by Mike Brown
Up to 18 September 1939, the Radio Times published no details of what was on Children’s Hour, but from that date the programmes were listed again, starting with Another story from Mostly Mary, followed by The Zoo man.
The programmes continued to be introduced by ‘Uncle Mac’ (Derek McCulloch) with the words, ‘Hello children everywhere’, and besides short prorammes of the sort already mentioned, there were serialisations of classics, such as The Wind in the Willows, and Great Expectations, and old favourites such as Toytown, with ‘Larry the Lamb’.
Sylvie Stevenson: ‘We used to listen to Children’s Hour on the radio – there was Uncle Mac and Toytown – I liked that. Then there were the serials. We also listened to the Ovaltinis on Radio Luxembourg.’
During the day there were two sessions of broadcasts for schools, 11.00 to 12.20 and 1.50 to 3.00. A typical programme might be:
11.00 Announcements and singing
11.05 British history – from coast to coast 11.25 Singing
11.30 Interlude
11.35 Nature study
11.50 Physical training
The schools programmes proved to be especially useful to those pupils who had not been evacuated and had no schools to go to, or to those receiving home tuition or part-time schooling.
Of course children listened to other programmes too. Particularly popular were The Brains Trust, a discussion show; Paul Temple and Appointment with Fear – thrillers; ITMA (‘It’s That Man Again’) a comedy hosted by Tommy Hanley, which included such characters as Colonel Chinstrap, Mrs Mop and Funf; and another favourite, Charley McCarthy, a ventriloquist act (Charley was the dummy!).
Popular singers included Vera Lynn – the ‘Forces’s Sweetheart’, Arthur Askey, George Formby, Hutch – real name Leslie Hutchinson, and Gracie Fields. There were also bands such as Geraldo’s Orchestra. Live bands always featured at local dances (discos not yet having been invented). Ken Kessie recalls one in Moreton:
You had the hops, the dances on Saturday night, you met your girlfriends there. The music was played by ‘Alberto and his Band’; a saxophone, a drum kit and a piano. Alberto, he was never really Alberto, probably Albert, he played the saxophone.
THE CINEMA
In the absence of television, the cinema was one of the most popular forms of entertainment – almost everyone went to ‘the pictures’, at least once a week. Iris Smith: ‘Every Saturday we queued up for the cinema – there were long queues – everyone went to the pictures – my favourite was Judy Garland.’
In addition to the feature film, which was the main entertainment of the evening, there would be a second or ‘B’ film, one or two cartoons – such as Disney’s The Fuhrer’s Face, where Donald Duck dreams he lives in Nazi Germany – and the newsreel. Ken Kessie: ‘My favourite was Betty Grable – the flea-pit in Moreton was a must on Friday or Saturday, Sunday it was closed of course. We all went to church on Sunday morning – mostly to see the girls.’
No film programme of the time would have been complete without a ten-minute newsreel, made by Pathé Gazette, British Movietone News, Gaumont British News, British Paramount News, or the American ‘March of Time’ – in the absence of television these were the only moving pictures of the war the British public saw. There were usually also Ministry of Information films, such as Five Inches of Water, which showed why it was important to use only a small amount of water in the bath, or cartoons such as Dustbin Parade, showing the importance of salvage collecting – all done with a certain amount of humour.
Wartime films can be split into two types. First there were those based on the war, telling stories, usually adventures, in which the heroes fight Nazi spies, etc. Among these was the 1942 classic Went the Day Well?, in which the inhabitants of an English village, including a young evacuee played by Harry Fowler, fight off Nazi storm troopers. Second there were what we might call ‘escapist’ films, such as Disney’s Dumbo, released in 1941, which had nothing to do with the war, but which helped people to forget such things as the Blitz – but only for a while. Charles Harris:
Then, of course there was the pictures, we used to go Saturday morning. If you went to the cinema in the evenings, when there were the air raids, if there was an air-raid warning, they used to put up a notice on the screen saying ‘The sirens have gone if you want to go to the shelter’, but they kept on showing the film, we always stayed to watch the end.
