Domestic Soldiers

by Jennifer Purcell

  Thousands can die of starvation in Bengal … and as far as one can see, no one gives a damn. A puppet and pipsqueak like Mosley is moved from prison to some secret place (where you bet he’ll be well watched) and the protests are so public and emphatic that even the BBC has to mention them in their news.

  Initially, the Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery, was unconcerned about the growing numbers of starving Indians (in his view, India was ‘overpopulated’ anyway), but the mounting crisis soon became a public relations nightmare and also threatened to destabilize India with the Japanese enemy at the gates. Help began to pour in that autumn, and an inquiry into the famine was launched in the summer of 1944. It was too little too late: by that time at least 1.5 million people had perished.

  Nearly one year after Sir William Beveridge went to the people with his plan to slay the five giants of want, ignorance, idleness, disease and squalor, Churchill’s government had done little to implement any of his ideas. Indeed, many believed that Churchill had effectively scotched the whole idea. Although he had gone to the people in a BBC broadcast in March of 1943 with his Four Years’ Plan, it was clear he resented being strong-armed into focusing on reconstruction policy, considering, he said, ‘We had nothing like won the war. People were always getting ahead of the events.’ 15

  Furthermore, the man of the hour, Beveridge himself, had been ousted from official participation in bringing his plan to fruition. After the glowing reception of his report, he had hoped to be allowed to carry out further investigations – especially on the possibility of full employment – but no invitation to do so was forthcoming. Sidelined from official channels of government, Sir William therefore embarked on his own personal investigations with the help of private funds put up by publisher Edward Hulton.

  When Beveridge appeared on the BBC panel discussion programme Brains Trust in September 1943, his frustration with the government was palpable. While the panel argued that the people should ‘fight with a unity of purpose for the very things in England that they want in England,’ Sir William pointed out that ‘the people who lead’ must also effectively plan and organize for the future. When, later in the programme, a question was posed regarding the government’s position on a National Health Service, Beveridge stuttered, ‘I can’t answer this question because I don’t know what the government’s proposals are – er – at all.’ The entire panel that day seemed frustrated with the lack of concern exhibited in government circles over Beveridge’s proposals. In fact, the final word on the subject was a slightly paranoid and thoroughly humorous jab at the government. To the presenter’s summation of the debate, ‘We’re not really in a position to issue a statement because the government’s position is not yet known,’ Julian Huxley, biologist and popular regular on the programme, nervously responded, ‘They aren’t here, are they? The government?’ The audience roared with laughter.16

  The frustration and anger which that laughter thinly disguised eventually pressured Churchill into action. On 12 November 1943, he created a new ministry focused on reconstruction, with the popular Minister of Food, Lord Woolton, at its head. At last, it seemed, something might be done to make a better future. Still, scepticism regarding Churchill’s true motives was never fully erased. As Irene Grant confided to M-O, ‘I don’t trust him in the peace.’

  Chapter Nine: Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Hun

  1 Quoted in Thomas R. Brooks, The War North of Rome: June 1944–May 1945 (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2003), p. 2.

  2 Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: Vol. 5, Closing the Ring (New York: Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt, 1986), p. 380.

  3 Quoted in Nicola Lambourne, War Damage in Western Europe: The Destruction of Historic Monuments During the Second World War (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001), p. 140.

  4 Quoted in Martin Gilbert, The Second World War: A Complete History (New York: Macmillan, 2004), p. 500.

  5 Keith Lowe, Inferno: The Fiery Destruction of Hamburg, 1943 (New York: Scribner, 2007), p. 64.

  6 ‘Hamburg Smoke Four Miles Up’, The Times, 31 July 1943, p. 4 col. F.

  7 ‘Evacuation of Hamburg’, The Times, 2 August 1943, p. 4 col. G.

  8 Lyrics in Noel Coward, The Complete Lyrics, ed. Barry Day (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1998), p. 207.

  9 William Gallacher, Hansard Oral Answers to Questions, 4 November 1943.

  10 Quoted in Francis L. Loewenheim, Harold D. Langley and Manfred Jonas, eds, Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspondence (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1975), p. 10.

