Evacuation of children from London on 1st September 1939, as written by Eileen Wright.

THE EVACUATION OF CHILDREN FROM LONDON 1st SEPTEMBER 1939.

Considering that the scheme was put together in a very short period of time (about a year) it was, on the whole, very successful.

The government at that time was very worried about children’s safety because they expected air raids to start immediately, but in fact they started about two years later.

I was part of that mass evacuation, being 12 years old at the time. Children as young as 5 years were included and some mothers accompanied the very young. Most mothers had smaller children at home and so did not go. The government paid about 7s 6d (about 75p) per child to the host families. (Per week)

I was evacuated with my school and about 80% of the pupils went. The others stayed at home and had whatever education could be provided for them, the school remained partially open with very few staff staying behind. Most of the London children went with their schools and had their teachers to take care of them on the journey.

My school was very close to Euston Station so that was our departure point, together with hundreds of other children. We gathered together early in the morning and at the set time we all walked to the station. When we arrived at the station there were hundreds of children as far as the eye could see — all waiting for trains to take them away to the country side and to safety. There were also many mothers behind a barrier, weeping and crying (including my own).

After a very long wait we boarded a train, no-one knew where we were going. We were allowed to take one small suitcase and had to carry our gas masks, also in a small box with a strap. Each child had a large label with his/her name on it and the name of the school. This label was tied to the gas mask. We set off on the train which was constantly being shunted into the siding so that the troop trains and goods trains could pass. It took six to seven hours to travel a journey which would have normally taken one and a half hours and we seemed to go through every county to get there. We eventually arrived at Kettering in Northamptonshire though we all thought we must surely be in Scotland after all that time.

Various local dignitaries were at the platform to greet us: my school and two others.

The people in charge of housing the children were called billeting officers and they had lists of families who were willing to take a child or children. Later, when the town was full of evacuees it was compulsory for anyone who had a spare bedroom to take an evacuee.

A very kind and pleasant young woman (a local teacher) said she would like to take two girls to live with her and her parents. So I, and a girl called Joan Tomlin, was chosen and off we went to her home.

Her name was Jessie Mobbs and her parents Mr and Mrs Mobbs, welcomed us and gave us tea. By this time I was terribly home sick and run off to have a good cry — it had been the most miserable day of my life (up till then). Mr and Mrs Mobbs were very kind, patient and understanding and did all that they could to make us comfortable and welcome. I did not settle easily, it was such an enormous upheaval. I never thought that it must have been equally traumatic for the Mobbs family — there they were in their fifties and having two strange children to live with them, indefinitely. I did think about it in after years and realised what an exceptional couple they were.

My mother had given me a parcel of sardine sandwiches to eat on the train, but I had hardly touched them. When I arrived at my new home I stuffed them in the wardrobe and forgot about them. Some time later Mrs Mobbs noticed a peculiar smell in the bedroom and when she tracked it down found a mouldy parcel of ‘sardine sandwiches’ smelling to high heaven! It was to become a family joke for 50 years and was spoken of in a letter I had from Jessie on the 1st September 1989. They were a lovely family and I lived with them for the whole of the war (Joan went home after about 18 months). I went home for school holidays and my parents came to visit me. I stayed friends with them until Jessie died in 1999, well into her eighties, her parents having died many years before. After I married and had a home of my own Mr and Mrs Mobbs came and stayed with us every summer. I know that I owed them a debt that I could never repay.

School in Kettering presented a problem with a huge influx of extra children into the town. We had to share schools with the local children and it was arranged that the locals should go to school from 8.30 to 1.30 and the evacuee’s (we never got rid of that name!) should have the afternoons. We changed times every two weeks. It seemed to work quite well, after a year or two the local council requisitioned various church halls etc, so we were all able to have full-time schooling.

Not all children were lucky with the places they stayed at. Some of the families treated them as servants and generally inferior beings. Children that were placed in these homes went back to London quite quickly. On the other hand, some were very nice families and had awful children who behaved badly and did all sorts of damage. These were sent back to the billeting officer to re-house which caused quite a few headaches.

Looking back, 65 years later, the Evacuation Scheme was a tremendous event to have organized and all things considered was a huge success. A good few children went back home before the actual bombing of London started, but most of us had settled and we stayed until the end of the war, leading peaceful and uneventful lives away from the terror of the bombs. Which was what the government had intended.

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