When I was writing recently about the women who collected Britain’s rubbish during the Second World War, I came across one detail that I kept thinking about afterwards. Families were being asked to keep certain things out of the dustbin because they might still be useful.
One of those things was bones.
It sounds rather strange now, but wartime households were encouraged to save bones alongside waste paper, scrap metal, rubber and old rags. Posters reminded people to separate them from their ordinary rubbish and leave them out for collection.
There was good reason for all this. Before the war Britain brought a great deal of its food, fuel and raw materials in from abroad. Once merchant ships were being attacked and supplies became harder to bring into the country, anything that could be reused at home became more valuable.
Bones were a surprisingly useful part of that effort. On the 22nd of February 1940, the collection of household bones appeared in a written Parliamentary question. The Minister of Supply confirmed that local authorities had been asked to help with collections and explained that bones were treated in the manufacture of glue, with what remained then being used for fertilisers.
Other wartime publicity went further, telling people that bones were wanted for planes, explosives and fertilisers. Fats could also be extracted during processing for industrial use.
All of which meant that the remains of dinner might have to linger around the house for a little longer than anyone would probably have preferred. WVS advice even suggested keeping bones in a lidded container until they could be collected.
Paper was everywhere in the salvage campaigns. Newspapers, cardboard and unwanted books could all be gathered up and reused. A Ministry of Information poster from the war claimed that 70 million books had been collected by December 1943. They were sorted rather than all being immediately destroyed: some were pulped, some went towards replacing books in bomb-damaged libraries and others were kept for members of the armed forces.
Old clothing and scraps of material were collected too.
Worn textiles could arrive at salvage factories where they were separated according to their type and condition. Some became wiping cloths for machinery. Knitted material could be broken down and reused in blankets, uniforms and other clothing, while linen and calico were useful in making paper and Admiralty charts. Even material in very poor condition could sometimes find a use in things such as roofing felt or mattress filling.
When clothes were already rationed and families were being encouraged to make do and mend, there probably wasn't an endless supply of perfectly good clothing waiting to be handed over. Salvage really did mean finding some value in things that had reached the end of their ordinary life.
The collections became part of everyday wartime routines. Paper was bundled, metals separated and bones kept aside rather than disappearing into the dustbin. Posters appeared telling households what was wanted, while councils and organisations including the WVS helped organise collections and salvage drives.
Then there were the famous pots and pans.
The aluminium collection campaign is often remembered through “Saucepans for Spitfires”. Families handed over aluminium cookware believing the metal could help aircraft production. The National Archives points out that the government did not actually need all the extra aluminium being collected. But the campaign still gave people at home a very visible way to feel they were contributing.
Going back to those wartime rubbish collections, it makes the contents of the dustbin look rather different.
Before anything was thrown away, people were being encouraged to look at it once more. A newspaper, an old shirt, a broken metal object or the bones left after a meal might still be wanted somewhere else.
I don't think I will ever look at the phrase “wartime salvage” quite the same way again - especially now I know someone had to keep the bones.
No comments:
Post a Comment