  11 Winston Churchill, Hansard Oral Answers to Questions, 4 November 1943.

  12 ‘Housekeeping Savings’, The Times, 9 November 1943, p. 2, col. D.

  13 Stephen Michael Cretney, Family Law in the Twentieth Century: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 117.

  14 George Woods, Hansard Commons Sittings, 1 December 1943.

  15 Kevin Jefferys, The Churchill Coalition and Wartime Politics, 1940–1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), p. 122.

  16 Brains Trust transcript, 13 September 1943, BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham Park.

  CHAPTER TEN

  CAN YOU BEAT THAT?

  On a clear and frosty February morning in 1944, a middle-aged woman stood before a magistrate in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, accused of seriously defrauding a local colliery. Nicknamed ‘Lady Bountiful’ by the press for her free-spending ways, Dorothy Elliott had almost got away with an elaborate scheme embezzling thousands from her employers, the Wombwell Colliery Company and Wombwell Coking Company. The chairman of the colliery, who also happened to be a director at the bank, by chance discovered Elliott’s misdeeds in a bank meeting at which he learned of an overdraft that had been granted to the colliery. Believing his company was financially sound, he was ‘surprised and horrified’ at the discovery and immediately launched an investigation into the matter.1

  The trail soon led to Dorothy Elliott, a secretary who had worked for the companies in various capacities for nearly thirty years. As secretary (a position she had held for over a decade), she was responsible for managing both the colliery and coking companies’ bank accounts, handling payments and deposits. The investigators soon learned that Miss Elliott – who made £500 a year – was notorious for her odd and extravagant spending habits around town, such as paying out huge sums (£1,100 in one instance) in £1 notes. Since customers often paid for their coal deliveries with such small bills, it was not long before Elliott became the prime suspect. Further investigation turned up a cheque from the coking company to the colliery which had been altered significantly. Knowing the coking company’s accounts could not handle a £37,000 transfer of funds, Lady Bountiful lowered the cheque by £10,000 to cover her tracks. But, after ten years of cooking the books and defrauding the companies of over £90,000, she made a mistake in her reckoning, and the overdraft that started the investigation eventually led to her arrest.

  That winter, Yorkshire was abuzz with the Lady Bountiful trial. In Sheffield, not far from Wombwell, Edie Rutherford followed the case with interest, and the story even broke in Gateshead, raising a few eyebrows in Irene Grant’s household. As details of Miss Elliott’s exploits filtered through the media that February and March, Natalie Tanner discussed the case with friends over cups of coffee at her usual haunt – the Gambit cafe in Leeds. The crowd at the Gambit was unanimous in their amazement that no one in Barnsley had ever questioned Elliott’s source of income. An unmarried secretary of Elliott’s stature might live quite comfortably, but Lady Bountiful lived lavishly: the press reported that she had recently bought a farm and several expensive paintings. Furthermore, she had a reputation for tipping handsomely (£100 in one case). A secretary’s salary could never handle such free-spending ways, and Tanner figured that enough gossips trawled through the newspapers to see who had landed windfall inheritances to know that Dorothy Elliott had never been so lucky as to grace the news columns in such a way.

  But the rea
l question, according to the newspapers, regarded Lady Bountiful’s motives. Dorothy Elliott’s defence argued that she was mentally unbalanced and pressed for a psychiatric evaluation. The consulting doctor affirmed the defence and told the jury at Leeds Assizes that Dorothy Elliott was indeed ‘hysterical and had two personalities’. Asking for clarification, the justice wondered if Lady Bountiful was a ‘sort of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?’ The doctor answered that she was. On one level, he claimed, she was quite normal, but on the other, it was clear Elliott had no ‘moral sense’ that altering cheques was wrong.2 Edie Rutherford, who followed current events voraciously, kept abreast of the developments in the case. She sincerely hoped Elliott would get the psychological treatment she needed, but wasn’t convinced the plea would work. Indeed, it didn’t.

