Coping with the Raids (p. 15-16)

London was harder hit than any other British city, both in number of bomb attacks and number of casualties. ‘Throughout the war it had 101 daylight and 253 night attacks by piloted aircraft. It was attacked at some time during the day or night, with the exception of only two twenty-four hour periods, for the whole of September, October and November 1940. London received 41% of the attacks by flying bombs, and 49% of those by rockets’, states Terence O’Brien’s detailed official history of Civil Defence provision in the History of the Second World War UK Civil Series.

Plentiful evidence of this process of destruction survives for the historian in the records of a wide range of national and local administrative records, and beyond. Each incident was different and could involve several agencies in dealing with the aftermath. Each of these agencies recorded the matter from its own perspective; these reports can often be dovetailed to produce a detailed picture of the event. Further information may come from maps, photographs, paintings, film, newspaper coverage, and the personal testimony of diaries, memoirs, letters and oral history recordings, of which there are many, for the experience made a lasting impression on those who suffered it.

Overall responsibility for Civil Defence and its coordination rested with the Ministry of Home Security. Its records are in the Public Record Office, among those of its parent Home Office; there is a clear outline of both Ministries’ administrative histories, and those of other government departments, in part one of the PRO’s Guide. Terence O’Brien ‘s authoritative volume Civil Defence, referred to above, is indispensable.

All too soon after the ending of the First World War international events made it apparent that the ‘war to end wars’ had been no such thing. The British government started to make plans for the defence of the civilian population if the unthinkable should happen - another European war. London had been bombed in the 1914-18 war and it was obvious that any future conflict would bring increased danger from the air. Gas was particularly feared and guarded against, but fortunately never used. Bombing raids during the Spanish Civil War, especially the attacks on Guernica and Barcelona, had reinforced official anxiety about the potential scale of damage. A sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence had been set up in 1924 to deal with Air Raid Precautions (ARP); it was transferred in 1935 to the Home Office. But it was not until the Air Raid Precautions Act of 1937 came into force that the subject made any real impact on the general public through local government planning, shelter-building programmes, blackout regulations and the issue of gas masks. Volunteers began training for all aspects of ARP work, guided by a stream of ARP Handbooks published by HMSO covering, among other subjects, ARP for animals. The Home Office monitored the efficacy of the ARP system during the Munich crisis and learnt from it. HO 45/17626, reporting on ARP in Hackney in 1939, provides a good example.

The Warden's Service (p. 17-18)

ARP wardens were the linch-pins of the local CD system. The boroughs were subdivided into ARP sectors, usually following established council ward boundaries, each of which had several wards' posts. These posts occupied a variety of premises. In the outer suburbs they were frequently set up in ordinary houses, more centrally they gradually acquired purpose-built, reinforced shelters. Tenders and building costs for these survive in some borough collections. Hackney, for instance, has a file of tenders for the construction of three reinforced concrete Report Centres: the Town Hall, Selman Street and Rossendale Street in H/CC/1/209. Rossendale Street ARP Centre still stands, and was the subject of a very detailed survey by the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments as recently as 1993 - RCHMons folder 91157 - with plans, photographs and a full building report.

In October 1939 Mass-Observation conducted an enquiry, documented in M-O file 4A 'Propaganda and ARP recruiting' into why people joined ARP. Two thousand volunteers in Fulham, which had one of the highest ARP memberships in London, were surveyed. Seventy-eight per cent of respondents said they had been persuaded to join by newspaper or radio advertisements. Like other apparently idle CD workers wardens were the butt of public jokes and complaints during the phoney war, and regarded by some as interfering busybodies even in more dangerous times. THe MOI tried to boost their image through information films such Night Watch, COI 259 in the IWM's Film and Video Archive.

The boroughs organised the Wardens' posts, so it is among their collections that any surviving material will normally be found. Individual ARP personnel sometimes retained material after the war. Of this, some is still in private hands and some has since been deposited with the appropriate local authority or elsewhere, such as the IWM Department of Printed Books, whose Civil Defence Collection contains a large amount of London local authority material, including items such as shelter wardens' post plans. The IWM Department of Documents, too, has examples, like the ARP log book for Wardens' Post 60, Park Royal Industrial Estate, 1939-40, in Misc. 1874, and other items.

The borough material varies from authority to authority, but many have ARP sector maps showing wardens' posts, first aid posts, shelters and fire hydrants. Kensington has a map of its 28 Group, in Redcliffe ward, plotting which houses and shops were unoccupied in 1944, with monthly summaries of unoccupied properties for earlier dates too. Recruitment literature and staff records can be valuable, particularly after compulsory registration for CD was brought in from 1941. Hackney Archives, for example, have registration cards for address, age, employer and details of any exemptions in force. Westminster's register of part-time staff has enrolment forms with name, address and next-of-kin and also preserves correspondence chasing up workers who had failed to report for their rota with their excuses and explanations, as in Westminster Archive Centre's file CD 83.

Duty rota, attendance registers, correspondence, rolls of honour and other material survives widely in many borough collections. ARP magazines were popular. Hendon wardens produced The Good Neighbour, in Barnet Archives L614.9, with local advertisements, factual information , jokes, cartoons, decorating and gardening hints and even a spoof ARP coat of arms in the issue for June 1940. Kensington warden contributed to The Warden's Post, and the Kensington Burrow News (Kensington LS 940.549.WW). The IWM Department of Documents has copies of Battersea's equivalent, The Striver (Misc. 685), its Department of Printed Books has others including Finsbury and Wembley. Any of this material may prove useful, but for many historians the meatiest slice of ARP records will probably be the array of borough control CD log books, incident diaries and occurrence registers kept all over London. They all record the same sort of factual information about incidents, but the format varies with the borough concerned.

