From descriptions of shared conditions such as bombing and rationing to individual accounts of evacuation, internment and civilian war-work, a small free display running until 11 December 2021, gives a flavour of the experience of those living and working in Britain during the Second World War.  This is a brief introduction to the items on display at St Pancras.

View of Home Front exhibition cases at the British Library

Bombing raids had a devastating impact on civilian life.  On display are the air raid appointment cards, badges, chevrons and whistle of Edgar and Winifred Wilson who served as air raid wardens in St Albans, and a copy of Bombers over Merseyside giving an indication of the heavy bombing of Liverpool.

Bombers over Merseyside. [Liverpool], 1943. 9101.ff.7

The British Museum in London was also hit by incendiary bombs.  This photograph shows the damage in 1940 to the King’s Library Gallery, built to house the collection of King George III.

Kings Library Gallery, British Museum, [1940]. British Library Corporate Archive, Photograph Box A1, no. 51

In order to escape the bombs, children were evacuated to the countryside.  For some this was a happy episode but for others it was a miserable, dislocating time.  An account by Rita Cowell describes her experience of evacuation to Exmouth, Devon, during which she was treated as a ‘domestic skivvy’.  Another account is taken from News notes produced by the League of Coloured Peoples, an organisation which campaigned against racism.  It describes the prejudice faced by two young boys evacuated to Blackpool.

Judith, Baroness Wentworth, ‘Back to the land’, pen and ink cartoons. Wentworth Bequest. Add Ms 75276 

Other items reflect the hardships of rationing.  Civilians were advised to grow their own vegetables and to salvage waste for reuse.  Some women as in this cartoon were sent to work on farms to help food production.  Not all foods were rationed and the restaurant Maison Prunier remained open through the blackouts, offering oysters to its clients.

Other documents record the work of volunteers including Vera Lloyd’s diary of her time with the Women’s Timber Corps.  Dilys Powell, film critic for The Sunday Times, volunteered as an ambulance car driver and George Orwell, novelist, as a member of the Home Guard.

Many men and women registered as Conscientious Objectors.  They were assessed at a civilian tribunal on the strength and sincerity of their beliefs.  The Scottish poet Ruthven Todd describes working as a stretcher-bearer until his tribunal.  Michael Tippett, the composer and pacifist, writes to his friend Evelyn Maude on the back of the Wormwood Scrubs Prison paper with a list of requests.  Tippett was imprisoned following his refusal to accept the result of his tribunal to undertake non-combatant military duties.

Michael Tippett, Letter to Evelyn Maude, Wormwood Scrubs Prison, 1943, MS MUS 1757/5 f.26 Case 4
Usage terms - Reproductions of Michael Tippett’s writings are included by kind permission of the Trustees of the Sir Michael Tippett Will Trust.  Except as otherwise permitted under your national copyright law this material may not be copied or distributed further.  Held by© The Sir Michael Tippett Will Trust

Many Germans and Austrians fled the Nazi regime and thousands of refugees arrived in the UK.  However, on the outbreak of war, all Germans and Austrians resident in the UK were classed as ‘enemy aliens’.  Large numbers were interned in camps across the country.  The letters and diaries of Ernst Roth, Konrad Eisig and Gwyneth Hansen reveal some of their experiences.

The final items on display reflect the war-time experiences of the novelist E.R. Braithwaite and The British Honduran Forestry Unit.  Members of the Unit, sent to help fell trees in Scotland, were greeted with substandard accommodation and a lack of warm clothes.  In his book, Amos Ford, one of the first contingent, recounts that the Hondurans often felt isolated in the remote Scottish forests but that, after initial mistrust, relationships with the local population improved and some married local women.

Members of the British Honduran Forestry Unit from Amos A Ford, Telling the truth: The life and times of the British Honduran Forestry Unit in Scotland. London, 1985. X.329/20351 

The items on display represent only a small selection of the wealth of material relating to the Second World War in the Library’s collections and much more can be found via our catalogues.

Laura Walker
Lead Curator, Modern Archives and Manuscripts

Life on the Home Front at the British Library St Pancras

In The Bengal and Agra Annual Guide and Gazetteer for 1841 is a section on the benefit of the climate of the Nilgiri Hills for invalids, followed by hints for those trying to recover their health.

