Why did the British government decide to evacuate children from Britain(TM)s major cities at the start of the Second World War?

large pressure on Britain’s economy, putting Hospitals in highly populated areas under immense amounts of pressure. These would be greater risks for the disabled, people and children as they would take longer to get into the shelters, which were in themselves inadequate due to a lack of space in the cities. Water supplies and sewers ruptured by bombs would also prove to be a health and safety risk for Children in the cities, as water could easily become infected with diseases. In addition to this, the expected figures for people being injured by the war were far higher than the actual figures proved to be as they were calculated using figures from recent bombings in the Spanish civil war and WW1. The British Government calculated that 100,000 tons of bombs would be dropped on London in 2 weeks, with each ton causing 50 casualties, which translates roughly to half of the children from the major cities being injured as a direct result of bombings. As well as economic pressure, there were psychological reasons for evacuation to occur, people out on the lines were to believe that their children and families back home had been evacuated and were all safe, this was to be a major morale boost for the British troops and thus would encourage them to work harder, to make sure Britain would be an o.k place for their children to grow up. The war, needed more supplies and artillery sending to the front lines as it progressed, this meant that someone back home had to work in the factories to produce the additional supplies, as the men were away fighting, this job would have to be done by the women of the country. Evacuating the children would free the women of the cities allowing them to take over the rolls of the men, producing artillery to send to the lines. This was vital, as without the women working in the factories, Britain would simply not have been able to fight. The government also wanted to ensure a good future for Britain as a country, as they knew that many of the men were likely to be killed from fighting, they needed to keep someone in the country for after the war to run the shops, factories and other businesses, the Government knew that the future of Britain depended on the survival of the children, providing a huge motive for evacuating the Children. Overall, there were a number of factors that brought the government to decide to commit to a large scale evacuation scheme, the most important of which was the overall economic benefits, as the war simply could not have been fought by Britain without the women working in the factories of Britain. Although the health and safety benefits were very important the related benefits were even more so, such as moral boosting, and the idea that Britain would survive after the war.