Before the war, the Maltese authorities had spent £350,000 creating a reserve of essential commodities, including oil, lard, margarine, kerosene, tinned meat and tinned fish, and sugar. Once war broke out in September, 1939, it was decided that the sole importers of such items would be the government and the armed forces, and an Office for the Coordination of Supplies, or COSUP, was established. The officers of this department travelled more than 27,000 miles by air seeking supplies for Malta during the war years. Prices were supposed to cover the cost of the materials and transport, but to avoid inflation and also hardship to the poorer members of society, some items were sold below their true cost. The decision over when and how a convoy was fought through was taken in London – many Maltese believed that these decisions were taken by someone they called ‘The Brain’.
Taking full control of imports may seem draconian, but it was an essential first step towards obtaining a clear picture of the supply situation. It was also likely that importers and wholesalers accustomed to the small size of frequent pre-war shipments would not have been able to cope with or afford the infrequent large shipments that were inescapable with the convoy system. In any event, it also overcame the problems that could have arisen if one importer had lost all of his supplies as a ship was sunk.
Gradually, some order was created out of the chaos, with a Food and Commerce Control Officer reporting to the Council of Government that ‘staple articles of food are available . . . in sufficient quantities to render rationing unnecessary’. Even so, the level of supplies that the FCCO allowed wholesalers to release each month were set just below the demand of the average consumer, prompting action against hoarders and control of food prices, enforced between 21 September and 21 October when the police inspected 1,268 shops, and found 375 grocers guilty of overcharging. Overcharging was punishable by fines of as much as £400, while one wholesaler lost his licence for a month.
One difference between Maltese practice at first and that in the UK, was that hoarding by householders, as opposed to wholesalers and retailers, was not at first discouraged since it was felt that some reserve of supplies could be allowed, especially if distribution arrangements were to break down following an invasion.
It soon became clear that a system of rationing was needed, but even before this was officially sanctioned, many Protection Officers instigated local rationing schemes, but inevitably this led to substantial differences in the ration between different communities. Depending on where they lived, a family of four might find that they were entitled to one, two or three bars of soap each fortnight. The supply of kerosene, still the source of heat for cooking even in the 1950s for most households in Malta, and also used for lighting by many in the country districts in the 1940s, was often badly interrupted, with many not receiving supplies for up to fifteen days. Protection Officers also sorted out this problem, enforcing it with escorts for the kerosene cartmen. At Lija, for example, the ration was a gallon and a half of kerosene weekly.
The desire to establish a seven-month reserve of the most essential items arose with the safe arrival of a convoy in September 1940, and this, more than anything else, was behind the decision to introduce rationing, but this was not announced until February 1941.
In the air raid shelters, many families brought food with them, while some shelter supervisors managed to acquire small stocks for emergency use. Thefts did occur from time to time, especially as rationing became tighter during 1942. One of the worst cases arose when the entire emergency stock was removed from the food store in one air raid shelter. The food had been removed through a ventilation hole that was large enough for cases of food to be lifted out.
Before rationing was introduced, a Food Distribution Office, FDO, was created. The FDO established the entitlement to supplies of wholesalers and retailers. Another essential preliminary was to require the head of each family to register at a post office, stating the number of people in their household, specifying how many were under the age of three and how many were between the ages of three and eight years. He was also required to provide the name of the retailer from whom rationed goods would be purchased. Rationing officially started on Monday, 7 April 1941, and rations became due on 6 and 21 of every month. The first goods to be rationed were sugar, matches, soap and coffee. Sugar was on a standard scale of a rotolo, or 28 ozs (800g), per person, the other items were on a tapering scale since it was felt that larger families did not need much more of these items than smaller households. For matches, families of five or less were entitled to four boxes of matches, but larger families had just six boxes. A single person got one bar of soap, a family of four or less got two bars, those with five to eight persons got three bars. Less easy to understand is that families of three or less had ¼ rotolo of coffee, those with four or five persons had ½ rotolo, and those of six or seven ¾ rotolo of coffee. By August, lard, margarine and edible oil were also rationed. A single person was allowed ¼ rotolo of lard or margarine and one terz, 0.32 litres, of oil, while a family of five received a rotolo of lard or margarine and four terzi of oil.
