List of Illustrations
1. Blitz damage to Whitman House on the Cornwall Estate, Bethnal Green.
2. ARP Warden King, accompanied by his dog Rip, begins his nightly duties along Southill Street during a London peasouper.
3. The railway arches, Arnold Road, Bow, showing the sandbagged entrance to the shelter belonging to J. O’Connor, the cooper and barrel merchants.
4. Bedtime stories in the shelter.
5. East Enders experience nightly overcrowding and lack of privacy as they shelter in the underground.
6. Devastation in Poplar.
7. GIs lend Londoners a hand to clear up after a raid.
8. Searching through the debris of a house in Cyprus Street, Old Ford.
9. An ARP warden helping homeless East End mothers and their babies move to a place of greater safety.
10–13. Ordinary domestic life still had to go on.
14. The postman does his best to deliver the mail.
15. A family with nowhere left to receive their letters. All that remains of their home is piled up on the handcart.
16. Young Peter Hodgson sitting among the blitzed ruins of Single Street School, Stepney.
17. London families waiting for transport to evacuate the women and children from the bombing.
18. Little ones evacuated from Columbia Market Nursery to Alwalton Hall, near Peterborough, wave goodbye to their parents.
19. Older London lads, evacuated to Devon, being taught how to plough.
20. London evacuees and Italian prisoners of war in the West Country.
21. A young Londoner ‘doing her bit’ by adding scraps to the pig bin.
22. A housewife ‘doing her bit’ by sorting tin and paper for salvage.
23. Queen Elizabeth pays a visit to the Sewardstone Road piggery in June 1943.
24. Models demonstrating the new Utility underwear.
25. Cancelling the coupons for a customer’s weekly ration, comprising tea, sugar, butter, cooking fat, bacon and ‘special margarine’.
26. Goods such as tobacco, cigarettes and especially matches were not rationed, but they were still hard to come by.
27. Children in Russia Lane, Bethnal Green, clearing a bomb site to create allotments for growing vegetables.
28. Part of the astonishing 100 tons of scrap collected at Northumberland Wharf in Poplar after the mayor made an appeal for salvage in July 1940.
29. Exhausted and dirty but safe, a childhood victim of war is given what limited comfort is available.
30. An adult casualty being tended until medical help arrives.
31. Nurses at St Peter’s Hospital, Stepney, recover what they can from the debris, April 1941.
32. Damage to Spiller’s Flour Mills, Royal Victoria Dock, following the first mass daylight raid on London on 7 September 1940.
33. A 1939 appeal for civil defence volunteers from the stage of the ‘Ipp’ – the Poplar Hippodrome, East India Dock Road.
34. Protecting the docks, November 1941. A detachment of the Port of London’s Home Guard, originally known as Local Defence Volunteers, march with fixed bayonets.
35. Tin hats, buckets and stirrup pumps were used by fire watchers such as these men on duty on the roof of the Troxy Cinema, Commercial Road.
36. The London Fire Brigade battles with blazing warehouses in the Eastern Basin, St Katherine Dock, 8 September 1940.
37. Salvaging what was left of the tens of thousands of tons of sugar that went up in flames in the West India Dock, 8 September 1940.
38. Members of the Women’s Legion preparing cheese rolls for London dockers.
39–40. Enjoying their work – women showing off newly found skills on the railways and the factory floor.
41. Taking care of homeless East End youngsters.
42. Elaborate use of gummed paper to protect the window of the Victoria Wine Company in East India Dock Road.
43. London families settling down to enjoy their Sunday dinner.
44. Londoners enjoying their special day, despite the sandbags, tin helmets and gas masks, and the lack of a traditional wedding gown.
45. Even ‘down the shelter’ – in this case a section of uncompleted underground line between Liverpool Street and Bethnal Green – Londoners could still enjoy a knees-up.
46. King George V Dock, March 1946. The war is over and young Peter Stewart is somewhat dubious as he inspects tins of honey and dried fruits.
47. It’s 1946, and yes, we have some bananas! A stall in Bethnal Green proudly displays the much-missed fruit and also has beetroot for sale at 5d a pound.
Illustration Acknowledgements
Associated Press: 9, 13, 17, 26, 31; Camera Press: 4, 24, 45; Hulton Archive/Getty Images: 44; Imperial War Museum: 12, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25; Mirrorpix: 29; Museum in Docklands PLA Collection: 32, 34, 36, 37, 38, 46; Museum of London: 5; News International Syndication: 11, 16, 41; Press Association: 7, 10, 47; Public Record Office: 30, 39, 40, endpaper, pages 15, 23, 87, 126, 156, 208, 258; Science and Society Picture Library, Science Museum: 14, 15, 43; Tower Hamlets Local History Library: 1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 18, 23, 27, 28, 33, 35, 42.