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- [00:00]
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- [02:05]
Lauren Good
Welcome to the History Extra podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. Imagine being torn from your home and sent to live with strangers. To escape the threat of bombing in British cities, thousands of people were sent to the countryside. And they weren't just children. Historian Joshua Levine joins Lauren Good to revisit the experiences of evacuees in today's episode, including those of his own father.
- [02:38]
Josh
Josh, thanks so much for joining me for an episode of our Everything you wanted to know series. Today we'll be talking all about the history of evacuees in Britain. First of all, during which period of the second World War evacuated evacuations actually.
- [02:55]
Joshua Levine
Started two days before the war. That's how Much it was anticipated the bombing of Britain had taken place during the First World War on a much bigger scale than people sometimes realize. So if you walk through London, you'll see damage to buildings and damage to Cleopatra's Needle, for example, on the Thames, which people often assume is Second World War blitz damage. It isn't First World War damage. And people were sheltering in the tubes in the First World War, so people already knew that what it was like to be bombed. And it was anticipated between the wars that bombing would end the war almost immediately. As soon as war was declared, the bombers would come over. It was said by the 1930s Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, that the bomber will always get through, which reflected common thinking. So that in 1938, very soon before the war broke out, the air staff were predicting in the very first weeks of the war, something like 2 million casualties, half a million dead. And it was believed that this would be a kind of knockout blow, or an effect of a knockout blow. It's why Britain didn't really bother with building fighters until relatively late, because it was thought there was no point that bombers were going to get through. So the Spitfire and the Hurricane were relatively late developments. So bombing was absolutely expected. And the idea of evacuation would be to get, well, what were known as useless mouths out of the cities, out of London, primarily. And what this meant was people who would either hamper the war effort just by their presence or, you know, it was important, obviously, that lives were saved. But it was also thought that if there were huge numbers of casualties, that would severely affect morale, could lead to an uprising against the government. So for all these reasons, it was important to keep the more vulnerable people safe. And so at the beginning of the war, you had children being evacuated. You had the disabled being not on the same scale, but being evacuated. You had expectant mothers being evacuated. So you had an official scheme known as Operation Pied Piper, and that took a million and a half people out of the cities into the countryside. So you had this official scheme, but you also had unofficial people just evacuating their own families, going to relatives. And the official scheme, Pied Piper, for the most part, took school groups and, you know, they were evacuated away, and they took teachers with them. But there were also a lot of other groups which weren't school groups, which were associated with other sort of collectives. And then you had people, as I say, just being evacuated unofficially with family members. So you ended up with a huge number of people going to the. To the countryside. And you then had what was known as the Phoney war or the Boer War B O R E when not very much happened, the bombers didn't come over as predicted. And, you know, people who'd been, for example, carrying their gas masks everywhere in anticipation of gas attack stopped carrying them because it didn't look as if anything was going to happen. And by April of 1940, so we're talking the beginning of the war, we're talking September 1939. By January, really, of 1940, you know, quite early in 1940, most of those who'd been evacuated returned because not much had happened and because people wanted their families back.
- [06:42]
Josh
It's interesting that you mentioned different demographics there. I think we now assume today that it was just children who were evacuated during the war.
- [06:51]
Joshua Levine
Yeah, no, it wasn't just children. I mean, I think the idea was it was, as I say, useless mouths, the more vulnerable. So others went apart from children. But of course, because children went, you had people looking after them. So you had family members going, most often mothers, but because the fathers might be serving or they might have some sort of reserved occupation, they were more likely to stay, basically. And then you had various other sectors of society, like disabled people, the blind people, who were considered more vulnerable, less useful to the war effort, basically.
- [07:32]
Josh
StevieJD on Instagram asks, was evacuation mandatory or did families have a choice to keep children or family members in the city?