Before introducing kerosene rationing, people were encouraged to build up a small reserve. In December 1940, the government ensured that there was an abundance to allow these reserves to be created, and this policy was maintained until 2 April 1941, when once again kerosene carts were put under police supervision. At first, the system was haphazard and not so much a ration but a restriction on supply, since no individual was allowed to buy more than a half gallon at a time. It was not until May that a formal kerosene rationing system was introduced, with a family of three or less receiving a half gallon weekly, with ¾ gallon for a family of four or five, and of six to nine, not uncommon in Malta, one gallon. The Food Distribution Office also looked after kerosene.
Kerosene rationing proved time and time again to be one of the most controversial and difficult. Housewives argued that they could not cook one hot meal a day with a weekly ration of ½ gallon, and the situation was worse for those who had to use kerosene for lighting as well. Worse still, there were several recorded instances of the ration not being delivered, and this no doubt found its way onto the black market. The authorities eventually tightened up, and in addition to the policeman, an official of the FDO also attended and supplies were issued carefully, street by street.
These moves still left many items off the ration. Fresh fish was becoming scarce due to aerial attacks on the fishing fleet, while no fishing boat was allowed to go more than six miles off the coast and all fishing at night was banned, so the supply of tinned meat and fish, especially sardines and tuna, was becoming important, but prices were soaring. There was little or no fresh imported meat after July 1941, so frozen beef was imported. By late 1941, the Food and Commerce Control Officer banned the sale of meat in restaurants and hotels twice a week, and soon followed this by a blanket ban on the sale of beef in any catering establishment. While the food situation eased during summer 1941, with the arrival of two convoys so that the seven month reserve was re-established, it was already apparent that the safe arrival of convoys could not be counted upon, and after September, 1941, only two convoys got through during the next seven months. Local meat, mainly goat or chickens, was by this time also becoming scarce.
By spring 1941, sugar, coffee, tea, margarine, lard, matches and rice were all rationed. Cows were not introduced to Malta until after the Second World War – the poor pasture available could not sustain them – and at first goats’ milk was still available. Cows’ milk came to Malta either as powder or in tins, and in the latter form was much favoured by the Maltese for tea or coffee drunk from glasses, but as the shortages began to grow, even this pleasure was to be denied them.
Of the basic commodities, during summer 1941, butter was still plentiful, although the Maltese themselves were not great consumers of dairy products. Bread wasn’t rationed at this stage, but this staple of the Maltese diet was often expensive, forcing the poorer members of Maltese society to waste much time shopping around, looking for the best price. The average wage for a Maltese worker was around five shillings a day, no more than half that in the UK. Olive oil also continued to be available. It was possible to augment the diet with fresh fish caught with rod and line off rocks, but the easiest positions were wired off to prevent invasion. Taking a boat, no matter how small, out to sea was a dangerous business.
Inevitably, rationing created a black market. One such black marketeer was Fredu Schembri of Vittoriosa. Times were hard even for the black market. The few who could afford his goods were able to snap these up immediately they became available, while there was always the risk of exposure by the majority who could not afford it, and had simply to tighten their belts. Supplies were intermittent, and the gaps between became longer and longer. Schembri eventually bowed to the inevitable and joined the Home Defence Force, which kitted him out with a helmet, armband and a rifle.
The authorities decreed that the entire potato crop would be bought by the Government, buying these at a good price to encourage production and overcome any temptation to keep produce to be sold on the black market, where a sack of potatoes could easily fetch £5. The Government then sold the potatoes at a lower price, but with strict rationing. Bread rationing was something that the authorities were reluctant to introduce as this was a staple of most Mediterranean diets, but people were initially forced to buy bread from the baker with whom they were registered and, from February 1942, the making of cakes and pastries was banned. Nevertheless, by April, bread rationing was necessary, and took effect from 5 May. The daily bread ration was 10½oz (300g), about a third of the usual adult Maltese consumption, meaning considerable hardship for many adults. One advantage was that the price of bread was halved. Bread rationing was difficult to enforce, with no fewer than 223 bakeries in Malta. Initially, to eke out the ration, wheat was being mixed initially with maize and barley, producing a dark coloured loaf rather than the white crusty bread to which the Maltese were accustomed. Later, it became necessary to include a proportion of potato in the island’s bread, due to the shortage of grain, which proved unpopular as it affected both the taste of the bread and it seemed to become stale much more quickly. The cut in the acreage devoted to grain mentioned earlier was beginning to be felt. At one time, grain not so much unloaded as salvaged from a sinking ship had been badly soaked, but it still had to be used.