Particular British favourites included George Formby, top British box office star from 1939 to 1943 – Formby always played the same character, an amiable idiot who always won through in the end. His wartime films included Let George Do It (1940), where he took on Nazi spies; one scene, in which he dreamed of flying to Germany in a balloon and punching Hitler on the nose, was a huge success, British audiences cheering at the top of their voices. In another film, Get Cracking (1943), George played a Home Guard. Other comedy favourites included Arthur Askey, and the Crazy Gang, a comedy group which included Bud Flanagan, who years later sang the theme tune to the BBC’s comedy series about the Home Guard, Dad’s Army. Of course, they were not universally popular – Charles Harris recalls: ‘I couldn’t stand Arthur Askey, “big-hearted Arthur” they used to call him, we called him “big-headed Arthur”!’
International stars popular in Britain included Abbott and Costello, Bob Hope, Jimmy Cagney, and those perennial children’s favourites, Laurel and Hardy who continued to make films throughout the war, including Air Raid Wardens in 1943.
The war took its toll on the stars as well as everyone else. In June 1943, Leslie Howard, the second biggest British box office draw at the time, was killed while travelling in an aeroplane that was shot down over the Bay of Biscay; rumours at the time said that the Germans thought that Churchill was on board. Also thought to have been shot down was the American band leader Glenn Miller, whose aircraft went missing on 15 December 1944.
SPORT
Then, as now, many children followed sport keenly, having their favourite teams and players. In the 1930s football and cricket players had regularly starred in cigarette card sets, and in the first weeks of the war the newspapers featured star players who had joined the armed services or civil defence. The radio and cinema newsreels covered matches, as well as the newspapers, and many children continued to attend local fixtures.
As soon as war broke out, the government, worried about air raids, banned all events that attracted large crowds. This, of course, included football, rugby and cricket matches. The newspapers announced: ‘All sport brought to a halt’. However, the government soon realised that sports fixtures helped to boost morale and a limited programme of such events was introduced. Of course the black-out meant that there could be no floodlit night-time events; this particularly affected greyhound-racing and speedway motorcycle racing, a sport which had been a pre-war favourite. Large indoor events were also affected as stadiums were taken over for use as ambulance or fire stations, or converted to factories. Even Wimbledon was not exempt: the courts were spared from being used for vegetable growing, but the car park was turned into a farm and the buildings used as an ARP centre.
In football, representatives of the Football League and the Football Association at first decided that all league and cup matches would be suspended. By the middle of September friendlies were being played, but the size of crowds was limited to 15,000 in even the biggest grounds. By now it had become impossible to resume the pre-war competitions; many players had joined the armed forces or civil defence, and fuel shortages meant that team travelling had to be cut back. From the end of October, a regional competition was set up comprising eight groups; South A, made up of London teams, South B, South Western, Western, Midlands, East Midlands, North Western and North Eastern. There was also a series of international matches played between the home countries and our allies.
The FA cup was not played for throughout the war, leaving Portsmouth, who had won it in 1939, holding it until Derby County took it in the 1946 final, but in March 1940 a ‘War Cup’ competit
ion was introduced. Following a knockout format, it took just seven weeks to produce its first finalists, West Ham and Blackburn Rovers, with West Ham winning 1–0 at Wembley. By now the ‘phoney war’ was over; among those watching the match were soldiers, admitted free, who just one week before had been taken off the beaches at Dunkirk. The crowds differed from those before the war, not only in size and in the preponderance of uniforms, but because that standard accessory of the pre-war supporter, the football rattle, was banned – it was too much like the gas warning!
Professional football continued to be played throughout the war, although the standard was often poor due to the lack of available players; there were also many local matches, often fund-raisers for ‘Warship Week’, or the ‘Spitfire Fund’. Usually played between police, fire brigade, civil defence or service teams, they often featured celebrity players.
