Explain the differing reactions of people in Britain to the policy of evacuating children during the Second World War?

Children that had been evacuated had mixed reactions towards this scheme. Some had never been away from home before so it was quite daunting, as many were very young and they were just sent on a train to an unknown destination. Others found the experience quite exciting and thought of it like an adventure as it was a new place to go. Those who had been to boarding school didn’t really have very many problems with staying away from home. Most of the evacuation was set up amongst schools, so classes or the whole school would be set to a destination along with their schoolteachers and maybe mothers.

Arriving at their destination, the evacuees were taken to somewhere like a village hall where they would be placed with host families. Often children were picked according to their appearance. It was quite difficult to place young children, those who wanted to stay with siblings or those accompanied by their mother as the host families wanted older, fit and healthy children who could help with work. There were also Negro and Jewish children amongst the evacuees and very often they were chosen last or not even at all. If there were children left and no one wanted them, sometimes they would then go around the villages knocking on people’s doors persuading families to take them in. There were even homes for the ‘unbilletable’ such as the one established for boys in Maidenhead.

It wasn’t always pleasant living with host families because some of the evacuees felt unwanted and were placed with families poorer than their own so they weren’t use to the way of living. Sometimes they were even badly treated and beaten. In other cases it was the complete opposite. The children had never lived in such luxury having clean white sheets and hot running water. Too often the children did not come prepared for the countryside without warm clothes or sturdy shoes and their parents usually refused to provide any funds. The host families were given an allowance for each child every week but this was very minimal only affording basics such as food. There were some incidents where the poorer families pocketed this money for their own use. There are other cases where the evacuees stole from their host families and ran away.

Many of the evacuees were stereotyped of being dirty, unhealthy and poor. There was a situation where many of them had head lice but this wasn’t due to them being dirty, it was only because they had all sat next to each other on the train. Medical checks had revealed that some children had medical disorders such as bone disorders and malformed teeth. It was also shown that children from a wealthier family were on average four inches taller than those from poorer families due to their diets.