Malta before the war and for a couple of decades afterwards, had large flocks of goats wandering with a goatherd from one piece of grazing to the next. By 1941, seventy per cent of the goats had been killed and eaten.
Wood was still available for baking bread, but increasingly this was having to be scavenged from the ruins of bombed buildings – a hard task since traditional Maltese architecture uses little wood other than for doors, window frames, furniture, such as cupboards, and for the wooden covered balconies that adorned the front of most houses. As shortages grew, many houses that had not been damaged were to lose their balconies in a programme that mirrored the drive for scrap metal in Great Britain, and had seen large houses and public parks lose their railings.
The cost of living was an important factor, with most government employees earning less than five shillings, 25p, daily, less than half the UK figure at the time. Some factory workers earned between three and four shillings a day. Many Maltese worked for the British armed forces, with the RAF and the Army seeing their Maltese civilian workforce rise from 1,900 in 1939 to 8,800 at the end of 1941. Government employees rose from 2,600 to 8,200 over the same period. Price controls and food subsidies were necessary, and appeared in November 1941, in an attempt to return to the prices prevailing on the outbreak of hostilities. Bread was to be sold at 3d for a rotolo instead of 3½d; paste 6d instead of 9d; sugar 4d instead of 6d; coffee 10d instead of 1/2d and lard and margarine, 1 /- instead of 1/8d. Matches were reduced from 2d to a penny; soap from 4d to 3d; a bottle of oil from 8½d to 6d; a tin of milk from 9½d to 7d and a gallon of kerosene from 1/3d to 1/-.
The arrival of three out of the four ships in a convoy from Alexandria in March 1942, simply prolonged the agony. Gort’s other concerns were coming to dominate his every waking moment. He already had the garrison on half-rations, and had organized sleep parades so that the soldiers would not waste energy or build up a healthy appetite. He now had to start to reduce the rations of the civilian population, a far harder task even in wartime. Already, safety matches had been rationed to two boxes per fortnight for each family. Now, all remaining foodstuffs had to be pooled to provide everyone with one meal a day using communal kitchens. It would stretch the food as much as was humanly possible, and also offer considerable savings on fuel – these were the Victory Kitchens.
The almost complete failure of the two convoys in May 1942, finally brought Malta to the brink of starvation. In June, two officials were seconded from the Ministry of Food in London to report on the ‘Food Situation in Malta’. By this time, they noted, the paste ration had been cut completely, and the bread ration reduced. The sugar ration had been cut from 28ozs per head to 21ozs and then to 14ozs (half rotolo). Further ration reductions were announced to the population by the Lieutenant Governor, Sir Edward Jackson, on 20 June 1942. For a family of five, this meant a monthly ration of 2½ rotolos of sugar, 4 terzi of oil, ½ rotolo of cheese, ¼ rotolo of tea, 1 rotolo of fats, ½ rotolo of coffee, three bars of soap, four tins of corned beef, four tins of fish and four boxes of matches. This reduced the average daily calories from the pre-war figure of 2,500 to less than 1,500. The bread ration would be maintained until mid-October. All brewing was stopped and the grain stocks in brewers’ hands requisitioned.
‘It was in June, 1942, when the siege really settled down on Malta, grim and cruel. From May to November the island faced up to ever tightening rationing’, recalls Mabel Strickland, Editor of The Times of Malta, and daughter of Lord Strickland.70
Generous prices were offered for grain from farmers and commission paid to brokers to ensure that as much home-produced food as possible was put into the economy, but these measures were not announced until the harvest had been threshed to ensure that surplus food was not fed to the animals. Fodder rations were reduced and generous payments offered for pigs and goats, which were initially intended to be distributed through the retail trade but before this could happen a change of plan saw the meat thus gained sent to the Victory Kitchens. A farmer or goatherd received a bonus of thirty shillings for each animal slaughtered, but unwittingly, rather than take the animals to the abattoir themselves and receive the money, many sold them at far less than this to intermediaries who pocketed a sometimes substantial difference! The scale of this can be gathered since in May 1942, there were 44,426 goats in Malta, and that summer more than 12,000 sheep and goats were slaughtered, and by the end of the siege about half of the sheep and goats had been slaughtered. At one time, the authorities were considering allowing each goatherd to keep just four goats.