Cricket was badly hit. The normal three- or five-day matches were no longer possible, and the cricketing authorities, old-fashioned as ever, seemed unable to imagine anything else. Gradually cricket evolved into a series of one-off, one-day games, with new scratch teams springing up – the two most successful being the grandly named British Empire XI, and the London Counties XI.
BOMB-SITE PLAYGROUNDS
When all else failed, there were always the bomb sites to play in. The gutted shells of houses made perfect adventure playgrounds, as we might call them today. In the worst-hit areas these bomb sites could cover extremely large areas, as is shown in the post-war films Hue and Cry and Passport to Pimlico. Barbara Courtney remembers playing on bomb sites: ‘We used the loose bricks to lay out room shapes, and then we built chairs and tables and swept the rooms clean.’ Slowly the bomb sites began to blossom as the wild flowers took root there, especially the rose bay willow herb, which was nicknamed ‘Bombsite’ by London’s East Enders.
TOYS
At first British toy manufacturers responded to the war by producing a whole range of military toys: tanks, aircraft, ships, soldiers, even barrage balloons. There were several high-quality German toy manufacturers before the war such as Schuco and Bing, but British companies were only too happy to fill the void. Particular favourites were board games and card games, which could be played in the shelter, or during the black-out. However, as the war drew on, raw materials became scarce, and the toy factories were turned over to war production. Like everything else, toys were in short supply. People made their own, or repaired old ones. Charles Harris: ‘I got hold of a big old wooden train, I painted it blue and put a seat on it and gave it to my little brother.’ Many fire stations set up workshops where staff in off-duty periods would build or renovate toys for local hospitals, etc.
The Lewisham Borough News in December 1941 reported:
CHRISTMAS TOYS FROM SALVAGE WASTE ‘The finest collection of toys I have seen this Christmas’ remarked the Mayor of Lewisham at a children’s party given by the Wardens of Forest Hill. Out of material salvaged from bombed houses the Rescue Service members had made all sorts of attractive toys, which, in view of the shortage in the shops, were particularly appreciated by the 54 children who had been invited to the party. There were toy engines, train sets, dolls’s cots, rocking horses, bead frames, and other toys. The gifts were distributed by Father Christmas (Rescue Party Leader Mills).
GETTING UP TO NO GOOD
Too much spare time with the schools closed, too little to do, and an absence of parental control could have negative effects – juvenile crime, or juvenile delinquency as it came to be known, was a particular problem of the war. In It Came to Our Door, his book about Plymouth during the war, H.P. Twyford explains the problem:
There was, of course, an increase in crime, although I do not think anyone would be justified in saying that it was a serious or alarming increase. I think the greater concern was in the matter of juvenile crime. Many children seemed to be lacking in the old-time home discipline. This was perhaps understandable to some extent, because so much former parental control was missing by reason of fathers being away in the Services and mothers often engaged all day on war work.
It was by no means only a problem in Plymouth. The war record of the Metropolitan Police states: ‘Children neglected or getting into mischief – or worse – through the absence of parents, were abnormally numerous.’ In Raiders Overhead, Barbara Nixon, an air-raid warden in London’s East End, gives one example of some of this ‘mischief’:
In one shelter where we cleared a bay of its bunks to make a recreation room, the children themselves helped with the clearance, carefully counted the nuts and bolts, and behaved in an exemplary fashion. The next night, their games became distinctly noisy, and some women protested with vigour. The children retaliated by pouring water down the ventilation pipes onto the bunks below; the women, thereupon, made use of two broomsticks, and the children capped that by resorting to the iron bunk poles. Peace was, with difficulty, finally restored, but the next morning the children had the final word. They threw all the precious nuts and bolts through the windows of the houses. And the ringleader of it all was a chubby little person called Pozzie, who would always proudly announce that he was ‘eleven, rising twelve’.
Ken Kessie remembers high spirits in Moreton: ‘The Presbyterian Minister started a youth club, but we wrecked the place – we were as bad as the youths today really, although there was no violence.’
