Textile rationing in the second world war

[TheOfficialBren]

How did textile ratiining during the second world war affect the kilt-makers and highland dress tailors? Were kilt yardages reduced? Were fewer kilts produced?

Thanks for your replies.

[Jock Scot]

I was too young to understand the technicalities of rationing at the time, but "make do and mend" was very much the order of the day and this national train of thought, due to continued shortages, continued well into the 1950's. However it was amazing what a couple of lamb chops, or even half a dozen eggs(wealth indeed!) could procure. In reality though, the war effort allowed little space for the production of fripperies like tartan.

[Chas]

Wartime rationing produced a very surreal and artificial atmosphere in the country. The effects were felt long after the rationing stopped. Like a pebble thrown into a pond, the ripples will reach the furthest shore, strike, and rebound, long after the pebble is on the bottom.

Each person was issued with 'Clothing Coupons' which allowed you to buy clothing. Every item had a certain coupon value. It had nothing to do with money - at all. There was plenty of money in the country - just nothing to buy. For example - between 1939 and 1945, my aunt worked in a munitions factory in Birmingham. Her husband (my uncle), was fighting in the army overseas. Apart from a small amount for personal use, he had his wages sent home to his wife. On the day he was demobbed in 1946, they bought (with the combined saved money) a house and land freehold for £5,000. When she died in 2005, the house and land was valued at a few pence short of 1 million £s.

A suit was a suit and was worth (let us say) 10 coupons. Whether it was mass produced in a sweatshop or hand stitched by a Saville Row tailor it was worth the same 10 coupons. If you did not have the 10 coupons, you were not able to buy the suit. It was a criminal offence for a retailer to sell things without the required amount of coupons exchanged.

There are many anecdotal stories of whole villages saving their coupons up to buy a wedding dress, which was then used buy all the brides in the parish for years to come.

Having a family with preteen/early teen children was the most advantageous, as it was appreciated that they would need more clothing for the growth spurts and were issued more. If a family was bombed or burnt out it was automatic for them to say 'All our coupons were destroyed' and get new ones issued. Many a dead child was still issued with coupons for a year or two after their death - the coupons were never returned.

When servicemen were demobbed they were issued with a 'Demob Suit'. If you were lucky, you got blue, or blue pinstripe or, grey, or grey pinstripe. Unfortunately there were many thousands of bolts of cloth woven in peculiar colours. One of the most famous was known as ' Two shades of dogsh*t brown with a hideous red overcheck'. Most of those were re-dyed, black. But because of the poorness of the dye, they came out very dark brown with a dark red check - an improvement, but not much.

As an aside, the war finished in '45; I was born in '52; rationing didn't finally end till '54; in '58 (aged six), I was wearing a hand-knitted wartime swimsuit. The ripples lasted a long time and I still remember how itchy it was!

Regards

Chas

[neloon]

I was born in '41. My memory is that, particularly for children. there was just an enormous amount of hand-me-down clothing sometimes in rather bizarre combinations There was a great deal of knitting, for example, of kilt stockings using stored-away supplies of pre-war wool. In those days, boys' kilts always had hems so one had the same kilt from age 5 to 12, say, quite possibly inherited from father or uncle, and just let down a bit each year.

[Pleater]

My mother's father died just before the second world war and her mother went out cleaning, and was given old clothes from attic chests and dressing up boxes to remodel into whatever could be made for the owners. From the scraps she made patchwork quilts, which were greatly sought after in the 1960s as they contained many fabrics from the 1800s.

Many men returning home found that their entire wardrobe had been restyled to make clothes for the family, or sold to buy food - not all food was on the rationed list. The wide trousers of a suit could be converted into a skirt, possibly two if it was for a young woman, there were special meetings for women to learn how to make the most of different items of already made clothing, combining small amounts of cloth and knitting wool - anything at all which could be made into a garment.

I suspect that many kilts went to make skirts and jackets or coats for those at home, rather than new ones being made

When I was born in 1951 I had a ration book all my own, but my mum was very glad that I would eat liver, as that was not rationed. It took quite a long time for the country to recover from the war, and for years factories were making goods for export to earn money and what was available at home was usually of lower quality. Gradually factories were allowed to sell freely, but many items were marked 'export quality' to denote that they were the good stuff rather than what had been available before.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[tundramanq]

Great topic TOB ! And great memories. We had rationing here in the US but we were not ducking bombs too! Mom could still pull together a feast with nothng many years later. Born in 1953, most of my clothes in my early years she made. Hardship improves the breed.
I learned a lot about rationing when Mom needed to make a cake and didn't have enough sugar. Without missing a beat she grabbed a box of lemon Jello and tossed it in. Bug eyed, I asked. - Sugar was rationed during the war, but Jello, that is mostly sugar was not. Darn good chocolate cake with a hint of lemon too!

[TheOfficialBren]

Thank you for your stories, folks. I imagined prior to posting that kilts would have become a very low priority during that period, and rightly so, considering the desperate state of things.

My father was born in 1943 (I am the youngest of four and all of my siblings are at least a decade older than me). My mother was born in 1946. They tell stories that their parents told them about rationing during the war.

The story about the village wedding dress was very touching and bittersweet. A community pulling together is a wonderful thing.

[Pleater]

When reading about the code breakers of Bletchley Park I found a mention of the girls working the devices taking advantage of the warm air generated by the electronics and blown away through large ducts, to do a bit of washing when they were there for long hours. Male engineers would back away blushing having encountered improvised washing lines with dainty garments wafting gently in the balmy breeze.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[TheOfficialBren]

Haha! That is a bit funny.

:-)

[Father Bill]

When reading about the code breakers of Bletchley Park I found a mention of the girls working the devices taking advantage of the warm air generated by the electronics and blown away through large ducts, to do a bit of washing when they were there for long hours. Male engineers would back away blushing having encountered improvised washing lines with dainty garments wafting gently in the balmy breeze.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

When I was visiting for the parish one day as a student half a dozen years ago, the old gentleman was telling me all of his Airforce stories. His wife was silent with the look of the cat who swallowed the canary, so I asked her about her war experiences. They both grinned; she had been released from the Official Secrets Act just that week and told me that she was a spy. I asked her where, and she said that she worked at a place nobody had heard of, called Bletchley Park. I just about came out of my skin and asked if she had seen any of the Enigma machines. As it turned out, she was the girl who operated Enigma #1 every day. Talk about a contribution to the war effort! She was excited just that I knew what she was talking about, and I was dazzled to meet a real live war hero! True to her oath of secrecy, even her husband hadn't known about it until the time expired and she was released from it. She had just told him that she was a secretary. I guess she was still reticent out of habit, until asked.