Having earlier encouraged families to lay in stocks of food, possibly against the threat of invasion, on 1 July 1942, everyone was ordered to declare their stocks of essential commodities. The excess of oats, bran, wheat or flour, or paste, barley, sugar, maize, carob beans, cotton seeds over and above twenty rotolos had to be declared, while anyone with more than four rotolos of butter, margarine, lard, cheese, coffee, tea, rice or tomato paste had to declare it. No one was allowed more than twenty tins of corned beef, fish or milk, and no more than ten bottles of edible oil, five gallons of kerosene, twenty bars of soap or fifty boxes of matches. All reserves of petrol and coal had to be declared.
On 20 June 1942. the Lieutenant Governor, Sir Edward Jackson, made a broadcast to the people of Malta. He held little back. He quickly squashed hopes for an increase in the bread ration, although he didn’t mention that had bread not been so fundamental to the Maltese diet, the ration would have been reduced. The ration of tinned meat would be maintained, and that for tinned fish would be increased. The ration for most other items was cut in half, including kerosene. This bad news was tempered by promises to improve the food provided by the Victory Kitchens, and to provide additional Victory Kitchens.
The vagaries of the convoy system meant that there was now suddenly a certain amount of wool for knitting, just the thing for those warm Mediterranean summer days, and a quantity of underwear. Nevertheless, the rationing system, in trying to be fair to all, allocated to a priest a pair of bloomers.
The one thing that Sir Edward did not mention was the shortage of fuel.
The ration system marked one big difference between Maltese practice and that in the United Kingdom at this time. In the UK, rationing worked on a points system, in Malta there was no such system simply because there was nothing on which to spend the points. The truth was that Malta had no food reserves on which to fall back by this time, and no guarantee of another convoy. When Italian air raids started, those who had lost their homes and their contents, could be sure of receiving at least some food from their neighbours, but by mid-1942, no one had any to spare. Even the bread ration would be locked away. This was also a feature of the difference between the situation in Malta and the UK; throughout the war, bread was not rationed in the UK, although after the war it was eventually rationed.
Introduced in January 1942, the Maltese Victory Kitchens were based on the Communal Feeding kitchens. They had the advantages of helping those whose homes had been damaged or destroyed in the bombing, and relieving others of the time-consuming queuing and preparation of food after long shifts on war work. They also made the best of scarce reserves of essential food and of fuel. At first, the take up of the Victory Kitchens was relatively low, with just 269 subscribers in January. The Council of Government was told that each managed to feed 200 people, and it was believed that many more would have registered with the Victory Kitchens but for the fact that they had to surrender half of their rations when they did so. Even so, by the end of May, there were forty-two Victory Kitchens throughout Malta.
The Victory Kitchens provided one cooked meal daily, which had to be collected either at 12 noon or at 17.00. Those registered with a particular kitchen often used to leave their pots and pans outside before 09.00, in a long line which no one tampered with through the morning or even the whole day, as they went off to work. Fuel and food were both scarce by this time, and many homes were without gas or electricity for long periods.
Despite surrendering half their rations, those using the Victory Kitchens were not immune from the general shortages. At first, a family of three could expect the meal for them all, the main meal of the day, to be three thin sausages and fifteen peas, plus a small ration of bread. Twice a week, there would also be half a potato. The menu varied, but it could include the vegetable soup, minestra, or beans, tinned sardines or herrings, bulbuliata, a mixture of beaten egg powder with tomatoes and left-overs, and goat’s meat. The island’s goat population was by now figuring on the diet, and as a direct consequence, there was a growing shortage of milk, now reserved for the very young and invalids.