View of the Neelgherry or Nilgiri hills of Tamil Nadu by Captain Richard Place Barron  - British Library 1784.c.10 plate II Images Online

The Guide stated that the restorative powers of the climate in the hills for those suffering from Indian diseases was evident, but the preventative powers of that climate were overlooked.  It recommended that people suffering from the following diseases should be transferred at once to the hills –
Fever (unknown in the hills)
Dyspepsia (when not connected to a ‘serious derangement’ of the liver)
Debility ‘in every degree’
Habitual constipation
‘Local and cutaneous affections of every description’
All pulmonary complaints
‘All female complaints, properly so called’
Diarrhoea
Dysentery
‘Hepatic diseases in their milder forms’
Rheumatism ‘muscular or mercurial’
Gout – improvements in the condition were possible rather than cure

The hints for invalids recovering in the hills started by stressing that warm clothing was of vital importance.  ‘Every invalid as he values life’ should be provided with a good stock of flannel clothing - banians (jackets or shirts), cummerbunds with strings to tie round the middle, and drawers.  Footwear should be stout shoes and boots worn with worsted stockings.  Cold feet was a general complaint of newcomers, especially females, and could be remedied by wearing lambswool or worsted stockings.

The invalid should avoid exposure to the night air and never be out after sunset.  Early rising was neither necessary nor prudent, and the invalid should wait until the sun had risen sufficiently to drive away the cold and moisture of the night.  However care must be taken to return home before 9am to avoid the powerful effects of the sun.

A diet of light animal food with bread or biscuit was recommended, with vegetables, pastry and cheese.  Port or sherry was preferable to lighter wines, and beer unnecessary.

Exercise should be taken so that it produced ‘a gentle action on the skin’ and not fatigue, and exposure to the sun should be avoided.  Riding was better than walking, ‘it being less exciting’.  Once acclimatized, exercise should be increased gradually.

When recovery was well advanced, daylight hours should be spent in the open air as far as strength would permit.  Those who had suffered from fever should avoid the jungle at the foot of the hills.  If unfortunately detained there, a course of purgatives should be taken followed by small doses of quinine.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
The Bengal and Agra Annual Guide and Gazetteer for 1841

A Royal Proclamation was published in India on 1 November 1858 transferring government from the East India Company to the Crown.  The document, addressed to the Princes, Chiefs, and people of India, was read out in the open in many places in both English and vernacular languages.  Public displays of fireworks and illuminations were organised to celebrate the change.

Copy of the Proclamation by the Queen in Council dated Allahabad 1 November 1858, announcing the transference of the government of India from the East India Company to the Crown - British Library Mss Eur D620

The transfer of power from the Company to the Crown took place in the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion. Viscount Canning was appointed first Viceroy and Governor General.  The proclamation announced that all Company civil and military personnel were confirmed in post ‘subject to Our future pleasure’.  Treaties and engagements made with Princes of India were to be ‘scrupulously maintained’.  No extension to present British territories was desired and the ‘Rights, Dignity, and Honour’ of the Princes would be respected.  Internal peace and good government would secure social advancement for the whole of India.  The native peoples of British India would be treated with the same obligations of duty as all Queen Victoria’s other subjects.  There was to be no imposition of Christianity, no discrimination on religious grounds, and no interference with belief or worship.  People of any race or creed would be able to hold office if qualified ‘by their education, ability, and integrity’.  Ancient rights, usages and customs would be respected.

The proclamation also spoke of the Rebellion, lamenting ‘the evils and misery which have been brought upon India by the acts of ambitious men’.  Pardons were offered for all ‘Offenders’ except those convicted of ‘having directly taken part in the Murder of British Subjects’.

Viscount Canning presided over the proclamation ceremony at Allahabad, which began with a salute of nineteen guns and the national anthem.  The document was read out in English, followed by an Urdu translation.  A firework display lasted from 8.30pm to nearly midnight – ‘trees of fire, crackers, squibs, whirligigs, and rockets’.

In Calcutta, large numbers of people gathered to hear the proclamation read from the steps of Government House, first in English and then in Bengali.  The royal standard was hoisted, cheered by the Europeans in the crowd.  At night there was a wonderful display of gas light illuminations.  The Homeward Mail was impressed: ‘ No other city in the world could have prepared such a sight... The City of Palaces shone a city of fire… we do not think any pen can paint the beauty of the scene’.  Even the smallest shops were decorated with a few lights.

