farms that we went to on Ringway Road; one was called Peacock Farm I think, and we used to go up Styal Road to different farms. One was Chamber Hall Farm, at the top of Styal Road, just before you get to Shadow Moss Road.

  We went to a lot of different farms, picking sprouts, swedes, potatoes, all different things. Oh there was one nice one where they said you can pick apples. It was quite hard work when you’d sat at a desk all week! We used to get per person about 9d [4p] an hour. But we didn’t have the money at all, it never came to us, because we used to give it to different charities and that.

  We hear a lot about the Home Guard and other volunteer organisations, but I wonder if readers give much thought to the poor Special Constable. I have been in the Specials for three years and I think that the conditions under which we are working should be more deeply impressed on the public. Then they and possibly the Home Guard will not look upon us as weaklings hiding behind a soft job.

  We have to do twelve hours per week duty, spread over three nights, to bring us in line with the other services, apart from lectures, drills, etc. The whole of the twelve hours is spent on the streets in rain, snow, or whatever weather is prevailing. Many of the other [voluntary] services may be called upon to do their 48 hours per month, but the greater part of their duty time is spent indoors, sleeping, reading, or playing. Should the sirens sound we are on duty until the ‘all clear’.

  Also, unlike other services we are not allowed subsistence money, however many hours we have put in. We have to buy our own boots, which have to be strong and of good quality to withstand wear and weather to which they are subjected. We also have to provide our own torches and batteries, without which we could not carry on in the black-out. We are not provided with greatcoats to keep out the biting winds or gloves to protect our hands.

  I am proud to be a Special Constable. Whilst we are not trained to fight, we shall pull our weight whenever the occasion calls.

  A MERE SPECIAL, Northenden

  (Manchester Evening News correspondence, 20 January 1942)

  Some of the farms were very good, others, you just had to eat your sandwiches in the thing with the cows and that, you know.

  This wasn’t the same as the Land Girls. That was a big national organisation, the Land Army. This was the Land Club, just a local thing. I wonder if other places had it around Manchester …

  We wore a little badge of membership. I’ve still got it, somewhere.

  [An extract from the 1942 film Start a Land Club – available on the website www.movinghistory.ac.uk – explains the organisation and workings of the clubs.]

  A Land Club badge. (Eileen Towers)

  FRANCIS HOGAN

  I remember one night, we were coming home from a dance, and all the lights went out; it was the blackout, and there was this drunkard on the opposite side of the road, and he shouts at the top of his voice, ‘I’ve gone blind! I’ve gone blind! Help me, I’ve gone blind!’ [laughs]

  We said, ‘OK mate, right you are.’

  Auxiliary Fire Service members enjoy a cuppa on Christmas Day 1940. (Manchester Evening News)

  MICKIE MITCHELL

  [The speaker worked for the Fire Rescue Service.]

  There was a house we went to, and there was three old men there, with, you know, caps on and nightshirts, and they wouldn’t come down from upstairs. The house next door was blazing; they wouldn’t come down, they were sleeping three in a bed in the attic upstairs. We had to knock them out to carry them down! [laughs] I was in stitches, me, these poor old men in long nightshirts! We had to carry them down, we couldn’t get them to walk down the ladder, or try and get them down the stairs. Oh no, it was hilarious.

  When we was at Withington Fire Station you had a lot of waiting at one time, and then sometimes you’d be out all day and all night. We were sat there one night playing cards for money, which was forbidden of course, and the D.O. [Divisional Officer] came in one day, so I sat on the chair on the money like that, and he wasn’t daft because he’d been a fireman and he knew what we were up to. He said, ‘Go in the duty room and get my log book.’

  So I said to one of the girls, ‘Do you want to go and get his log book?’

  He said, ‘I order you to do it!’

  We used to get fined.

  Another time, driving the petrol wagon alongside the [Southern] cemetery, a great marvellous puddle of water there all over the road, and I thought, ‘Ooh I’ll go through this’, and I didn’t see anything, ooh splash it was marvellous. I get back to the fire station and they said, ‘The police want to see you.’

  So I said, ‘Why?’ A woman was passing and I’d drowned her and I didn’t notice! I got fined 10s [50p] for that, because she took me to court, and then I had to pay for her cleaning.

  DORIS WADE

  [The speaker worked six hours a day at Fairey Aviation (Ringway) [See page 98] and the rest of the day worked on the wards at Manchester Royal Infirmary.]