- [07:42]
Joshua Levine
No, they had a choice. It wasn't mandatory. People do sometimes think that people were just forced to go. That's not the case. To the point that there was a radio doctor called Charles Hill who broadcast to families. You are being selfish if you're keeping your children in the cities, because the government wanted children and the vulnerable out of cities, but there was no obligation to do that. And very often people would go out to the countryside and just not like it and decide to come back. In the same way that people sheltering, you know, people began by very deliberately assiduously taking shelter. And then as the war went on, they stopped doing it to the same degree as people became more used to the situation in the way that anything becomes normal. I mean, I don't think you can say the bombing ever became normal, but people became more used to it and started to believe that they were likely more likely to survive than they had at the beginning of the war. So people stopped sheltering to the same degree. They stopped taking their gas masks around with them and they came back from evacuation.
- [08:58]
Josh
Jaylee Buck on Instagram asks, where were most evacuees placed once they had left the city?
- [09:06]
Joshua Levine
The groups that went tended to go to the same area because if, for example, teachers went with them, it became easier. They could go to the same schools and they could be supervised to much more easily. Siblings, they tried to keep together, but they didn't always. Sometimes they were separated. And I remember very recently talking to a man who was well into his 90s called Ron. And Ron was evacuated to the Midlands, I think it was with his sister. And they were very, very close and they were separated. And when I spoke to him, however many years later this is, he started crying at the memory of being separated from his sister. So they had to go to places where people were willing to take them. Obviously, sometimes approval was sought by the local authorities, but very often not. Sometimes, you know, these families were, or the hosts, the foster parents were vetted, but most often not. You could end up with anyone. I mean, you know, there couldn't be disease or illnesses. I mean, my own father had an experience and he spoke about it as being really, really life defining. Because if you think about it, young children, this is the period when their characters are formed, when their hopes and fears and sensibilities and everything is formed. And my father remembered he was 7, his brother was slightly older, was 10 or 11, and they were taken out to Bedfordshire. And he remembers arriving at a street and all of the children were paraded up and down both sides of the street and he was with his brother. He said, first of all, the single girls, the girls on their own were taken because it was thought they'd be less trouble. Then the boys on their own were taken and he and his brother were the only two who were going together. And family after family or host after host said, no, you know, we don't want these two boys. And what was he said particularly humiliating was the fact that people, they would just talk about them in their presence. There was no sort of holding back. No, no, we don't want these. They don't look. These two look like ruffians. These two look. They definitely. And he said, you know, it was as though they weren't there. People weren't holding back on just describing their faults, their supposed faults in their presence. And he said they were the last two to be taken. And eventually a couple said, well, all right, we'll have them just begrudgingly, which is really what you want to hear when you're being taken in for God knows how long. And they took them. And he thinks it was because they were offered some funding to take them, which is a few shillings, basically the equivalent of about 35 or £40 today. Although money did go further than meant to cover food and clothes and things. And he said, my father said that he'd, he was so angry and so humiliated that he hoped he'd be killed by a bomb and then the government would be sorry because that's went through his, that's what went through his little seven year old head. He wasn't clearly, because he became my father. But you know, he remembers it as being, that moment as being really traumatic. He said after he was taken in, it was okay. They weren't particularly, they didn't care particularly, but they weren't nasty, they weren't cruel. You know, they lived. This was the countryside. So he helped with the harvest, which he found completely fascinating. You know, he was an inner city boy from North London, from Stamford Hill. My father, who was a Jewish boy, was given sausages and he was quite seven year old, was quite strict. His brother was 11, was delighted, never had them before, absolutely loved them. My father said that he, he wouldn't eat them. And he asked the family could he have something else. And they never heard of this, that people wouldn't eat pork. So they were just baffled. Like he said he didn't want to breathe air. I mean, it was like, what? It's food. So you ended up having these strange sort of misunderstandings, people who couldn't understand each other and sometimes it caused trouble. But a lot of the time it was a good thing because it meant that an empathy built up between people in different parts of the country from different lives who would never have come into contact. So you had country people understanding the differences with, you know, city people or inner city people or people from effectively slums and sort of ease the passage for, I think, the sort of progressive developments that came after the war when people realized that others were different and maybe had more needs than they did.
