How was the evacuee programme managed in WW2?

[DetailMouse]

Just thinking about the proposed refugee scheme and personally, expecting that there'll be very little take up. I feel very sorry for all involved but not enough to share my home. I'll try and "do my bit" but it won't involve taking strangers in.

To our modern sensibilities the evacuee programme seems almost impossible. Send small children away to stay with strangers? Accept strangers' children into your home and be responsible for their wellbeing (and discipline?)

Was an incentive offered? Did host families get a contribution towards cost? Did the children's families have to contribute? Was it compulsory to send your child and/or to host if you had space?

My gran always spoke fondly of "their" evacuee (gran was also a child at the time) and kept in touch through letter writing until she died, but there was always an air of superiority about having taken in this poor child. That child was probably well cared for, but there must surely have been 100s who weren't? Was any "safeguarding" done?

And, if we house refugees with host families, what checks will be done to make sure they're not being exploited or harmed in any way? I'd love to think everyone who takes them in is doing it out of human kindness, but we know that won't be true in every case

Still though...someone broadcasts, this afternoon, that you take your kids to a station tomorrow. Schools might have been saying 'stay put, we're in talks with the Borough' or similar up to then. No real information on where they will end up, not even 24 hours later.

No, I agree that's the bit that's impossible to imagine, although we're seeing it now in Ukraine. Not quite children being sent away without family, but fathers not having any idea where their partners and children might end up.

I know someone who was evacuated. When he arrived he was beaten and told that’s what would happen if he misbehaved

This was WWII I should add

The war began on 3/9/39 and the Blitz began about a year later, at which point some evacuees left the cities again.

Children from SE coastal towns were evacuated at the time of Dunkirk, early June 1940, because it was thought that invasion would follow almost immediately. The evacuee trains taking the children were running alongside the trains taking the troops from Dunkirk away from the coastal towns where they'd been landed.

After Dunkirk, all civilians were strongly encouraged to leave the most vulnerable coast towns, unless they had an essential reason to stay. They were told that if they chose to stay and an invasion did take place, they wouldn't be able to leave, they would have to stay where they were and take their chances. The government didn't want hordes of refugees clogging up the roads, as had happened in France.

I’ve heard many stories from my Mum and Gran. Mum was about the same age as the evacuees that arrived.
They lived semi rural in Wales and all the evacuees where at the village hall and people went there to choose their children.
Strong boys were preferred as they could work on the farms or in the businesses.
Pretty girls were also preferred and they were expected to help in the homes.
Overweight children were last to be chosen as families thought they would cost too much to feed on rations.
Many were treated badly both physically and otherwise. Some were treated much better than the homes they came from.
Some, living in the cities had never seen cows or sheep!
My Gran’s evacuees kept in contact with her for the next 50 years of her life and even brought their own families to visit as they’d had such lovely memories of country life.

There's a book called 'Kisses on a postcard', autobiographical I think, about a couple of brothers evacuated to Cornwall. All the evacuees were given a postcode to send home with their new address on it and before leaving these boys' mother told them their secret code was to be three kisses if they were loving it, two if it was just alright and one if it was terrible, so she could come and rescue them without the foster family knowing they were 'telling' and trying to stop them. I thought that was genius!

My grandma and great aunt were evacuated to Wales from London. They must have been a bit borderline on the age- 13 and 12 I think. The family were nice but they quickly declared it 'boring' and decamped back to London where my gran seems to have spent most of the rest of the war extracting nylons from airmen and going to dances (she left school at 14 for work in the West End).

They were bombed out of SE London and eventually got given a council house in the suburbs.

Barbara Windsor describes a troubling evacuation experience in her autobiography - she was placed with a 'couple' who had designs to abuse her - fortunately a schoolfriend found out what was going on and their family took her in. The 'couple' were actually a brother and sister.

@GeneLovesJezebel

I remember a friends grandma hiding under the stairs when it thundered. As kids we thought it was funny, as an adult I can see the trauma she must have suffered.

my mother was a formidable person and never showed fear of anything. although i didn't, know her for long, i clearly remember she would go under the stairs during thunder and lightning. it was from the blitz. she chose to remain in this country during the war, although she came from a neutral country and was free to return there. she did war work, including cleaning a hospital floor on her hands and knees with a brush that had steel bristles. one of them came loose and pierced her finger. it was permanently damaged, in a time before antibiotics could have been even worse. she could never use a thimble after, and didn't like sewing.

My grandma and great aunt were evacuated to Wales from London. They must have been a bit borderline on the age- 13 and 12 I think.

The school leaving age was 14, so anyone up to 14 (who was attending school) would be evacuated - there were no schools left behind for them to go to.

And anyone who stayed on after 14 would be evacuated if their school was.

From 1942ish, when the worst of the air raids were over and there was no longer thought to be a risk of invasion, the local authorities did begin to bring some teachers back and start up some schooling again for children who had returned home. But a lot of it was quite patchy and piecemeal.

This is so interesting!

An older friend of ours (no longer with us) was evacuated to Devon, and had only good memories. He was in a farmhouse where the 5 daughters spoilt him rotten, and after a bath used to go to sleep in front of the fire, curled up with one of their dogs.

I know he was lucky though.,
He eventually retired to Devon and used to give talks to local primary school children about being a WW2 evacuee.

