Wartime rationing

I don’t remember anything except the last thing that came off in June 1954 a month before I was born.
My brother could remember our aunt donating her sweet ration to him .

I remember rationing. I was born in 1943. Going to the sweet shop once a week for my sweet ration. My mother and grandmother producing ration books at the butcher and grocers.

I remember the day clothing came off coupons and my mother and grandmother gave my sister and I the now not reuired ration books to play with.

We were spared the full rigour of living on rations. My mother and grandmother kept chickens and grew vegetables. As well as that my father was posted to India in 1945 and he was allowed to send one parcel home each month.

My dad was soon pushing the limits and posting one parcel a month to each family member, my mother and grandmother, my sister and I and my aunt, away nursing, but based with us.

These parcels were all beautifully sewn up in cotton and contained food; butter sweets, Vienna sausages, tinned salmon, plus other food. he also sent back supply parachutes, army blankets - I still have one - other lovely fabrics. My grandmother was a professional dress maker and my mother also had sewing skills, so my sister and I had underwear made from parachute silg an dressing gowns made from army blankets, plus other dresses.

I remember going to some offices with my father to collect my youngest sister's ration book.

The books were all different colours. My babysister's ration book was beige. I think children's ration books were green.

My paternal family were under German occupation in the Channel Islands for 5 years. They had rationing with bells on. My Granny made jelly from hedgerow berries and bladder wrack seaweed. A canning machine was hidden from the Germans and Granny and her neighbours took turns each doing this. When it was her turn she hid it, wrapped in an old grey blanket and tucked it well into the woodpile in the corner of her backyard. No sleep for her that night. Being found in possession of something which the Germans had banned was punishable by imprisonment, fines or deportation.
I was 6 when sweets came of the ration. I have made up for that since.

Sarnia

My paternal family were under German occupation in the Channel Islands for 5 years. They had rationing with bells on. My Granny made jelly from hedgerow berries and bladder wrack seaweed. A canning machine was hidden from the Germans and Granny and her neighbours took turns each doing this. When it was her turn she hid it, wrapped in an old grey blanket and tucked it well into the woodpile in the corner of her backyard. No sleep for her that night. Being found in possession of something which the Germans had banned was punishable by imprisonment, fines or deportation.
I was 6 when sweets came of the ration. I have made up for that since.

That was interesting. I saw pictures of the German occupation of the Channel Islands. That must've been so terrifying. Bless your family for surviving this nightmare period.

I remember rationing and so will plenty of others here; it didn't end until 1954.

My mother left me in a pram outside the shops, came back to retrieve her rationbook and found I'd eaten it.

Sarnia

My paternal family were under German occupation in the Channel Islands for 5 years. They had rationing with bells on. My Granny made jelly from hedgerow berries and bladder wrack seaweed. A canning machine was hidden from the Germans and Granny and her neighbours took turns each doing this. When it was her turn she hid it, wrapped in an old grey blanket and tucked it well into the woodpile in the corner of her backyard. No sleep for her that night. Being found in possession of something which the Germans had banned was punishable by imprisonment, fines or deportation.
I was 6 when sweets came of the ration. I have made up for that since.

Why was it banned Sarnia?

My father grew lots of fruit and veg and mum bottled a lot of fruit. We had chickens so we children did have eggs. Otherwise I think the allowance for adults was two eggs a week.
Powdered egg, a thick yellow substance, was used for baking.
Our ration books were green and the adults’ were beige. At a certain age we progressed to the beige books and felt quite grown up. Sweets were on ration but back then there wasn’t a wide variety of sweets and chocolates. I remember Dad’s coffee being liquid, in a bottle. The last thing to come off ration was sugar. I was 14 and I remember all the girls at school cheering.
Clothes were also on ration and needed coupons. In the early 40s my mother used the clothing exchange. Lots of clothes were called “Utility” and had the logo CC49.
You shopped in a queue and the assistant fetched what was on the shopping list, tearing out the required coupons.

I was born as the war was ending but I do have my mum and dads ration books in the archives somewhere It’s amazing how little the weekly rations were

I found my mils ration book in a biscuit tin after she died. Mind you her whole 92 year old life was in that biscuit tin 😞 it could tell a story, old photos of a Yankee soldier she was in love with.

Like Monica, I too was born in 1943 and I remember ration books. I lost them once!!
I’d been allowed to carry them in a string shopping bag and somehow they must have slipped out. I can still remember my normally calm mother telling me off for swinging the bag.
The other thing I remember when I was slightly older is that by the bus stop going home from school, there was a chemist’s shop where if you had a penny or two you could buy cough candy that didn’t need coupons.

Bellanonna, I remember the coffee in the bottle...Camp coffee..
the sweetie coupons were always gone first. 2 oz of sweets cost 3pence, you had to have a coupon for them, but you could get a penny caramel or gobstopper without a coupon. it must have been a right struggle trying to feed a family. I think I remember my mum putting condensed milk in tea to sweeten it.

pably yes, we used condensed milk. I loved it!

I have found this subject to be so interesting and hope for more posts regarding rationing. I am in the US and my mother never talked about rationing here except something about shoes. She was born in 1925 and I saw a ration book once in her papers. I only wish I had more information about it here. World War II is my favorite subject for reading. Thank you for posting!

I remember going with my dad and younger brother to the sweet shop to get our sweet ration. The bags were triangles. Listen with Mother had a suggestion about sweets you could pretend were dolls pills, neither the sweet shop owner or my father had the faintest clue what I was asking for!

Although I was born in the December after the war ended I do remember rationing as it continued until 1954. I remember being sent to the corner shop and having to ask if we could have some tea and sugar from next week’s ration. I don’t know what happened when rationing ended as Mum was always a week ahead!!

