Smiffys World War II Evacuee Girl Costume, Blue with Dress, Hat & Bag, Girls Fancy Dress, 1940s Dress Up Costumes

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Some Saturdays we would go the Whitby on the bus and have a look around the shops. At Christmas I had some nail varnish and I wrote to Santa asking him for a new dress because I Within the next three days, 1.5 million evacuees were sent from cities and towns into rural areas considered safe, and over the course of the war around 4 million people left their homes. It was a huge logistical exercise that required tens of thousands of volunteer helpers. In some instances, a child's upbringing in urban poverty was misinterpreted as parental neglect. On the other hand, some city dwellers were bored in the countryside or even used for tiring agricultural work. The mass exodus of civilians in Britain during the Second World War was designed to protect people – especially children – from aerial bombing, by moving them to areas thought to be less at risk. In the summer of 1939, more than 3 million children were evacuated from London and other cities in ‘Operation Pied Piper’, while most parents stayed behind to work and help out with the war effort. Altogether we enjoyed our time being an evacuee and it was a lot of fun. It was all new living in a café and then a real castle, but loved our home best.

The government recommended that in addition to their gas mask and identity card the evacuees had the following items:A few days after the announcement of war Ronald McGill boarded his own train along with 500 other pupils from his school headed for Reading. The school had been preparing for evacuation for a few weeks and some schools had already started leaving the cities.

To smaller towns and villages in the countryside. Some children were sent to stay with relatives outside in the countryside, but others were sent to live with complete strangers. There were no big bombing raids on Britain in the first months of the war (know as The Phoney War) as a result by early 1940 many children had returned home. As well as the huge logistical challenge for the government, towns, families, and volunteers, evacuation was an emotional upheaval, distressing for both children and parents. Evacuation was also entirely voluntary, so why did so many thousands so readily sign up before the war had even started?

Mary Whiteman: “Mostly the school children went straight to the training college and then were taken, met by billeting officers who offered to find them homes, and it does credit to the town to say that that first night everybody had somewhere to go. And they just counted up the rooms that was the idea you've in the old days, you count how many rooms and how many people.” Evacuation on this scale had never been attempted by the government before but it was their task to safely transport millions across the country. So, how was this mammoth task accomplished? Interviewer: “I was going to ask if you had ever thought whether had you children they would be evacuated? You've seen it as a child, what would it be like as a parent?” At Christmas we went to a party at Mulgrave Castle that had a real Marchioness living there. She was a very old lady and when she had super, she had 12different foods and after every course there was a little bell rang.