  I was an auxiliary nurse. We had to do 100 hours on whichever ward the matron sent us to. She’d see that we’d got the caps on the right way, and so forth, and then when we’d done the 100 hours we were asked which ward we’d like to go on. So I chose S2 Male, because it was more interesting, being surgical work and not medical. And also I was allowed to go into quite a few of the operations there. I was on that ward for over two years, and the sister was called Jessie Matthews. I’ll always remember that!

  And of course the matron was real old type, you know, in those days, she’d come round and we’d give one another the wire, you know, when she was leaving one ward for the next, and we’d have to take all the magazines and books off the beds, make the patients sit there just so: ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Oh the matron’s coming.’ [laughs]

  We had all sorts of jobs. One of the jobs was to put a loincloth on a man [laughs]
– that was rather embarrassing! We’d practised while we were training, and of course we had a written exam as well, and helping the nurses generally. When I watched the operations, I was allowed to put the iodine on at the end.

  (North West Sound Archive)

  MARY CORRIGAN

  My sister and I joined the ATS, but we never left home, because we were in the Army Pay Corps, and the offices were quite near to where we lived, but there were certain restrictions. We had to wear khaki uniform all the time: tunic and skirt, blouse and tie, and a cap, and you also had a greatcoat for the very cold weather, and khaki gloves, woollen gloves.

  David Appleyard’s enamelled cast-iron sculptures ‘Factory Girls’ (installed 2011) commemorate the achievements of women workers at Metropolitan Vickers during the Second World War. They are on East Wharf, Salford Quays, with the Manchester Ship Canal and the Imperial War Museum North in the background. (Author’s collection)

  To go into the city, we had to have an army pass, because you could be stopped by an officer, who would want to know why you were in Manchester, and of course if you could show a pass, you were alright. If you couldn’t show a pass, you were put on a charge.

  Strange to say, although it was blackout and there wasn’t a light anywhere, you weren’t nervous on the streets like you are today. Everybody was friendly and nice. Because everybody was in the same boat; we were all working for peace, and you felt friends with everybody.

  (North West Sound Archive)

  FIVE

  RATIONING

  Before the outbreak of war in 1939, Britain imported well over half of its essential foodstuffs. Shipping bound for the UK was a prime enemy target, so serious shortages forced Britain into a system of strictly limited domestic supply. Basic foods were rationed from January 1940, clothing by June 1941, and by July 1942 petrol, by law, was to be used for essential services only. UK rationing in one form or another lasted until 1954.

  A close-up of a display from the Imperial War Museum North, Salford Quays. (Author’s collection/Imperial War Museum North)

  HILDA MASON

  They gave you a ration book, and in it was how much butter and sugar. There was a book for food, one for clothing, and if you were lucky enough to have a car, one for petrol. It’s surprising: my mum was a very good manager, she’d been brought up that way, and we never really went short. I mean, we very rarely saw an egg – it was dried egg. We were very lucky; we had parents who were very good and who looked after us.

  Really, we just got on with life, and I’m still here today, so all the rations and what we lived on, didn’t do us any harm. I’m still here and still – touch wood – pretty fit.

  PHILIP LLOYD

  The shopkeeper clipped one of the little tickets out of the ration book every time you bought whatever it was. The shops that you were registered with were in the front, so you had to go to those shops. You were told to use marked coupons at a certain time or for certain things. Somewhere it says: ‘Do nothing with this page until told what to do.’

  DENNIS WOOD

  Actually it was a healthy diet. The incidence of heart attack almost disappeared for the six years of the war, and later because rationing was still on until about 1953. Nevertheless, we had to get used to it.

  In the police station on Mill Street [Bradford, central Manchester] they used to get the prisoners’ meals from the café down the road – the British Café it was called – and it would be good enough grub, you know, potatoes, like potato mash, Spam or corned beef, gravy, quite tasty. Anyway the sergeant on duty would come in with his sandwiches that his wife had made; nothing special, black bread and dripping, and he’d ask, ‘what are they having down there?’ and more often than not order a swap!

  JEANNE HERRING

  Usually I took sandwiches for lunch, but once a week mother gave me 1s 3d threepence [approximately 6p] to eat out. She said it would be an educating experience for me to watch other people ordering their meal. There was not much choice because of food rationing: maybe soup and a roll and beans on toast or fish and chips.