Air Raid Shelters (p. 24)

The anticipated danger from air attack, though it proved over-pessimistic, necessitated easy public access to secure shelters. Public shelters, especially those in the tube stations, have lodged indelibly in the collective memory, but in fact they were used by only a minority of Londoners. In the early days of the Blitz it was calculated that about one in seven people used the public shelters, and that number soon dropped. Many more sheltered fairly safely at home or at work. There is detailed information about all aspects of sheltering in London in Terence O'Brien's Civil Defence. PRO CAB 102/31 contains some of the notes on shelters used in O'Brien's published book, and can provide extra information.

Home Shelters (p. 24)

Londoners with gardens were supplied with 'Anderson' shelters of metal, half-buried in the soil, and proof against most damage short of a direct hit. Later in the war 'Morrison' shelters, strong metal cages big enough to take a large mattress, became available for indoor use. There were other solutions too. The Museum of London’s ephemera collection has an advertisement dating from the earliest days of the war offering to convert garages into shelters by installing a tubular structure inside, padded all round with sandbags. The illustration is headed 'Gar-raid [sic] shelters, 42 Station Parade, Willesden Green NW2'. Paul Vaughan's father converted a spare room in their suburban semi with sandbags and strengthened walls — 'With bunk beds installed for all the family it would look like nothing so much as a dug-out in a quiet sector of the line around 1917...' (Something in Linoleum, (1994) p. 56). People quickly evolved a routine. When the siren sounded they seized children, pets and a waiting bag of necessities — thermos, snack, book, cards, knitting — and hurried to the basement, Anderson or Morrison shelter until the all clear sounded. Published and unpublished letters, memoirs, diaries, photographs and oral history tapes are the chief sources of information about this kind of sheltering.

Public Shelters: Mass-Observation (p. 31)

Mass-Observation's ubiquitous observers made detailed notes in the shelters. Folder5/A of the M-0's London Survey contains a report on all-night shelterers in the underground on 17 September 1940. The observer began work at Piccadilly underground station, moving on to other stations by train. At Piccadilly at 8 pm 'Only about 2% were already attempting to sleep in a sitting or doubled-position. Of the others some 46% were reading (mostly evening papers), some 14% eating (apples seemed favourites) and some20% of the women knitting'. This file also contains handwritten or typewritten responses to questionnaires on topics like the effects of air raids on leisure activity, reading habits and sleep patterns. Some give the addresses of respondents. In spite of continuing official endeavours, conditions in tube shelters remained unpleasant. M-0 2121, the VI survey contains a report from an M-0 observer in the summer of 1944: 'I was coming home at 11'O'clock last night and my God, the tube! How people can stand it all night I can't conceive - I felt quite sick and faint with it just standing waiting for my train. It was packed with people. You could cut the air with a knife'. The writer is described in M-0 shorthand as F 30 B, that is female, aged 30 and of social class B.

Public Shelters: Discipline (p. 32)

ARP shelter marshals, or shelter wardens, were responsible for keeping order. They were identified by a white armband with black lettering and a tin hat with the initials 'SM'. Many were part-time, though some larger shelters had paid full-timers. Among the IWM Sound Archive collection are some marshals' memories. Mrs Rennie, on IWM 2335/D/B, recalls her work as a part-time warden in an unnamed East End shelter, and her horror at first seeing the crowd staggering and fighting its way in. The state of the shelter was deplorable— 'it hit you in the face', with inadequate sanitation and water streaming down the walls. She recalls the difficulty of getting children to settle for sleep while adults were still moving about. Mrs Rennie used to bribe them with sweets, bought with a levy of 1d per adult, offering a sweet for the first one ready for bed. The wardens operated under Defence Regulation23AB which empowered them to give instructions to shelterers, and eject trouble-makers. Dolly Rolph, on IWM 2336/D/C was a deputy warden in shelters in the Bethnal Green area. She describes discipline problems. Some of the shelterers brought a piano in and began to have noisy singsongs after the pubs closed, keeping others awake. Failing to persuade them to be more considerate, she had to ask the local council to bring in regulations to restrict noise. They were 'lively times', she says.

Public Shelters: Personal Recollections (p. 32)

Like evacuation, sheltering made a great impression on the individual memory and there are plenty of published and unpublished memoirs, diaries and oral history tapes recalling the experience. Some were written soon after the event, others many years later. The IWM collection contains numerous examples, including a description of the organisation, routine and conditions in a shelter during an air raid in 1943 or 1944 in Misc.167 (2546) and a six year old's letter to his grandfather, written in a Blackfriars shelter in 1940, describing the sights and sounds around him, in 88/49/1. Anthony Heap enjoyed the regular shelter entertainment. 'Went round to the weekly BMA shelter concert in the evening, co-shelterer Collins and the two curates from St Pancras Church being the star turns. A lively affair', he wrote on 16 January 1941 (LMA ACC 2243/15/1). Interviewees talk about shelters, among many other topics, in the Making of Modern London television programme tapes held at the Museum of London.