Evacuation was successful and unsuccessful at sometimes for foster carers. Many foster carers found the experience of fostering a child from the countryside for several reasons. The main reasons being the social class differences and having a different lifestyle. Not all foster carers thought of evacuation as being a bad experience, only some foster carers enjoyed spending time with evacuees because they naturally bonded well with them. I believe that some foster carers were only in it for the money. Foster carers were paid 10 shillings and 6d a week for fostering the first child, this was a lot of money and many people took advantage of it. People of the countryside were not really enthusiastic about receiving evacuees because there was a lot of stereotyping about the people of the city such as, they were poor, this is completely untrue because I know that there were all different classes of people in the major cities. Overall, I believe that evacuation was a success for foster carers because they were paid a good amount of money for fostering one child and some foster carers bonded very well with evacuees. Even though many foster carers had trouble bonding with evacuees, it was still overall a success.
Many people agree and disagree about evacuation being a success for parents. I believe that evacuation was definitely a success for parents because it saved their children’s lives however most children missed out on important years of their upbringing. Most important thing to consider is the safety of the children. If it wasn’t for evacuation then we would not have another generation. Overall evacuation was a success for parents because it saved their parents lives which were probably the most important thing for them.
The successfulness for evacuation was that it saved many peoples lives so few children died in the bombing, the country side people got to know and understand what life was like in the major cities. Evacuation also led to the children understanding the benefits living in the countryside. Evacuation also helped in building a generation after the Second World War.
Looking at the sources from my evacuee’s booklet I can see the sources A, C, E, F, G and I show that evacuation was a failure.
Source A is a piece of text from a history text book called ‘Mastering economics and social history’ which was written for British schools. The text book was written by David Taylor and was written in 1988. Source A talks about evacuation and suggests that evacuation was a failure this source is a secondary source because it was written after the event therefore being unreliable. ‘Arrangements did not go smoothly. Unfortunately many evacuees could not settle in the countryside.’ These are negative views towards evacuation which show that evacuation was a failure. Source A is also a biased source because it is one sided, the source only Conway’s negative views towards evacuation. The main purpose of the source was to show that most aspects of evacuation were a failure.
Source ‘C’ is an interview with a teacher who remembers being evacuated with children from her school. Source C talks about children being evacuated and also about how they and their mothers felt. The interview took place in 1988 making it a secondary source because it was written after evacuation took place. Because the interview was taken after a long time after evacuation it may be unreliable because her views may be affected by hindsight, the source may also be unreliable because it is one persons point of view. Looking at source C I can learn that it shows the evacuation was a failure. ‘Children were too afraid too talk. . . . . . . We hadn’t the slightest idea where we were going. . . . . . The mothers pressed against the iron gates calling goodbye darling.’ From this I can learn the children were not comfortable because they were too afraid too talk. I can also learn that there was lack organisation because no one knew where they were going. This source is an objective source because e in the source it does state about the source being on time. Overall source C shows that evacuation was a failure. The main purpose of the source was to show how children and mothers felt about evacuation. Source ‘E’ is also an interview with a mother of the host family. The mother looks back and remembers what the evacuees were like. ‘The children went around urinating on the walls; although we had toilets they never used them.’ From this we can learn that the evacuees had very poor hygiene. This shows that evacuation was a failure because it was difficult for evacuees for evacuees to live a middle classed lifestyle. I can see that this source is a biased source because it only talks about negative things about evacuation. I can also learn that this source is a secondary source because it was written in 1988, after the event. The source being secondary may result in it being unreliable because it is someone else’s view and it may be affected by hindsight. The main purpose of the source was to show how evacuees lacked hygiene.
Source ‘F’ is again an interview with a person who was an evacuee in 1939. In source F an evacuee looks back at evacuation. ‘It is just as upsetting for a clean and a well educated child to find it self in a grubby semi slum as the other way around.’ Form this I can learn that some evacuees were not put with the right families. This source implies the message that evacuation was a failure because some evacuees were not placed with the right families. This source criticises the government for not being much organised. This source is a biased source because it criticises the government and states negative things about evacuation. This source may be unreliable because it is a secondary source and it is one persons view. The main purpose of the source is to show that the government was very bad at organising evacuees with carers.
