Shropshire Routes to Roots

www.shropshireroots.org.uk

1d. Children in wartime: Why was evacuation necessary?

Although war had yet to be declared, most people believed in the summer of 1939 that it was inevitable. The idea of evacuation was to remove children out of the danger zones to the countryside where they would be safer.

This article published in the Border and Counties Advertiser is about preparing for this emergency:

How many children were expected to arrive in Oswestry?
Where they would be coming from?
Was it just children who were evacuated?

Posters and messages on the wireless asked for volunteer host's. The Government believed that they would be evacuating 3.5 million children. In fact they only actually evacuated 1.5 million.

Poster, 'Oswestry's arrangements for the reception of evacuated children [Opens in new window: image size 42kb]

Preparing for the Emergencies.
larger image in a new window [42kb]
[Reproduced with kind permission of the Oswestry and Border Counties Advertiser]

Opposite is a leaflet sent out to householders in the months before the evacuation.

Do you think that the local population would have had any choice as to whether they wanted these visitors?

Click on the image and you will find part of the leaflet. See if you can find out:

How much Foster parents would be paid to look after the children?
Was payment the same if the householder had more than one child?
Do you think this would be enough money?

Leaflet outlining the government scheme for foster parents [Opens in new window: image size 20kb]

"What the householder is asked to do".
Larger image in a new window [20kb]
[Shropshire Archive]

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