A certain amount of actual crime was, of course, carried out by youths, but most of it was of a fairly petty nature, usually perpetrated by boys between 16 and 18. The biggest area of crime (60 per cent) was ‘larceny and housebreaking’, followed by ‘theft from parents or employers’ (11 per cent). This extract from the Kentish Mercury is fairly typical: ‘James Kemp (17) and a 16-year-old youth pleaded guilty to stealing from a shop articles valued at £4 10s. The younger boy’s parents were dead, and both lads had been sleeping in air-raid shelters.’
In June 1941 the Home Office and the Board of Education jointly issued a memorandum on juvenile crime. They pointed out that the number of children under 14 found guilty of offences in the first year of the war had risen by 41 per cent, and for the fourteen to seventeen year old group the increase was 21 per cent. It was felt that a major cause of these increases, besides lack of discipline, was the closure of leisure facilities due to the war; as a result of this, in London, play centres were opened in all areas, and staff were sent to the reception areas to organise out-of-school activities. For older children ‘mixed youth recreation centres’ were opened, for young people to ‘meet in social intercourse and recreation’.
TEN
High Days and Holidays
If Britain was going to be invaded, the invaders would obviously land somewhere on the coast, almost certainly in the south or east. Almost from the start of the war beaches in these areas were planted with mines, barbed wire and other obstacles, so swimming, paddling or playing on the sands there were out of the question. From time to time areas of Britain, especially along the coast, were closed to visitors; in April 1944, for instance, all civilians (except those who lived there) were banned from a coastal belt, 10 miles in depth, stretching from the Wash to Land’s End.
Family holidays became a rarity as workers were no longer given holiday time – war production had to be kept to a maximum. Added to this were the travelling restrictions – ‘Is your journey really necessary?’ the slogan asked. Petrol for private cars was almost impossible to get, and anyway most of them had had their tyres removed for the rubber salvage drives, and railways were needed for the transport of troops and war materials. What transport was left for civilians was often in a poor state. Charles Harris: ‘Most of the buses were so old that when they went up Chingford Mount they couldn’t get all the way up with passengers on board, they’d stop half way up, then we’d all get off and walk up to the top and then get back on.’
There was some travelling, though. Special cheap-day and weekend excursions were laid on by bus and railway companies, for parents who wished to visit their evacu
ated children. But on the whole, holidays stopped. If you lived in a blitzed city, you might be lucky enough to have relatives in a country area who would put you up for a week. Other than that, holidays tended to be for children only, organised by clubs, or groups such as the Guides. R.J. Holley of Bristol remembers one camp:
During the war we went as schoolchildren to summer camps helping the farmers bring in the harvest, etc. We, that is, Eagle House Youth Club under the direction of the Rev. Bouquet, the club leader, went to the Duke of Beaufort’s estate. He had a miners’s camp there. During the war the duke let it to the schoolchildren and clubs who went to help on the land.
Eric Chisnall:
An incident I well remember concerned a week’s holiday with our Scout troop. A new vicar came to the church and he took over as our Scoutmaster. He was not over-popular with us lads as he tried to stop our rather boisterous games such as British Bulldog, because he thought they were too rough. He very kindly arranged for several of us to spend this holiday in Rugby, in the parish he had served in before coming to Ipswich. As I had never travelled more than fifteen miles from home, this was a great adventure, and it was probably the same for most of my mates.
In Rugby people were very kind and we were made very welcome even though we did have to sleep on a hard wooden floor in a local hall. Amongst other trips we were taken to see the famous Rugby School and the Rugby railway locomotive engineering shops, and a trip to Coventry was also arranged.
When we arrived our vicar gave us a stern lecture about not being too extravagant with food, as people had kindly given up their rations to feed us. At breakfast the next morning he proceeded to smother his toast with a thick layer of butter, and what looked to me like well over a quarter of an inch of marmalade. He thought he was sparing, but coming from a family of eight children, well used to ‘scraping it on and scraping it off again’, I could not believe my eyes – at home we were rationed by price as well as by ration coupons.