  I cannot remember ever having a meal out with the family, but Auntie Gertie treated me once to the pictures and a fish and chip meal at the Odeon on Oxford Road. The café was in the basement of the cinema. I must have been about eleven or twelve, and when we got home Auntie Gertie said, ‘Do you know what the dear girl said, Annie? Can I have as much tomato ketchup as I like?’ Mother laughed but I didn’t think it was funny, for she restricted our portion at home.

  DENNIS HUMPHRIES

  One of the other considerations that came along as soon as the war started was a thing called rationing, which meant you had to go to the shops with your book, with your coupons. One of my jobs on finishing school, since my mother was working and my brother was working, I had to take my mother’s shopping bag and get in the queue at the local grocery store, so that when mother came home from work, she’d get straight in there, and have my place in the queue, so she didn’t have to wait too long.

  I don’t remember any black market activity, except that once I sold my sweet coupons – only once! [laughs] I was only eleven at the time!

  MARJORIE AINSWORTH

  It came very gradually, because they had to organise all the ration books, and you had to register with a butcher and a grocer. You’d get your weekly rations: you’d get 3d [1p] worth of meat, which wasn’t very much, and occasionally you would get an extra sausage. At the grocer you got your butter, eggs, bacon; all the things that were rationed. For everything else you used to queue. Queuing was quite a feature. If you saw a queue, you automatically got into it [laughs] but you didn’t really know what you were going to get at the other end! But it didn’t matter: it could have been a bread queue or a potato queue or even a cigarette queue. Sweets were rationed, but you didn’t have to register for those, you just went there.

  There were recipes; people used to try the oddest things. I know when we finally got married, my mother-in-law used to make some little buns, and if she didn’t have any margarine or butter or lard, she would use liquid paraffin as the shortening! [laughs] They were quite nice actually.

  We were never lucky enough to know anybody who was involved in the black market, but we used to get, we had an uncle in Australia; he used to send food parcels to his sister, and occasionally we’d get a food parcel. How that was arranged I don’t know, but they would come from Australia.

  We had horse meat, I remember, there was a horsemeat butcher on Corporation Street [Gorton] opposite the Co-op bank. We occasionally got a bit of pork, and I remember eating whale meat, but I can’t remember where we got it from, it certainly wasn’t the butcher’s. There must have been a whale meat queue somewhere! [laughs]

  I remember one of the girls in the railway office lived on a farm somewhere outside Stockport, and she invited us back for tea one day, and it was amazing: we all had two very fresh boiled eggs, with toast and butter. That seemed to be like a feast.

  (Manchester Evening News)

  There were restaurants open, but you could only spend I think up to five pounds, which was a lot of money in those days. The thing that saved most people was the chip shop. They weren’t rationed, so at a pinch you could always have fish and chips somewhere. It was beef dripping that they used in those days, not fancy oil. They tasted better with beef dripping.

  A dried eggs recipe list. (Manchester Evening News)

  PHYLLIS STEWART

  We were rationed: there was my father-in-law, my mother-in-law, Pamela [baby daughter] and me. Arnold, my husband, was stationed outside York and you know what he used to do? He used to go around to these farms and help them to mend the fences and that, and they used to give him eggs, and he used to bring the eggs home. He’d have a little case, and he used to wrap each egg in newspaper. He’d bring about a dozen eggs home every time he came on leave, it was lovely.

  I don’t know if my mother-in-law was more pleased to see him or the eggs!

  (North West Sound Archive)

>   HELEN SEPHTON

  I remember the egg powder, and the potato powder, that was called Pom, and now it’s gone full circle because you can get Smash now, can’t you, in the shops? It was like that, but inferior.

  I remember the rationing books: if you had the money, you hadn’t got the coupons, and if you had the coupons, you hadn’t got the money. We had a man in the neighbourhood, this old guy, and he used to treat all the children in the area in rota, because he never used his sweet coupon; he always gave it away to the families with children, so we could have a quarter of sweets to share out.

  JOAN CONSTABLE

  I remember a greengrocer’s near where I lived [Chorlton-cum-Hardy], and one day the word went round that there were bananas there. I can still see all the women running down the road with their ration books.

  I remember a family used to keep a pig in their back garden and people used to give it their leftovers, and when it was killed we were all given a little bit.