My grandad was an evacuee. It didn't last long before his mother brought them home as the family hated their presence apparently!

I was thinking this the other day because I absolutely cannot imagine sending my children away to strangers even if I felt their lives would be in danger where we lived. Of course the reality of that decision and sitting here comfortable in my safe house saying it are two totally different things. But it must have been awful for a lot of people.

I bought a 17th century estate cottage a decade ago. A year after moving in one afternoon I had a knock at the door. An elderly couple were there. He said it was his 80th birthday and he lived in our cottage as an evacuee. I invite them in for tea. A lovely couple. He grew up in utter poverty in the city over the water and was evacuated to our village. He was the last child to be chosen but the childless couple in our home by his account wrapped him up in love and he said it was idyllic. His childhood was violent and horrible and he said his time in our house was blissful - poor but in a different way to his home life, fresh milk every night. Sadly our cottage was an estate cottage and the squire (not a nice chap by all accounts from the elderly in our village) at the time took against our evacuee family and they had to leave. Our evacuee then had to remain in village and was sent to a neighbouring farm where he sadly ensured indifference and unpleasant treatment. This man was so lovely and he said that living in my cottage showed him love and kindness he took with him for life. I was truly honoured when they came round, so glad he knocked and he cried when he left and said his 80th birthday was made by coming in for tea. He was lovely.

Meant to say the couple who took him in who lived in our house weren’t allowed to take him with them, evacuees had to stay in the village they were sent to. Apparently they were heartbroken too especially as they had no choice in leaving.

My dad was evacuated with his little sister from Catford to Somerset. The host family only wanted a little girl. My dad was not treated nicely. In the end my nana came and took them home. They slept at night in the caves at Chislehurst.

He never spoke about the evacuation time except to recount how when the train full of kids pulled in there was a nestle vending machine on the platform. Those kids that hadn't seen sweets in months went at it like piranha.

Spent the night before my 3rd birthday in the Andersen shelter. I remember walking up the path to the house in the morning in my dressing-gown and slippers and feeling excited, because it was my birthday. Later that year my mother and I were evacuated to Shropshire. We came back to London a few months later and stayed at my Grandma's because our house had been requisitioned. Grandma had a new kitten called Timoshenko after the Russian general. We were evacuated again in 1944 when the V2s started. Last year my son and I visited the village and found the house I had been evacuated to. It looked exactly the same, except they no longer had the Elsan lavatory in the garden! Timoshenko lived to a ripe old age and is buried in what was Grandma's back yard.

Carrie's War and Goodnight Mr Tom have been mentioned - both excellent.

A lesser known evacuation-themed children's book which I have loved since I first read it aged nine is 'Searching for Shona' by Margaret J Anderson. It tells the story of Marjorie, a well-to-do girl being evacuated from Edinburgh to Canada, who impulsively swaps places with a friend, Shona, because she's terrified of going to Canada and would rather go to rural Scotland where Shona is headed.

I highly recommend it.

Brilliant thread

@LouisRenault they did come back to school though (before she left the following year) which threw me a bit- so I looked it up and it seems like their school stayed open (interesting little article here www.southwarknews.co.uk/history/old-magazines-reveal-chapter-of-south-london-emergency-schools-history/)

My gran had told me the story about playing tennis while the flying bombs went over. They had a much younger brother who would have been about 4, but my great gran refused to go away with him.

I think something like a quarter of schools stayed open in London.

I don’t know much about the programme, but I do know people had a choice about whether they evacuated their children or not. My Nan had spoken to me about it, her mum didn’t want her or her siblings to be split up so they didn’t evacuate. She lived in Liverpool so was quite brave I think to make that decision for her children!

All children that were ‘left behind’ as it were were given an identity bracelet to wear in case of bombing. My Nan passed away last year and I have her bracelet. It was engraved with her name, address and an ID number.

@spring2022

I wonder if it was slightly more acceptable then as it seems that commonly happened pre war in other circumstances anyway? My great great grandparents were largely from Glasgow, but were brought up in the highlands … my great great grandfather and grandmother brought up several dozen children from Glasgow whilst living in the middle of nowhere . Lots of ‘fostering out’ and adoption . Even those with living parents . My gran thinks it was something to do with clean air . I think even my great gran (born 1917) was fostered out at one point; I think abuse was quite commonplace unfortunately .

Certainly I know my great x twice grandmother was moved from Glasgow workhouse to highlands aged 8ish with four other children, to live with a stranger in her 70s, sent out to employment age 11 or 12 (domestic service) and was walking miles alone to and from work. She married and settled in the highlands and had a large family, fortunately, but my gran remembers being told how initially she was very lonely and unhappy .

So I wonder if it when it came to evacuation for the war it didn’t seem such an alien idea !

This happened even with my cousins in the 80s/90s in Scotland. Both sets of grandparents knew the parents were physically abusive towards the children but because of generational hang ups (?) or perhaps fear they might not get to see them if they were taken away, nobody ever reported it. Instead the children went to stay with Scottish grandparents for lengthy periods to give "the parents" (the kids) a break.

We are in France. The gymnasium at my kids school has just been requisitioned to provide temporary accommodation for Ukrainian refugees, mostly women and children. The school are collecting toys and school materials for them. It feels quite WW2 but as a previous poster says, needs must.