This film shows glimpses of life in a Malton family for a year after taking in two evacuees from Middlesbrough in September 1939. It was made by local filmmaker Mr Folliott-Ward, who worked as a local solicitor, and was also a councillor.  As one of those helping to organise homes for evacuees who came to Malton, he made his own home available to two children, who were later replaced by another three children.  As well as this film, Folliott-Ward made a number of films spanning the five years from 1937 to 1942, held at the YFA. 

Folliott-Ward’s daughter, Heather Reynolds, seen in the film, has shared some of her memories of that time in the ITV programme The Way We Were. Here Heather tells of how much she enjoyed having the two older girls to stay, recalling how friendly they were to her, and how much fun they were.  Heather says that it felt that they were like sisters, and that having them helped her to grow up and expand her horizons – even speculating whether her father’s role in choosing homes for the evacuees might have helped him get such pleasant girls!  Heather kept in touch with one of the girls, Pat Burns, for some time after the war.  Later on three other girls stayed at Heathers home: Margaret Stocksen, Paddy Lassen and Vera Horn, from Middlesbrough, Saltbourn and Redcar respectively.

 

One confusing aspect of the film is the reference to two schools that have been evacuated to Malton: St Mary’s Convent School, Middlesbrough andNewlands Convent School, which is from Hull. Schools from Hull tended to go as a group, and 40 children from Newlands went to Bridlington first before moving to Malton in August 1941 where they joined with Malton Grammar School. Preparations had been made for 100,000 children to be evacuated from Hull, although only 38,000 went on some 100 trains. It ought to be remembered that Middlesbrough was part of Yorkshire until 1968 when Teeside was created (then Cleveland in 1974, and a unitary authority from 1996), and is still a part of historic Yorkshire.

 

Discussions on the possible evacuation, of children, invalids and the elderly, had been going on for many years before a Committee for Evacuation was finally set up under the Home Secretary, Sir John Anderson, in May 1938. When it came the evacuation was a massive operation, with a planned 3.5 million individuals to be evacuated by early September, beginning on the 1^st, two days prior to the declaration of war. In the end only half this number actually turned up at the many evacuation points, complete with gas mask and name tag. At the time, with the example of the Spanish Civil War still fresh in the memory, it was estimated that up to 600,000 might be killed in air attacks. 

 

Despite all the organisation that went into this, the plans left much to be desired. Arranging accommodation was usually very haphazard, with grief stricken parents and children having no idea who they would end up with. The major cities were targeted for evacuation, with evacuees to be shipped out to rural areas. Very often children from poor backgrounds found themselves staying with much more wealthy families. This meant that both parties had a culture shock: seeing how the other half lives. This could be a good thing, but it frequently turned out badly for those children who experienced rejection, or ended up with families that ill-treated them. The whole enterprise was voluntary, so many parents opted out, as did very many wealthy families who preferred not to have to look after children from an alien culture – and possibly with head lice, and little personal hygiene, let alone adequate clothing – even though they could receive ten shillings and six pence for a single child and eight shillings and six pence for each additional one. 

 

This film certainly shows us the best side of the evacuation experience: how exciting and uplifting it could be. But many evacuees returned home by Christmas, before the war really got going. However, there was another round of evacuation during the blitz, between September 1940 and May 1941, when 41,000 civilians were killed and 137,000 injured during air raids across Britain.   Both Middlesbrough and Hull were heavily bombed during this time.  Middlesbrough was second only to London on the German target list, and was the first major British town and industrial target to be bombed. In fact the first German airplane shot down over Britain during the war was near Whitby.  Hull was also particularly hard hit, not only as a target in its own right, but also because it was a convenient place to offload bombs if other targets inland couldn’t be reached (for Hull in the war see the Context for King George And Queen Visit Hull).

 

Another film held at the YFA that features evacuees is Lord Mayor’s Year of Office 2, which shows some boys evacuated from Bradford to Linton Camp near Grassing ton (see ’Britons at War’ in Further Information).  This school was set up in July 1940, just a month before Bradford was bombed. More stories and memories of children during the war, including two from Hull, can be found on the BBC website (see References).

 

[with special thanks to the BBC, Pamela Silver and Alan Rudd]

 

 

Juliet Gardner, Wartime: Britain 1939-1945, Headline, London, 2004.

Angus Calder, The Myth of the Blitz, Pimlico, London, 1991.

Sara Last and Liz Deverell, Evacuuees from Hull 1939-41. (No publication details are available for this, but it is available at Hull Local Studies Library – it details the places evacuees were sent to and their experiences) 

A number of online sites collect wartime memories, along with much more useful information – see especially:

The story of Peter Cooper who was evacuated from Hull to Robin’s Hood Bay in 1939, at the age of 3, and who never went back.

Britons at War An educational site for schoolchildren, with information on evacuees.