- [14:01]
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- [14:30]
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- [14:39]
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- [14:45]
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- [15:13]
Joshua Levine
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- [15:16]
Josh
Looking to the the wider rural communities you mentioned earlier about perhaps teachers being evacuated too, with school groups. But were there any measures to encompass the new pressures that came with such a large influx of people coming to the countryside?
- [15:35]
Joshua Levine
Yes, I think it was often very, very difficult. I mean, it could be good and bad. I mean, it was, it was good sometimes in the sense that you suddenly had people who brought money with them. Effectively, the one village shop might suddenly have had lots and lots more people using it and frequenting it. And local communities learned things and maybe benefited from these outsiders. But in terms of schools, you know, schools were almost overrun. You had sometimes schools offering, you know, morning and afternoon sessions for different children. You had classrooms that were set up in country barns and you had city teachers and country teachers working together, which created maybe friction or maybe again better understanding. So you had that in terms of the schools themselves, you had the countries often, you know, they were rationed too, but they often had better supplies, better access to fresh produce. So city people, like I say the girl who found milk came out of cows. You had a lot of them, had a healthier diet than they would have had before, but you had these local places just suddenly overwhelmed. I mean, I found a story of there was a chart in Chinatown in those days in London wasn't Sohos, it was Limehouse. And there was a surprisingly large Chinese community. The Chinese were evacuated to a village in Oxfordshire called Wolvercote. They basically went as en masse. And so this village suddenly became Little China. And this woman who went, she said, you know, the children went and a lot of the mothers went. And she said, suddenly this country village, maybe nearer town, was full of Chinese people everywhere. And she said, but there was no trouble, there was no discrimination. She said, we were accepted. And she remembers the time very, very fondly. Now, that's not to say that's, you know, like with all these things, that's not the whole story. There's a famous photo in the Imperial War Museum of a small black boy being evacuated. You can see he's holding his little suitcase this was a picture that inspired Steve McQueen to make his film Blitz. You know, when he saw that, it suddenly occurred to him, wow. The black people had their own story, but there were a lot of people evacuated, different communities that you don't necessarily associate with the war. And some had good experiences, some had bad experiences, and plenty of people, by the way, do report bad experiences. I found a magistrates court report of the time absolutely heartbreaking. Four year old boy took some biscuits from the larder and the two women looking after him, mother and daughter, hit him, caned him something like 64 times. And it's a 4 year old. And it came to court and they were convicted of assault and his mother came and took him away. And the magistrate, you know, very touching, says to the mother, you know, he's been treated monstrously and it's your job now to. I'm almost welling up talking about it. It's your job to treat him with great love and care so that he can forget this. And I've spoken to a lot of evacuees and it's totally mixed, the story. I mean, you know, I didn't speak to this woman, but I found her story that she was sexually abused as a child by the man of the house and ended up thinking it was her fault and very sad when she left. And it was only when she was older that she was able to make sense of what had happened to her, that it wasn't her fault and it did affect her for the rest of her life. So these things absolutely happened. And then there were lots of people who had really good experiences and didn't want to come home. I spoke to a man called James Porter, from very poor family in Bristol, you know, gone around without shoes when he was a kid and he was part of the overseas scheme. So in the early part of 1940, there was a scheme to send children abroad, to basically ship them abroad. So they went. A lot of them went to Canada, some went to America actually, but they were mostly private. At first it was mainly rich children, but the government was very keen to stamp that out. So a lot of ordinary children went as well. And he went to New Zealand and he went first of all to this. Well, to this wonderful sort of rich family. I say wonderful. I mean, they were nice to him. That's what I mean by that. Not that they were rich, but they were rich. They had a summer house by the coast, they had a house in Auckland, I think it was. And he just suddenly had this new life. You know, he went sailing, he. He Played cricket. He. He was unimaginable to him. And he became a different person. Went to school where he was actually, they paid attention to his education, he said. The mother was very, very kind, the father was quite strict, but would make sure he ate with a knife and fork properly. Just taught him stuff that he didn't know. And he started to love art. And towards the end of his time, you know, he grew up there from 1940-45. He was there at this formative age. And before he left, he was given a place, he learned, a place at New Zealand's top art college. And he was so excited and all set up to go there when the war ended. He's one of those people who's really unhappy the war ended because he was sent back to his house in Bristol, where his parents were complete strangers to him. Brought all of his art stuff back with him, his paints and his brushes and his pastels, whatever else. And after a few days, he looked in his room and they were gone. And he asked his mother what had happened. She said, oh, I threw them away. You don't need that rubbish. And he realized that he had to go, couldn't stay, you know, these were not his parents anymore. And as soon as he could, he joined the Marines, Royal Marines, and couldn't wait to get away. And spent so much of his life traveling back to New Zealand. His sister actually, who went with him, actually move there, went to live there. So lives were changed for better and for worse, which is hardly surprising. And the country changed.