Despite this, by the end of June, the food supply situation was such that more than 7,000 people were being fed in this way, and by September, the figure had risen to 60,000! To encourage greater use as the food supply situation became more serious, by mid-July, the proviso that subscribers should lose half their ration was dropped. People on relief nevertheless lost their allowance and their ration. People registered with the Victory Kitchens for a week at a time, with meat and vegetable stews costing 6d, while minestra dishes cost 3d. Goat’s meat appeared on the menu as much as five times a week, until someone realized that most people couldn’t stomach this so often.
While some of the kitchens were praised for the quality of their cooking and cleanliness, many left much to be desired, and especially since much of the labour was untrained. Sometimes people had to queue for most of the day to register. Much of this can be attributed to communal catering and the fact that many felt that this was being forced on them, while no doubt the ingredients were far from top quality given the necessity of ensuring that there could be no waste.
With a diet like this, hunger was a big problem, with one Maltese who lived throughout the siege recalling in later years that his belt could go half way around his waist again! There were health problems too, with scabies from the poor diet, and lice from the lack of adequate washing facilities.
The shortage of fuel meant that hot water was scarce. Some left a tin bath of water on the flat roof of their building in summer, so that at the end of a hot day, the water would be warm, although often rather dusty after the air raids. Fuel for hot water was obtained by scavenging through bombed buildings looking for wood. Later, as the crisis really bit hard, even this source was barred and any wood collected from bombed ruins was allocated to the Victory Kitchens.
Lighting was often no more than a bootlace or piece of string stuck in a potted meat jar containing some paraffin.
Tinned milk was reserved for young babies. Powdered milk, when it did arrive by one of the fast minelayers or by submarine, was barely a relief from the tedium, since the ration was just two tablespoonfuls for sixteen days. Locally-grown fruit was plentiful at times, but sold out quickly, especially if the vendor was spotted by thirsty soldiers. There was no beer.
Tales abound of a thriving black market, but there was little to buy, even so. Eggs could command 15 shillings (75p) for a dozen. Someone maintained that they had spent 17s 6d (87.5p) on a rabbit, but then couldn’t eat it since they were convinced that it was the grocer’s cat.
Clothing was soon in short supply, as was furniture. Anyone leaving would be pressed to sell as much as they could.
By summer 1942, the food situation was so desperate that around 100,000 people were registered with the Victory Kitchens, more than a third of the civilian population at the time.
Gradually, the normal life of the islands was coming to a standstill. The people were starving and waiting, for either salvation or invasion. Shops were closed since there was nothing for them to sell – even though at one stage many of the food shops had taken to selling secondhand clothes and household possessions. The bus service was little more than a rush hour only service. The Victory Kitchens were serving one hot meal, consisting of a few small pieces of goat’s meat. There was very little tea and no sugar. For most meals, a single slice of bread sufficed, and for the lucky, who had hoarded their rations carefully, that might be enlivened by a thin smear of tomato sauce. As fuel reserves fell even further, water became another scarcity, with queues in the hot summer sunshine for water as there was insufficient fuel to keep all of the pumps working. Many of the water mains had in any case been fractured in the constant bombing.
Surrounded by the sea, the normal Maltese diet had always included fish. They were surrounded by plenty, but the coastal defence regulations prevented fishing at night, while German fighters strafed any fishing boat whose crew were desperate enough to venture out to sea during the day. Two-thirds of the Malta fishing fleet was sunk before the end of the war.
The arrival of the famous Operation Pedestal on 13 August, 1942, covered on pages 206 – 211, meant that Malta had been saved from starvation, but times of plenty were still far away. One of the worst aspects was that most of the grain carried by the convoy had been in just two ships, both of which had been sunk.
This meant that the wheat situation was now the major problem. In a heart-to-heart with Bishop Gonzi, emphasizing the great secrecy of the predicament, Lord Gort was frank about the problem. It was once again clear that Gonzi harboured no resentment, for he immediately offered to find the wheat in Gozo, where the harvest was just starting. Gort provided Gonzi with the petrol necessary to visit the farmers on Gozo and ask them to supply their surplus wheat for their neighbours in Malta. The high regard in which the Bishop was held by his flock was soon reflected in the provision of enough grain for the wheat target date to match that for fuel and other necessities. This was a burden lifted off Gort, and of the Maltese, but for any wartime governor, it seemed that resolving one problem only brought another to the top of the pile – the new target date was December, but would another convoy arrive in time? Operation Pedestal would show that it could be done, but at what cost?