Crowds flocked to the fort in Bombay to hear the proclamation in English and Marathi.  Ships in the harbour then fired a salute of 101 guns.  The fireworks were on a scale never before seen in Bombay and workmen had spent days constructing elaborate illuminations on government buildings and the private mansions of prominent Indians.  Poor citizens had decorated the narrow streets and alleys.

At Madras the proclamation was read in front of an invited European audience of about 100, and there was a gun salute.  According to The Homeward Mail the only Indian present was the man who translated the document from English.  However a week later there were ‘some bad fireworks’, dancing girls and jugglers, and a state ball at the illuminated banqueting ball.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator East India Company Records

Further reading:
British Library Mss Eur D620 Copy of the Proclamation by the Queen in Council dated Allahabad 1 November 1858.
British Newspaper Archive also available via Findmypast e.g. The Friend of India 4 November 1858; The Homeward Mail 6 December and 15 December 1858; Evening Mail 6 December 1858.

There are a number of files in the India Office Records about public ceremonies held to celebrate the proclamation e.g.
IOR/L/PS/6/495, Coll 76/312 Measures taken to publicize the Royal Proclamation announcing the assumption of the Government of India by the Crown, October 1858-June 1859.
IOR/L/PS/6/463, Coll 36/9 Notification to the Princely States of Northern India of the Royal Proclamation transferring the government of India to the Crown - reports on the public ceremonies held in celebration - complimentary letters from some of the Native Princes, October 1858-January 1859.
IOR/L/PS/6/489, Coll 76/14 Papers relating to the North Western Provinces - expenditure incurred on illuminations in the Rohilkhand Division during the ceremonies accompanying the formal transfer of power from the East India Company to the Queen, November 1858-January 1860.
IOR/L/PS/6/490, Coll 76/46 North Western Provinces - expenditure of 38 rupees 5 annas on illuminations at Jalalabad Fort on the occasion of the reading of the Royal Proclamation, January 1859-January 1860.
IOR/L/PS/6/490, Coll 76/39 North Western Provinces - expenditure of 5446 rupees incurred on providing fireworks and illuminations at Allahabad on the occasion of the reading of the Royal Proclamation, January 1859-January 1860.
IOR/L/PS/6/490, Coll 76/36 North Western Provinces - expenditure of 500 rupees incurred on illuminations and fireworks at Banda during the occasion of the reading of the Royal Proclamation, January 1859-January 1860.

 

All manuscripts are unique and cataloguing them often leads to unexpected findings.  The 73 albums of natural history drawings recently selected for cataloguing as part of a PhD placement project undertaken in the Modern Archives and Manuscripts Department at the British Library are no exception.  Bird feathers, prints obtained from plant leaves, the wings of a dragonfly, a dried fish skin – at first, these objects seem to have little in common.  In fact, they all belong to the same remarkable early modern collection of natural history drawings. So how do they fit within it?

The albums of drawings catalogued during this project were bequeathed by the physician and Royal Society fellow Hans Sloane (1660-1753), who kept them in his library alongside prints, manuscripts and printed books.  You can learn more about Sloane’s legacy and his manuscripts through our collection guide.  Plants and animals easily come to mind as subjects of natural history drawings, but in Sloane’s lifetime, this category encompassed a broader range of topics, all of which are represented in his collection. There are studies on human and animal anatomy, maps and charts, sketches of fossils and minerals, costume albums and architectural drawings, all executed in a range of techniques.

Paper is not the only material found in the albums: parchment, cardboard and canvas were used for watercolours, and a series of studies of butterflies was even executed on small veneer panels, pasted on the folios of an album.

Add MS 5271, item 162: Monogrammist ‘d.v.’ (Nicolaes de Vree?), Study of a butterfly, late 17th century. Oil on veneer panel, 47 x 87 mm.

There are not just albums in this collection.  As the drawings vary significantly in size and format, they were housed differently.  Pictured below is an example of a roll, filled with nature prints obtained from inking different leaves.  A team effort was necessary to measure this more than 5 metres long roll, which will not fit on any Reading Room table!