  Natalie Tanner’s friends, or ‘cronies’ as she called them, were absolutely captivated by the case. The Gambit cafe cleared out during the trial, as Natalie’s cronies flocked to the Leeds Assizes to hear the case unfold. Rarely moved by such public spectacle, she, on the other hand, drank her coffee in silence and later learned from her friends that the jury was unmoved by Elliott’s plea of insanity. Lady Bountiful was sent down for six and a half years. Tanner was satisfied with the verdict, convinced that if the insanity defence had been successful, it would have cleared the way for abuses in the future – especially for big-time white-collar swindles. What was perhaps the most galling about the entire case, Tanner complained, was the fact that such a defence could be entered in the first place. To her, it was a matter of class inequity: no explanation was needed when the poor steal, but when well-off individuals do, Natalie argued, there must be some underlying psychological defect. Indeed, she thought, ‘If a poor person pinches things in a shop, it’s plain stealing – if a rich person does, it’s kleptomania.’

  The war provided many opportunities for the criminally inclined, and – especially in the case of black market trade – even for those who would be the most upright of citizens in peacetime. Wartime shortages of goods, rationing and coupon schemes, and other government aid programmes, as well as a shortage of manpower and oversight, extended a welcoming invitation for criminal activity. Furthermore, there were many more potential crimes to commit in wartime, as Parliament deemed a range of normally innocuous behaviour – from gossiping or complaining to wasting food – to be harmful, and therefore criminal, in a society plunged in total war.

  In the initial eighteen months of the war, when the home front atmosphere was tense in anticipation of German invasion and the uncertainty of victory, prosecutions for defeatist talk or behaviour soared. In March 1942, one elderly woman was fined £50 and sent to jail for a month’s hard labour when she struck up a conversation with a soldier at a cafe in Hove and expressed pro-German sentiments. Simply acting depressed in public could bring upon one a heap of indignation. Nella Last was admonished when she came into the WVS centre looking tired and a little depressed after the news of the Belgian defeat in the spring of 1940. She was quickly reprimanded that such behaviour was a ‘crime’, especially since her usual contagious ‘cheerfulness’ was integral to the overall morale of the women at the centre.

  In the first nine months of 1943 alone, Home Secretary Herbert Morrison informed the House of Commons that fifty-four individuals were found guilty of offences under Defence Regulation 3, ‘the unauthorised obtaining and communicating of information useful to the enemy’.3 These individuals were prosecuted for what the average Briton on the street in 1943 might call ‘careless talk’ – a phrase coined by an early propaganda campaign (‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’) aimed at thwarting the spread of rumour, defeatism or any sensitive details that might benefit the enemy.

  As essential products and food became scarce or under the control of the government, an individual or business could be found guilty of the crime of wasting these items. The squandering of food, paper, rags and fuel, for instance, were all considered wartime crimes.

  Although considered criminal behaviour in wartime, participation in the black market occurred along a continuum. Some people attempted to gain more than their fair share while others sought out the huge profits that could be gleaned on the black market. Some of the most common of these crimes occurred in the ‘grey market’, in which proprietors rewarded their best customers by offering them scarce commodities ‘under the counter’.4 Sometimes proprietors nudged prices above the government’s controlled levels or fudged weights and measures to make extra profit, and there seemed little one could do upon encountering such deceptive practices, as Edie Rutherford found out one cold November day in 1941. ‘Paid 2/8d for a small rabbit,’ she related to M-O.

  It was slapped on and off [the] scales so fast that even my quick eye could not see what it weighed, but anyway, it is afterwards relieved of its fur coat, so one cannot check up whether one has been overcharged.

  She would have complained, but decided against it, as she had already waited half an hour in the queue, and did not want to cause disruption for all the other women queuing behind her who were ecstatic simply to be given the chance to buy even a skinny overpriced rabbit.