Nevertheless, there were other improvements, with weekly instead of fortnightly issues of kerosene. Edible oil was also to be issued every ration period, but the sugar ration could not be increased given that much of the consignment had been damaged by sea water. Coffee would also be issued every ration period.
Having got so close to the target date, and been saved at the eleventh hour at such a heavy price, rationing was maintained and the supplies were eked out. The Victory Kitchens’ role was to ensure that everyone should be treated equally, providing a communal meal so that no one should starve, or, as one wag put it, ‘so that everyone should starve equally’.
The new ration served by the Victory Kitchens meant that a typical meal would consist of a plate of vegetable soup, an ounce of corned beef or tinned fish. When available, ‘veal loaf’ was served, and this was regarded as a rare treat, but the ‘veal’ consisted mainly of slaughtered sheep or horse. The animals themselves had not been well fed, so the quantity of meat was limited. The rule of each person having a single meal from the communal kitchens at either midday or 17.00 continued, and meals were still collected by families in their own utensils. In addition to the communal meals, each person was allowed a meagre ration of a tin of corned beef and a small tin of fish every fortnight, a few beans, some coffee mixed with barley to eke it out, and when it was available, a small quantity of tea and sugar. Tinned milk was reserved for small children and those who were ill. For everyone else, there would be an occasional ration of powdered milk and powdered eggs.
The complaints about the standards of the Victory Kitchens continued at this time, and rebellion nearly broke out on 1 September. Liver stew had been served and thousands found the taste unpalatable, throwing the dish away in protest and leading to what must have been an unprecedented promptness in the bureaucratic response of the Communal Feeding Department, which immediately ordered that those who had had an unsatisfactory lunch be given a portion of corned beef either immediately or later in the day. When, balbuliata, on this occasion minced vegetables with powdered eggs, was served for the first time, many found it to be unpalatable and badly cooked, but there were also protests over the small portions served, two tablespoonfuls with another two of peas.
On 10 September, the Council of Government decided to appoint a select committee to investigate the running of the Victory Kitchens. It reported on 7 October, finding many of the criticisms justified, with no uniformity in the taste or quality of meals, food often overcooked or burnt, or left raw, inexperienced cooks, and poor supervision. The Committee recommended closure, but with 100,000 people now subscribing, the Government rejected this recommendation. The numbers peaked at more than 175,000 by the following January, but within a month, this had dropped to 20,000.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to brighten things up, the Communal Feeding Service introduced a new menu:
| Sunday | – Stewed meat with tomatoes and baked peas. |
| Monday | – Macaroni with cheese and tomatoes. |
| Tuesday | – Balbuliata. |
| Wednesday | – Minestra. |
| Thursday | – Stewed meat with tomatoes and peas. |
| Friday | – Minestra. |
| Saturday | – Macaroni with cheese and tomatoes. |
Deciding just how to cut rations was bad enough, but deciding how and when to ease the restrictions was also difficult. In November, the safe arrival of a convoy intact so that there were no imbalances in the food supply situation, presented Gort with a fresh problem. The Maltese were starving and had given their all, and it was too soon to relax their guard with the enemy still present in Sicily, just sixty miles away. Should he relieve the hunger of those in Malta by increasing rations to a more sustaining level, or, in case the convoy had been a fluke, maintain them at the same severe level? After all, Gort had no idea, no guarantee, of just when the next convoy might be. Gort decided to compromise. He introduced a graduated increase in rations, one that would take full effect by January 1943, but overall the effect would be still far less than what the people needed. Gort’s caution was understandable, with all too recent memories of the desperate situation the previous August, but he needn’t have worried, for within a month a further nine ships arrived with food and aviation spirit.
This large batch of supplies, coming so soon after the November convoy, meant that Gort was now free to make the increase in rations that he had wanted. The bread ration for working men was increased by a quarter for five days a week. The sugar, cheese and fats ration was increased in December, and a special issue of sugar, flour, beans and dried fruit was made with Christmas in mind. The Victory Kitchens once again became an option, not a necessity, not least because of the increased availability of kerosene for cooking at home.