- [22:22]
Josh
There's such a broad spectrum of experiences here. We did have a lot of questions about safeguarding measurements, and clearly there was no general vetting process. It strikes me as very much a luck of the draw, I suppose, of where you did end up and who you ended up with.
- [22:43]
Joshua Levine
And it was luck of the draw, the people you ended up with, the hosts you ended up with. And it was also partly the individual, the child, how the child adapted, was able to adapt. You know, one girl told me that at home, she kept the light on that night because that's what she was like. And where she went, she wasn't allowed to keep the light on. So it's a small thing, but it's a big, you know, for a child who was used to a certain protection way of living, you're suddenly given something else. I mean. And also the children themselves underwent quite a lot of, you know, they had medical exams to see how they were, whether they were, and they were registered. And there was a certain amount of supervision during Transit when they went on trains and coaches and they were supposedly looked after while they went. But it's nothing like it would be today. I mean, it's hard to imagine it happening today because the organization would almost be too great, you know, to look after children, millions of people, in the way that they would need looking after today. In those days, it was more ad hoc. People slipped through the cracks. Some ran away. I spoke to one woman, her brother walked three days to get away and walked back and showed up on his grandmother's doorstep. And she said, yeah, you're not going back. You're staying here. If you're willing to walk three days at a young age, then you're. You don't want to go back.
- [24:17]
Josh
Derek Hayton on Facebook asks how easy was it for parents to remain in contact or to retrieve their children if necessary? In these circumstances, that could be pretty horrific.
- [24:31]
Joshua Levine
Well, to stay in contact could be very difficult. I found one man who wrote letters, but the letters were never sent. You see, again, it depends on the situation. There's no one story. Some parents came up every week and the parents were free to take them back whenever they wanted, you know, the children, in the same way that it was a voluntary scheme, no one had to stay, but it was whether your parents were willing to take you back or knew you were unhappy. So again, it's a very much a situation by situation story. You know, some didn't stay very long. Some people went away with their families. The last time my father was evacuated, he went with his mother and they went to Waldeshot, which is an odd place to choose because it's an army town. But he remembers while he was there, his brother was in the air force and his brother was flying Wellington's. And he said it was the happiest moment of his childhood, perhaps his whole life, when there he was in Aldershot, stand outside the house when his brother flew low over the house in a Wellington bomber. And he said, I was looking up and just unbelievably proud that that's my brother up there. And so, my goodness, there's no one story but you were, you were in theory free to go at any time.
- [25:54]
Josh
When the war did end, did any evacuees stay permanently in the places that they were sent?
- [26:02]
Joshua Levine
Yes, yes, some did. These were effectively foster parents looking after them. And some wanted to keep the children. Some children wanted to stay. Sometimes the parents wouldn't let them stay, and sometimes they did stay. And even of those who didn't stay, they stayed very, very close. All Their lives, you know, saw these people as. As another family, as a second family, because often they got better care from these people than they did from their own or as good. So, like I said, you know, the. The. The man in New Zealand, he went back as often as he could to New Zealand. So even though he didn't go back to the family or the sister who went to live there, she didn't go back to the family, but she went back to the country, became her home. So, absolutely that did happen. And no wonder people became close, because the alternative could be terrible. I got the story of one man living in Canada until very recently, and he was 11, in December 1940, living in Manchester, and his home was bombed. He'd been on the cellar stairs, and his mother, father and grandmother were there. The father and grandmother were both killed by. When a bomb landed, and he was buried. And he actually told this extraordinary story. You know, how things move in slow motion during extraordinary events. And he. He said that he first heard people screaming upstairs. And then he said the wall in front of him bulged. It actually sort of bulged in a. In a semicircle inwards. And then the wall came crashing down, but he remembered it as if it was slow motion. And the wall fell on top of him and it buried him. And he heard people screaming and he went in and out of consciousness and he was trying to be heard. And eventually he was dug out. And he said it was the most extraordinary moment of his life when people dug him out. But his father and his grandmother were both killed. That was the alternative. That's what happened to a lot of people who stayed.