Add MS 5026: The roll with nature prints, partly unrolled. Ink and watercolour over 14 sheets of paper pasted together and laid down on canvas; 33 x 552 cm.

A renowned collector, Sloane received donations and acquired works from many collecting enthusiasts, so that reconstructing the drawings’ provenance remains challenging.  How this dried fish skin made its way into an album of miscellaneous fish drawings is unclear, but the accompanying inscription tells us that the fish was ‘from Gibraltar by the persons sent from the King of Poland to collect natural curiosities in Africa, 1732’.  Sloane’s botanical specimens are now in the Natural History Museum, but some ‘organic matter’ remains in the albums.

Add MS 5267, item 99: dried fish skin with an eye made of cardboard, accompanied by an inscription in pen in brown ink.

In Sloane’s drawings collection, art and nature come together in fascinating ways.  In a series of watercolours of birds by the naturalist George Edwards, the iridescent wings of a dragonfly were pasted around the drawn body of the insect.

Add MS 5264, item 139. Detail from a watercolour of birds and insect by George Edwards, with real dragonfly wings pasted on paper.

In Sloane’s ambitious project to understand the variety of the natural world through arrangement and classification, specimens and artefacts were studied alongside images of the same.  Could this help explain why a watercolour of a crossbill includes two real feathers from this bird pinned onto the sheet?

Fig. 5. Add MS 5264, item 73: Unknown artist, sketch of a crossbill. Watercolour, pencil and two bird feathers on paper.

These are just some highlights from a multifaceted drawings collection, which we hope many British Library readers will be keen to explore and help research further. The descriptions of these albums will become available on our online catalogue in early 2022.

Alice Zamboni
PhD placement student, Modern Archives and Manuscripts Department and PhD candidate, The Courtauld Institute of Art.

Further reading and links to online resources:
Reconstructing Sloane projects website Reconstructing Sloane – Welcome to Reconstructing Sloane.
Kim Sloan & Felicity Roberts, partial transcript of the handwritten British Library catalogue of Additional Manuscripts, vols 20-21, for Sloane’s albums of drawings (entries Add MSS 5018-5027 H and 5214-5308).
Sloane’s manuscript catalogue listing his albums along with books and printed ephemera, MS 3972 C vol IV 

Some of Sloane’s Additional Manuscripts have been digitised thanks to funding by the Oak Foundation and Trinity College Cambridge and can be consulted online. 

 

Amongst the papers of the Ricketts and Jervis family (Add MS 30001-30013) at the British Library lies an 18th century account of ghoulish goings-on.

Add MS 30011 documents a series of curious observations made by the Ricketts family and their household, who were tenants from 1765 until 1772 of the old Tudor house which once stood on the Hinton Ampner estate in Hampshire.  Primarily comprising a handwritten account of the frightful events by Mary Ricketts, the volume also contains a plan of the old house, a chart recording spectral sightings and noises, and later correspondence relating to this famous haunting.  Other correspondence referencing the hauntings can also be found throughout the wider collection (Add MS 30001-30013).

Add MS 30011, f.1. Mary Ricketts’ account of the hauntings at Hinton Ampner, written for her children, 1772.

Mary Ricketts’ account begins with a note to her children and a brief history of the estate, and then continues to retell her experiences in detail, noting that ‘soon after we were settled at Hinton I frequently heard noises in the night, as of people shutting, or rather slapping doors with vehemence’.  Initially the family had assumed it the staff who were responsible.  However, after making his own investigations, Mr Ricketts could find no evidence of this.

William Henry Rickets (1736-1798), a plantation owner, spent a significant portion of his time in Jamaica.  In 1769 he travelled without his wife and children, leaving them at Hinton Ampner, and it was during this absence that the disturbances became more terrifying and frequent.  ‘Vanishing’ figures, slamming doors, footsteps at the ends of beds, chilling cries and moans – the Hinton Ampner hauntings offer all of the prerequisite features of a perfect 18th century ghost story.  One male figure frequently spotted was said to be dressed in particularly drab clothing, leading some to believe it the ghost of Edward Stawell, 4th Baron Stawell, who previously occupied the house and had died there in 1755.