My Mum told me you could only get white wool if you had a baby. A woman came to the office where Mum worked wearing a white jumper that she had knitted from wool her sister had acquired when she had a baby. Mum said she was green with envy.
She also told me that loaves of bread were a sort of grey colour. When the war ended she bought a white loaf and ate slice after slice until it was nearly all gone.
She told me that her mother (my Gran) used to join queues at the Co-Op often not knowing what she was queuing for and hoping it might be bananas which they hardly ever saw for the duration of the war.

I can remember on the way home from a shopping expedition sitting in my pram surrounded by what Mum had bought and feeling very annoyed at how much of it was lying on my legs. So I picked up a jar of strawberry jam and heaved it out. It smashed with a satisfying crashing noise. Mum was less happy - that was our jam ration, and we would have to do without until the next lot of rations were due.

I remember being given an orange. Possibly after the war ended. I was told not to eat the white pith as it was poisonous. Also I remember when sweet rationing ended and being able to buy a big bad of aniseed balls.

Born in 1953, but we always had plenty of sugar in our tea.

No wonder we all needed fillings!

Sarnia

My paternal family were under German occupation in the Channel Islands for 5 years. They had rationing with bells on. My Granny made jelly from hedgerow berries and bladder wrack seaweed. A canning machine was hidden from the Germans and Granny and her neighbours took turns each doing this. When it was her turn she hid it, wrapped in an old grey blanket and tucked it well into the woodpile in the corner of her backyard. No sleep for her that night. Being found in possession of something which the Germans had banned was punishable by imprisonment, fines or deportation.
I was 6 when sweets came of the ration. I have made up for that since.

My grandfather was a Jerseyman. There were terrible food shortages by Christmas 1944. The SS Vega brought Red Cross parcels which saved the day. The Germans were not allowed access to the parcels and were on the brink of starvation themselves, forced to eat rabbits, birds, etc. People in the country were better off than those in the town as they had animals and crops. From what I heard rationing finished about 1954.

I was born in 1943 too and apparently was issued with a whole body gas mask - like a tube that the baby was placed inside. I didn't like it and screamed the place down until removed from it apparently. As we lived in a Pennine village away from the danger of bombing or gas attacks it was never used from necessity.

My Dad was in the regular army and was posted to West Africa when the war ended but rationing continued for us at home. He used to send wonderful large tea boxes packed full of extra supplies. I remember both dried and tinned fruit, tinned meats and butter and whole coconuts with every space being filled with peanuts in their shells. It was a red letter day when one was delivered and Mum must have heaved a sigh of relief to help her feed we then four children. A fifth child was born in 1950.

I remember when sweets came off ration too and the joy of buying 2 ounces of smarties in the familiar triangular white paper bags with my weekly pocket money. No other sweets featured in our lives - just the once weekly treat.

Our meat ration was delivered by a local butcher in his little van on a Friday night. No choice of what came - you got what he could supply. Sometimes with an extra couple of sausages tucked in with the meat parcel.
It was just normal and what we were used to but looking back it was very difficult for our Mothers. Luckily my Mum was a good manager, a good cook and a gardener so we survived and I think make do and mend was always a part of our lives. I wore a lot of hand-me-downs and homemade things!

MT62

Sarnia

My paternal family were under German occupation in the Channel Islands for 5 years. They had rationing with bells on. My Granny made jelly from hedgerow berries and bladder wrack seaweed. A canning machine was hidden from the Germans and Granny and her neighbours took turns each doing this. When it was her turn she hid it, wrapped in an old grey blanket and tucked it well into the woodpile in the corner of her backyard. No sleep for her that night. Being found in possession of something which the Germans had banned was punishable by imprisonment, fines or deportation.
I was 6 when sweets came of the ration. I have made up for that since.

Why was it banned Sarnia?

The Germans had priority over food and drink. Rationing was very strict. Some Islanders were not above reporting others in return for a food parcel. After D-Day, when the Germans were in retreat in Europe it became even worse. No supply ships were sent to the Channel Islands from June 1944 until May 9th 1945. Food, fuel and medicines were desperately short. Any islander having access to food, surplus to the ration, such as the canning machine, would have suffered the consequences. The Germans banned many things in their 5 years of Occupation.

SpinDriftCoastal

Sarnia

My paternal family were under German occupation in the Channel Islands for 5 years. They had rationing with bells on. My Granny made jelly from hedgerow berries and bladder wrack seaweed. A canning machine was hidden from the Germans and Granny and her neighbours took turns each doing this. When it was her turn she hid it, wrapped in an old grey blanket and tucked it well into the woodpile in the corner of her backyard. No sleep for her that night. Being found in possession of something which the Germans had banned was punishable by imprisonment, fines or deportation.
I was 6 when sweets came of the ration. I have made up for that since.

My grandfather was a Jerseyman. There were terrible food shortages by Christmas 1944. The SS Vega brought Red Cross parcels which saved the day. The Germans were not allowed access to the parcels and were on the brink of starvation themselves, forced to eat rabbits, birds, etc. People in the country were better off than those in the town as they had animals and crops. From what I heard rationing finished about 1954.

They were desperate times for those lovely islands. You are right about the rationing. I remember going to the local Parish Hall in 1953 with my Primary School to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation. From somewhere our Mums had produced mountains of sandwiches, cakes and jellies. We made short work of it.

This interests me because I never knew rationing. We went abroad in 1947 when I was 2 and returned when it was all over. I know we lived very much better than those back home, with American and Australian food supplies. My parents used to send parcels home but they often disappeared on the way.