Lean years of food rationing (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Lean years of food rationing

4:48pm Thursday 4th March 2010 in

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IT’S now 70 years since rationing was introduced – and older readers will have their own stories of how families coped during the lean, war years.

Sheila Brennan, of Blackburn, who had an older brother and sister, Robert and Lilian, recalls: “Mum and dad managed to feed us well with what was available at the time.

“More likely they went without themselves.Families had already struggled through the thirties depression and, sharing the same situation, neighbours would help one another with nothing expected in return.

“The new National Health Service, founded in 1948 and national insurance scheme must have offered a lot of relief after years of hardship.”

It was in September 1939 that a national register was set up and identity cards issued as the war began.

The Ministry of Food opened offices throughout the country and families were offered recipes and advice on how to produce filling meals with the basic items available in the shops.

It was the time when people were also asked to dig for victory, by turning their gardens into vegetable patches to feed hungry mouths.

Food rationing began in 1940 and everyone was issued with a ration book to buy groceries at the local store.

Meat was the first food to be cut back – and it would be 14 years before normal sales began again.

It was quickly followed that summer by other staples, such as tea, margarine, cooking fats and cheese.

By March ’41, jam, marmalade, treacle and syrup had been added to the list, while three months later the distribution of eggs became controlled.

When the distribution of milk was controlled in November, national dried milk was introduced a month later, as was a vitamin welfare scheme.

American dried egg powder went on sale in June 1942, but then sweets were rationed in July.

Bread was rationed for two years after the end of the war, from 1946 to 1948, but it was well into the fifties before many basic foods became readily available once more.

It was 1954, for instance, before butter, cheese, margarine and cooking fats were taken off rationing.

l Our photo of Sheila on the right in 1947, with Robert and Lilian, was taken at Leslie’s studio, in Whalley Banks.

She reckons it will be remembered by a lot of readers, as many families used to have their photographs taken there.