Michael Dahl (c.1659-1743), 'Edward Stawell (c.1685–1755), 4th Baron Stawell', oil on canvas, c.1710-c.1720, National Trust. [Wikimedia Commons]

It seems even four-legged residents could not escape the ordeal.  Mary writes:
‘I had frequently observed in a favourite cat that was usually in the parlour with me, and when sitting on table or chair with accustomed unconcern she would suddenly slink down as if struck with the greatest terror, conceal herself under my chair, and put her head close to my feet. […] The servants gave the same account of a spaniel that lived in the house’.

When Mary’s brother Captain Jervis and his friend Captain Lutterell stayed to witness the events for themselves, they ‘declared the disturbances of the preceding night were of such a nature that the house was an unfit residence for any human being’.

Henry James, 'The Turn of The Screw', Colliers Weekly 1898.

Mary’s account was published in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1871.  Not only is it one of Britain’s best known historic hauntings, but it has been speculated that the ghostly goings on at Hinton Ampner, and specifically Mary’s account, may have also served as inspiration for Henry James’ 1898 gothic horror 'The Turn of the Screw', first published as a serial in Colliers Weekly.

The old Tudor house at Hinton Ampner, the site of the 'haunting' was demolished in 1793.  Its foundations were uncovered by the National Trust in 2014, 50 yards from the new house.  For more on the history of the Hinton Ampner estate, its former inhabitants, and its current collection, see the National Trust's Hinton Ampner webpage.

Zoe Louca-Richards
Curator, Modern Archives and Manuscripts

 

A curious item was discovered in the British Library’s Modern Archives recently: a torn piece of paper belonging to A. A. Milne (1882-1956), creator of Winnie the Pooh.  On the back of a royalty statement for the Christopher Robin Reader is a drawing of a hippopotamus and six statements predicting the future of the Second World War.  It was written on 21 January 1943, and you can see it below:

Drawing of a hippopotamus and six statements predicting the future of the Second World War - Add MS 89401.

Immediately noticeable is the sketch of ‘Belisha the Hippotish’ in a long coat and wide brimmed hat.  Not one of his son’s stuffed animals, it is probably a reference to Leslie Hore-Belisha (1893-1957), a Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minster.  If you haven’t heard of him, you’ve probably heard the name Belisha from the beacons named after him.

A Belisha beacon. Source: Wikipedia

As Minister for Transport in the 1930s, he was also responsible for creating the driving test and instituting the standard 30 miles per hour speed limit.  But by the time of Milne’s doodle he had fallen out of favour with the government of the day.

Milne had served in World War One, suffering many illnesses and then injury at the Battle of the Somme.  He was decidedly a pacifist by the advent of the Second World War, although he joined the Home Guard despite this.  He explains his decisions in War with Honour (1940), writing that ‘we are truly fighting the Devil, the Anti-Christ’.

As for the predictions – how accurate were they?  Well, a few were completely wrong, but most did happen…eventually.  ‘The Axis will be axed in Africa’ occurred a few months later than Milne thought, in May 1943 following the conquering of Tunisia.  ‘Mass raids from East and West on Berlin’ also commenced with bombing campaigns the following month in June 1943, though ‘no effective reprisals in England’ would not turn out to be true, as it felt the force of V-2 rockets towards the end of 1944.

Portrait of A. A. Milne in May 1939 by Bassano - courtesy of National Portrait Gallery London NPG x85610

Similarly, ‘Invasion from the North’ would not commence until eighteen months after his estimation, and Finland refused to make peace until it had resisted invasion by the Soviet Union.  Another inaccuracy was ‘Nothing much will happen in the Far East’, a somewhat dismissive statement.  Allied forces did launch offensives there, though most were disastrous and necessitated retreat.

Overall though, he was not too far off.  His predictions captured the spirit of wartime Britain well, at a time of gaining momentum.  Most of them just took a lot longer than he thought.

So why did Milne decide to scribble all this on the back of a royalty check?  The answer is probably just that – it was a doodle when he was bored, getting out his thoughts of the day.  It doesn’t appear to have been written for anyone, certainly not for publication, and it’s a wonder it survived.

Jack Taylor
Doctoral researcher at the Open University. His CHASE-funded research explores sexual violence between men in the late 18th and 19th centuries.

Letters, original illustrations, photographs, books and leaflets, together with items issued to air raid wardens form part of the Life on the Home Front display in the British Library’s Treasures Gallery. The display gives a flavour of the experience of those living and working in Britain during the Second World War. It runs from 14 September until 11 December 2021. 