  Scarce items might be had under the counter for a wink, a nod and a little extra cash. One undercover Ministry of Food inspector was able to buy a rabbit for well over double its government-controlled price and to pay an exorbitant rate for half a dozen eggs, a few stockings and a coat – all without surrendering one coupon. The butcher in question was given six months in jail and fined £120. As in this case, one could always find ways of sidestepping proper procedure – of paying more than the allowed price without surrendering the necessary coupons. (The butcher had told the inspector that coupons ‘don’t matter’ and did not accept them when offered.)5

  Although there were penalties for engaging in this illegal activity, some had no qualms disclosing that they did so. Edie Rutherford and her office mates ‘pounced’ on the foreman when he told them that he ‘buys clothes on the Black Market whenever he can, as coupons are inadequate’. Furthermore, he informed them, he refused to pay the high prices in the shop. ‘These overalls I’m wearing cost 10/-. They’d be 35/-AND coupons in a shop!’ he proudly declared. But Edie deflated his pride somewhat when she pointed out that the only way he could spend so little was if the overalls were stolen, ‘which means’, she concluded, ‘that you connive at theft as well as buy illegally’. She then warned the foreman to refrain from divulging any more tales of illegal activity, as she did not want to feel compelled to report him.

  On another occasion, an acquaintance told Edie that the government regularly issued her ten clothing coupons for work overalls, but since the original ones had not yet worn through, she simply used the allocation to purchase other clothes. Rutherford was exasperated at such abuse of the system, and at the fact that people were not duly ashamed of their behaviour. ‘Why such folk calmly tell others this sort of thing’, she said incredulously, ‘beats me’. Of course, some of Edie’s annoyance probably stemmed from the fact that she did not receive extra clothing coupons for her work, despite the fact that she thought she deserved them.

  The diarists were usually either indignant at such abuses, protesting their moral superiority in such matters, or – not wanting to admit wrong-doing – simply silent about it in their writings to M-O. Nonetheless, it is likely that Natalie Tanner, despite such silence, probably dabbled somewhere along the continuum from grey to black market during (and after) the war. Natalie rarely complained about shortages, and when her son needed or desired new clothes, there were rarely any problems. Over the course of the war, she bought her son at least two new suits, numerous pullovers, socks and other clothes that were difficult (if not all but impossible) to procure with such regularity under the strictures of clothes rationing and coupons.

  Natalie also did quite well for herself, managing to feed her cigarette addiction and her shoe addiction at a time when both were quite scarce. In May 1942, for instance, she ‘fell in love with [and bought] a pair of red wedge he
eled shoes for 55/-’. Since her husband’s business was thriving, it’s not surprising that Natalie used the family fortune to purchase what she or her loved ones desired – it was a simple wartime fact that those with money could always find what they wanted, for a price. Furthermore, Natalie did most of her shopping in Leeds, which was notorious for its thriving black market. Indeed, the Evening Standard proclaimed in January 1945 that, ‘You do not need coupons in Leeds if you are prepared to pay the price.’6

  Professional thieves adapted to the exigencies of war and often shifted their focus from big-ticket items such as furs and jewellery to the more mundane but now high-demand and scarce items that could be easily moved on the black market, such as food and clothing. Rationing coupons also provided a lucrative trade for both big-time criminals and amateurs alike. Some defrauded the government by passing fake coupons, while others stole massive hauls of ration books and unloaded them on the black market.

  On the other hand, there were those individuals who sold unwanted personal coupons or ration books simply to get by. Edie reported in the spring of 1944 that some women in Sheffield had been arrested for selling their coupons to store clerks. Edie was not offended by these women’s actions, but instead sided with them. The incident, she thought, only pointed out the significant problems endemic in a system in which poor women were forced to sell coupons because they did not have enough money to purchase legally the necessary clothing for their families. Rather, these women had to sell their clothing coupons for money in order to buy the ‘cast-offs’ of the well-to-do. Furthermore, according to Edie and her neighbours, the women’s actions were not harmful to others: they did not flood the market with coupons or steal coupons. ‘Why don’t they [the police] find the real lowdown people and prosecute them?’ Edie wondered.