- [28:18]
Josh
Do you think it was always explained to people, well, in this case children, why they did have to be moved to the countryside? Do you think they would be subjected, I suppose, to the true reasons why they did have to move?
- [28:36]
Joshua Levine
I mean, I think the older ones, it was perfectly clear, even if they weren't specifically told why it was happening. I mean, they understood. I think most people were told, but some report that they weren't. They had no idea. One little girl who went out on her own said she thought she was being punished, which is heartbreaking. I mean, to be sent away and for no one to explain why, that it's for your safety and not that you've done something wrong. Can you imagine at a young age being sent away because it's your fault, you've done something wrong and your family is sending you almost to prison that would stay with you for the rest of your life? So, again, mixed story.
- [29:25]
Josh
It's such a mixed story, as you said. It's difficult to imagine, isn't it, in this modern day day, I suppose, being in these situations.
- [29:37]
Joshua Levine
Oh, I mean, it's, it's a different world. It's a funny thing as well. It couldn't happen today in the same way that people are just sent out to. To strangers and often left to fend for themselves, pretty much. And yet you can't ignore the fact that for some people it was wonderful and formative. I think the experience nowadays, if there ever was to be one, I think it would be more of a uniform experience and people wouldn't be left so much to their own devices with people who frankly had no business taking care of children.
- [30:12]
Josh
Finally, Josh, I think we have begun to cover this a bit, but what do you think we have most misunderstood about the evacuation experience?
- [30:23]
Joshua Levine
I think there are a lot of misconceptions concerning evacuation. I think one of them is people often think that children had to go, they didn't have to go. The government wanted them to go, but absolutely they didn't have to. You know, quite a lot of people stayed. I think there's this sort of understanding that it was all basically poor people from the cities going and staying with middle class people from the countryside. And again, it was much more varied than that. You had wealthy people being evacuated, you had people being evacuated to very poor families in the countryside. Often people think that it was just in Britain that evacuation took place. People don't really think about evacuation anywhere else. And it happened on a very large scale in Germany. But it was a kind of different experience because it was also a brainwashing experience. Children were taken to camps essentially where they were indoctrinated in the worship of Hitler in Nazi ideology and they were brought up as good Nazis. Perhaps the biggest one is simply that there was a single story. And this is the biggest misconception about history, full stop. I always think when in fact there's a story for every single individual and often when you're talking to people who've been through events, they'll tell their story. And then, you know, I've learned not to tell them someone else's story or usually not to tell them someone else's story because often they'll say, no, no, that didn't happen because your own story is, is the reality, full stop. It's like in. If you go into a court and you hear the most simple case, you'll have four witnesses all telling the truth, but all giving entirely different stories. And that's what life is like. People experience things differently, they have different experiences and that's very much a case of evacuation. But I think that's point worth making is it happened to so many people. This wasn't an event that just happened to one section of society, happened across the board. And I think you can say that overall it made people more empathetic than they had been. You had people going into houses, city people going to country houses where both sides learned something about each other and learned to empathize, to agree with each other so that when the wartime and post war social political changes took place, people were more willing to embrace them because they were more willing to accept that others lived and thought and felt differently.
- [33:09]
Lauren Good
That was historian and author Joshua Levine speaking to Lauren Good. Joshua also previously appeared on the podcast to discuss the SAS in the Second World War. You can find that episode wherever you listen.
- [33:30]
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