Further Reading:
A.A. Milne, It's too late now: the autobiography of a writer (2017 [1939]).
A.A. Milne, War with Honour (1940).
Add MS 89401 - A A Milne, ‘Programme for the Next 3 Months’.
A.A. Milne’s pacifist pamphlets Five minutes of your time printed in October 1935 and 5 minutes of your time (3rd ed.) printed May 1937, produced by the League of Nations Union, are in the collection at shelfmark J/8425.pp.29.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Ann Thwaite, ‘Milne, Alan Alexander (1882–1956), writer’. 
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Keith Robbins, ‘Belisha, (Isaac) Leslie Hore-, Baron Hore-Belisha (1893–1957), politician’.

 

At the start of the 19th century, Bengal became the home for the Shakespear family of Calcutta, whose ancestry dated back to close relations of William Shakespeare.

Shakespear tombs in Calcutta’s South Park Street Cemetery - author's photograph

In Calcutta’s South Park Street Cemetery, one can still find two Shakespear tombs. One of them belongs to John Talbot Shakespear, born in 1783 to John and Mary Shakespear in England; the other belongs to his wife Emily.  Shakespear arrived in Calcutta during the early 1800s as an East India Company official, marrying Emily Amelia Thackeray in 1803.  She was the eldest daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray senior, who was the grandfather of the more famous Calcutta-born author William Makepeace Thackeray.  Emily’s brother, Reverend Francis Thackeray, married John Talbot Shakespear’s sister Mary Anne.  Another brother, Richmond, arrived from London around the same time to become the Secretary to the Board of Revenue.  He married Anne Becher and their son, William Makepeace Thackeray, was born in 1811 at Thackeray House in Alipore.  Clearly, the eminence of the Thackerays seems to have overshadowed the lineage of the Shakespearean relative in their midst.  Thus, Thackeray’s father’s name Richmond also became the name of the youngest son of John Talbot and Emily Shakespeare, Sir Richmond Campbell Shakespear.  He would later acquire renown as an agent to the Governor-General of Central India and a Companion of the Bath.  Another son of John Talbot and Emily was named William Makepeace Shakespear.

But what do we know about John Talbot himself, and how does his ancestry trace back to Shakespeare?

John Talbot Shakespear was appointed by Richmond Makepeace Thackeray as the assistant to the Collector of Birbhum.  John’s brother Henry also served in the Bengal Civil Service. John’s own successful career at the East India Company was truncated by his death at sea on board the Rose in 1825, a few months after the death of his wife.

Extract from John Talbot Shakespear's will specifying burial in a grave he had purchased next to his wife's IOR/L/AG/34/29/37 p.46

 

Memorial inscriptions for John Talbot and Emily Shakespear from South Park Street Cemetery recorded in The Bengal Obituary (Calcutta, 1851)

We cannot ascertain whether the Thackerays knew about John Talbot’s illustrious relative.  The oldest recognizable discovery of John Talbot’s lineage dates back to George Russel-French’s Shakspeareana Genealogica (1869), later reproduced by Charlotte Carmichael Stopes in Shakespeare’s Family (1901).  Despite the variant spelling of this ‘Shakespear’ branch (without the ‘e’), it belonged to the Stepney (or Shadwell) Shakespears.  They had either descended from William Shakespeare’s brother Gilbert, or his uncle Thomas.  Russel-French claimed that this family tree was supplied to him by Lieutenant Colonel John Davenport Shakespear, a nephew of John Talbot.  Key evidence to the linkage between the Shakespeare and Shakespear families was two-centuries old ‘drawing on a parchment of a coat of arms, pronounced by an eminent herald’ which is exactly the same as the coat of arms granted to William Shakespeare’s father in 1596.  John Davenport Shakespear possessed this in the 1860s.

India has been generous to Shakespeare, adopting his works.  However, John Talbot has not been recognised, as his and his wife’s tombs languish in oblivion.  Recently, there have been reports of former British prime minister David Cameron’s lineage dating back to John Talbot Shakespear.  But historians are yet to take note of the Shakespear in question being a significant leaf on a stem of the bard’s family that branched out to India.

