Living Archive - Home Front

Rationing

Before the Second World War started Britain imported around 55 million tons of food a year from other countries. After war was declared in September 1939, the British government had to cut down on the amount of food it brought in from abroad as German submarines started bombing British supply ships. There was a worry that this would lead to shortages of food supplies in the shops so the British government decided to introduce a system of rationing.

ration book

On 8 January 1940, bacon, butter and sugar were rationed. Families had to register with their local grocer and they were given a ration book to make sure that food was distributed fairly. In each ration book there were small coupons that could be torn out or stamped by the shopkeeper.

As the war progressed more items were added to the list of goods that were rationed. Some items were never rationed like potatoes and fish.

queuing for food

“My mother did the shopping. She had to do all the queuing up and things like that, if there was any fish, they used to go and queue for that, if the butcher had anything special, a few sausages, they had to go and queue for that. There was powdered egg and you had to make cakes with that.” Betty

"I’ve never seen my mother do so much with a tin of corned beef! We used to have it mashed, we used to have it boiled, we used to have it in all sorts of things in pies, and tins of Spam. Now that was nice. We used to have tins of Spam that went a very long way." Edith

"I can remember things my mother done for us. On a Sunday we’d have the glass cake stand and there’d be little squares on there, making out it was cakes. In actual fact, it was bread with a little bit of icing . We made out we’d had cakes for tea to all the other kids down the road, showing off! Then she got some ice cream cones from somewhere and then filled them up with very thick custard and we pretended we had ice creams. She was a very clever woman that way." Diane

"I think my favourite was always, we were talking about the rabbit, was his tongue and his brains and my sister and I used to fight over this and mother used to make us take turns!" Audrey

"Butchers, for instance, would always want to swap meat for vegetables and we had a particular butcher that delivered meat to us in a van and he came from Sherington, and I can remember being sent out on my bike in the dark to his house to collect meat which I carried in two bags one on each side of the handlebars and I said that no one would really suspect an innocent young lad on a bike in the dark whereas if it was the butchers van seen out after dark people would talk.'' John

"I didn’t do the shopping very much. I did go down to the Co-op for mother quite often and they had an extra card and I can remember that on this card was things like blue bag and starch and that type of thing. Which presumably was not in the normal ration books and so that they had rationed out these other items as well and would just tick it off so that you were only entitled to have it every so often. Custard powder I think was another one." Audrey

"When we opened up our packed lunches at school, I would open up two lovely big thick pieces of bread but they were spread with lard and Marmite. Then sometimes you’d have condensed milk which had oozed all the way through. There’d be lunches like that. You never had cake or… you might pick up an apple from an orchard you went through. I don’t think we were ever hungry but we were never ever really full up." Joan

"You had up to 4oz of margarine per week, when there was any butter you got 2oz if you were lucky. Sugar I think it was half a pound a week. You could get a shillings worth of meat if the butcher was that way inclined." Eileen