‘ Its bad enough that we will be getting bombed but if the children are away there is no guarantee that they will be safe anyway, Id rather they stayed at home with me and well risk it.’
Many parents had many questions like…
‘Who are they going to stay with?’ ‘Where will they be staying?’ ‘Will they be staying in houses or boarding type schools?’ ‘Will brothers and sisters be split up?’ ‘What will happen if something happens to them?’ ‘What will happen if something happens to us?’
Nobody knew the answers to these questions except the government so many of the parents didn’t have answers, became worried and so therefore didn’t let their children go.
Most parents saw the need for evacuation and thought it was a necessity but they did not like the idea.
After December 1939, people started coming home. It was suggested that around one million people started to come home for a number of reasons. The major one was the phoney war. Bombing had not happened so they decided to come home but also some of the children were unhappy with their foster homes and some of the parents were becoming lonely as well.
For children on the other hand it was all a big adventure. Many of the children had never been out of their town or city and thought it was all a big holiday.
Once many arrived, however, their way of thinking changed. Some children of course enjoyed it thoroughly, had nice families and loved the countryside.
Most of the children were evacuated with the school and although they were billeted to the people, who chose them and stayed in different houses they still went to school together in the local church hall or local village school.
Many of the children who went hated it. They were lonely and missed the cities. Many were very badly treated by their foster parents and were beaten, forced to work on the farms, weren’t fed properly and they had to clean the houses. One person who was evacuated said…
‘The foster mum thought she was onto a very good thing with me, I think she regarded it as a kind of a business transaction. We were expected to wash and shop and look after a whining three year old.’
Many foster parents only took on children for the money they were paid for looking after them. Michael Caine said after he’d been evacuated…
‘We later found out that our foster mother hated kids and was only doing it for the extra money. The meals were the cheapest you could dish up.’
Many carers were very enthusiastic to start with. They were helping the war effort but at the same time, they were being paid for it. Many of the carers did not have children of their own and once the city children started to arrive, they did not know what to do with them.
Most of these children were from the city slums. They did not know how to behave, they were dirty and they swore and as the war went on many regretted their decisions. The national federation of women’s institutes collected complaints from around 1,700 institutes around the country and many said things like this…
‘ Some Gosport children had never used a knife and fork and in practically every batch of children there were some who suffered from head lice, skin diseases and bed wetting.’
In addition, a man called Oliver Lyttelton allowed ten children from London to stay in his large country house, he later complained…
‘I had little dreamt that English children could be so ignorant of the simplest rules of hygiene, and would regard carpets and the floors as suitable places to relieve themselves.’
Obviously different people who were involved in evacuation had different reactions depending on their experiences. Some people enjoyed being evacuated, some carers enjoyed having children and some parents were happy to let their children go to safety and vice versa.
I have concluded that evacuation was not the best system and even though many people did not agree with it, evacuation was a necessity.
