On the 3 September 1939, Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany. Railway staff, local police and teachers all helped to shape these plans, which were largely ready by the summer of 1939. Hosts in these areas could face a fine if they refused to take an evacuee.
It was deemed better value for these evacuees to be billeted in private homes in safer, ‘reception’ areas of the country, rather than building special camps. Committee members also noted that any evacuation should be voluntary rather than enforced, as the latter might cause even more problems and panic in a wartime situation.Īs the threat of war in Europe loomed by the late 1930s, the Anderson Committee published a report on evacuation in July 1938, which prioritised schoolchildren and mothers with infants.
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Much of its early attention centred on London, on the timing of a successful evacuation and on how to ensure the effective maintenance of crucial infrastructure if people were evacuated. In 1931, the ARP Committee appointed its own sub-committee on evacuation, another possible preventative measure, led by Sir Charles Hipwood. Their task was to consider practical responses that could preserve human life during air attacks, from gas masks to underground shelters. In 1924, the influential Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) formed a sub-committee on civil defence, the Committee on Air Raids Precaution, led by Sir John Anderson (whose name was later associated with air-raid shelters). Source: The National Archives (AIR 1/569/16/15/142) Interwar DevelopmentsĪfter the First World War, there was therefore heightened interest in how to defend the ‘home front’. Damage caused by the raid to Edwin Place, Porter Street, Hull. The First World War saw some of these fears realised: although often forgotten in popular memory, British cities were bombed by zeppelins throughout the 1914-1918 conflict, resulting in the deaths of 1,239 civilians, half of whom were women and children. Wells’ 1907 novel 'War in the Air' predicted the growing threat of attack from the air and governments worried how cities and urban crowds in particular would respond. It was in the early twentieth century that governments and populations across Europe first began to speculate on the dangers of aerial bombardment. The children’s forced move represented the nature of total war, a conflict that involved even the youngest members of British society.īut the origins of childhood evacuation in fact lie much further back. Photographs of the evacuation of British children in 1939, excitedly waving from packed trains or with name tags round their necks, have become some of the most emblematic images of the Second World War. Some of the adults are wearing arm bands which identify them as volunteer marshals. This photograph shows evacuees and adults walking along a street carrying suitcases and gas mask boxes. The children assembled at school at 5am on Friday 1 September 1939.
An early start to evacuation is made by children of Myrdle School in Stepney.
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