Source ‘G’ is an extract from a novel about evacuees which was written by Nina Bawden in 1973. The extract comes from a novel called, Carries war. Reading source ‘G’ I can learn that it displays a negative view towards evacuation. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, how silly of me, why should you have slippers?’ this is the views from the countryside people towards the evacuees. The people from the countryside made false assumptions towards the evacuees such as, they were poor. This source is a biased source because it only says negative things about evacuation thus making it unreliable. This source might also be unreliable because it is a secondary source and could be affected by hindsight. The source may also be unreliable because it is one persons view. The main purpose of the source was to show what the people of the countryside thought of the evacuees and the false assumptions they made.
Source ‘I’ is a mass observer survey in which a Southend father of a seven year old child was being interviewed. Reading the fathers comments I can quickly gather that from his point of view, evacuation was not a success. ‘What if I got killed? Who’d look after look after him? There are plenty of people here, my family and friends.’ By this he means that evacuees were not looked after properly by the host families. This source is a secondary source because it was written in 1940. This source is a biased source because it is one person’s point of view thus making it unreliable. The main purpose of the source was to show what some people from the cities thought of evacuation.
Many people had different views on evacuation and there were many different reasons for why people thought why evacuation was a failure. However many people had different reasons for why evacuation was a success.
Again looking at my booklet I can see that sources B, D and H show or tell that evacuation was a success.
Source B is a photograph of school children and some teachers walking to the train station. To be evacuated. Source B is a primary source because it was taken at the time of the event in September in 1939. Source B is a biased source because it only shows a positive perspective of evacuation; it does not show any negative perspective about evacuation. By looking at source ‘B’ I can learn that it shows that evacuation was a success, this is because in the photograph I can see children smiling happily and running to the train station as they are eager to get to the countryside. The main purpose of this source is to show that children were happy to be going to a place where they had never been before.
Source ‘D’ is also a photograph which shows evacuees happily having a bath. This photograph was issued by the government and the main purpose is to show that evacuation was good fun for children and also because they made new friends. It is clearly obvious that this photograph is trying to Conway the message that evacuation was successful. Source D is a biased source because it only shows positive views towards children being evacuated. I believe that this photograph was published by the government to show that evacuation was fun so people would send their children to be evacuated.
Source ‘H’ is an advertisement and also a combination of both a photograph and text. In the photograph I can see ably and a girl and below the picture there is a piece of text which reads, ‘thank you, foster parents. . . . . . We want more like you!’ By reading this I can clearly understand that this source shows a positive view towards evacuation. This advert was issued by the government and its main purpose was to get more people to foster evacuees in Scotland. This source is definitely a biased source because it only shows a positive view towards evacuation. Source H is a primary source as it was published in 1940, at the time of evacuation. The advert also has text and in the text it uses facts to get people to foster children. The text is also written in a way so it makes you feel sympathy for the evacuees, ‘You may be saving a child’s life.’
Many people believe that evacuation was a success and many others believe that it was a failure. Well, evacuation was a success for mothers because their children’s lives were saved, however they did not know where they where going and when they will be back. Evacuation was definitely a success for children because most importantly it saved their lives and they got to witness what the countryside looked like for the first time; however they had much trouble bonding with the foster carers. Evacuation was a success for foster carers because they were paid a good amount of money on the other hand they also had difficulty bonding with the evacuees because of the class difference. I believe that evacuation was a success for the government because they were responsible for saving one and a half million peoples lives by transporting them to the countryside, however they did a bad job with the distribution of children.
Overall I believe that evacuation was definitely a success because it saved nearly one and half million children’s lives which allowed us to have another generation after the war. Even though there were many negatives about evacuation I still believe that the life of children is far more precious than the bonding of two different classes. Thanks to evacuation we were able to have another generation after the war.