Arup K. Chatterjee
Teacher at OP Jindal Global University, India, and author of The Purveyors of Destiny: A Cultural Biography of the Indian Railways (2017), The Great Indian Railways (2018), Indians in London: From the Birth of the East India Company to Independent India (2021) and The Great Indian Railway Saga (2022)

 

Air Raids were a consistent source of terror and dread for Britons during the Second World War (1939-1945).  The first warning siren sounded only 22 minutes after war had been declared; it was a false alarm, with bombing not beginning in earnest until the following September.  The most sustained bombing campaign – The Blitz – lasted until May 1941, and claimed the lives of around 43,000 people.  Bombing continued after this period, across various regions of the United Kingdom.  Some people wrote about their experiences.

Diaries are an especially good source of information on the difficulties of living in fear and anticipation of air raids.  Those of Judith Blunt-Lytton (Lady Wentworth) are particularly detailed about her life in Sussex.  Perhaps the most evocative entry is from 29 November 1940, where she wrote how she had to jump in some wet bushes after the warning sounded, and that explosions in nearby Horsham ‘looked like an aurora borealis’.

Afsa Horner described how bombing evolved over the years.  She writes in her memoirs that she preferred V2 rockets – which often did not trigger warning sirens – as you had no time to wonder about getting to safety.  Although deadlier, they were less frightening as you had no time to be scared.

Letter from Rupert D'Oyly Carte to Lady Dorothy D'Oyly Carte, 26 November 1940 - Add MS 89231/18/44

Staying in a hotel, especially in London, was extremely risky.  Nevertheless, business continued despite the persistence of air raids.  Evelyn B. Graham-Stamper was in bed with her husband at the Hans Crescent Hotel in September 1941, ‘when, suddenly, the most blinding flash and every-thing seemed to fall around us’.  She continues, ‘We both knew the end had come and clung to each other waiting for the coup de grace which was to finish us off.’  However, they survived and managed to make their way to safety.  Similar experiences did not hurt the trade of one grand hotel, The Savoy.  Owner Rupert D’Oyly told his wife in a letter from September 1940 that after a series of bombs falling, causing damage on multiple floors, ‘in fact the 200 or so people living in the hotel increased the next day’.  Life went on.

An account of air raids by William Carpenter, Chief Air-raid Warden of Poplar, September 1940 - Add MS 48988 M

A persistent theme throughout these narratives is morale.   The Chief Air Raid Warden of Poplar emphasised that people are ‘wonderful considering what had happened’: multiple streets destroyed with numerous deaths.  On the other hand, Julian Symonds described London life as ‘depressing’.  Either way, the experience of huddling in shelters together was the ‘new spirit’ of the country, as editor of Poetry London Meary James Thurairajah Tambimuttu wrote.

Air Raids were terrifying part of life on the Home Front, which continued throughout the War.  However, what comes through in most of these narratives is a sense of positivity, that life must continue as normal as possible.  The accounts described here are only a small sample of those which survive in our collections.

Jack Taylor
Doctoral researcher at the Open University. His CHASE-funded research explores sexual violence between men in the late 18th and 19th centuries.

Further Reading:
The Life on the Home Front display in the British Library’s Treasures Gallery includes cartoons by Judith Blunt-Lytton, Lady Wentworth, depicting the experiences of Mary in the Women’s Land Army and the badges, chevrons and appointment cards of the air raid wardens, Edgar and Winifred Wilson. The display gives a flavour of the experience of those living and working in Britain during the Second World War. It runs from 14 September until 11 December 2021. 
Add MS 48988 M – 'Intensified Air Raids on London', a memorandum by William Carpenter, Chief Air-raid Warden of Poplar, Sept. 1940 (ff. 47-51).
Add MS 75028 – Wentworth Bequest (Series II), Vol. XXVI, Pocket Diaries (1 Jan. 1940-31 Dec. 1940).
Add MS 78862 – Phyllis Bottome Papers, VOL. XXXI, Letter from Evelyn B. Graham-Stamper (14 September 1941).
Add MS 85265 - Letters from Julian Gustave Symons D. S. Savage (ff. 13-15).
Add MS 88997 – Afsa Horner: Memoirs.
Add MS 89231/18/44 - D'Oyly Carte Family Papers: Letters from Rupert to Lady Dorothy D'Oyly Carte.