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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Roger Marsh of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Roger Marsh and has been added to the site with the author’s permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Pre-school memories of WWII in the East End of Sheffield - Part 2
By
Roger Marsh

Coal was delivered by the coalman who transported the coal on the back of a horse drawn wagon; this mode of transport later gave way to motorised lorries.

The one hundredweight sacks of coal were carried from the wagon, on the backs of the coalmen and then the sacks of coal were emptied into the cellar through the coalhole, which was located in the passageway at the side of the house. The coalhole was normally covered by a cast iron or steel cellar grate, which was secured into position by a chain that was looped around the grate and fixed onto the wall of the cellar by a hook.

We would buy one ton of coal, which was delivered in sacks. Each sack would contain one hundredweight of coal and 20 sacks making up one ton. It was important to count each sack as it was emptied into the cellar through the cellar grate. This was to avoid the trick sometimes used by the coal deliverymen to give short measure. What they would do, if the householder was busy and did not watch them carefully, was to deliver the coal and as each sack was emptied they would lay them in a pile to be counted at the time that they were paid for the coal. The trick was that one of the sacks in the middle of the pile would be folded in half then when they were counted it would appear that they had delivered one more sack than they actually had.

It was my job to count the number of sacks of coal delivered, I do not know how good I was at that age at counting to twenty but at least I could look out for the folded sack. I do not know if the coalman thought that I could count or not but my presence was supposed to keep him honest.

The fruit and vegetables that my father and mother grew in our back garden supplemented our rations. The wonderful flavours that came from this food cannot be found in the food purchased from today’s supermarkets.

Another way of supplementing the rations was through the “Black Market”. The black market was the illegal underground economy that was prevalent throughout the war and almost everyone was involved in one way or another though this would be denied. This market was based on barter and cash. The currency that we used was hen’s eggs.

At the top of our garden at Station Road my father built two large pens for the hens. The largest consisted of an enclosed wooden hut that was a lean-to on to the red brick wall that separated our back garden from the gennel that ran parallel with Station Road. The hut had a wooden floor and tarpaulin on the roof to make it water proof. This hut contained the nesting boxes where the hens laid their eggs and the perches, on which they roosted to sleep at night, a door allowed access to the nesting boxes so that we could collect the eggs. The wooden wall opposite to the brick wall had glass windows that could be opened for ventilation. This wall also contained two bob holes, which allowed the hens to go out side into the run made from a wooden frame over which chicken wire mesh was stretched, including the roof. There was also a door for access into the run. The steel shortages meant that my father made all the hinges for the doors from leather cut from old boots and shoes. The knife that he used was made from a broken saw blade with string wrapped round it for a handle.

The outside run had an earth floor and was where the hens would exercise, drink and eat. I believe that during the war people were allowed to keep 12 hens, to help feed the population, and were allowed a ration of meal to feed them. The meal was bought from an animal feed shop near the railway bridge at the bottom of Prince of Wales Road.

The wood for the construction of the pens came from the wood yard located at the bottom of Staniforth Road at the railway bridge by the side of the Darnall Curve of the railway line. The wood had to be transported by tram from the wood yard to Station Road providing that the wood would fit under the stairs that gave access to the upper deck of the tram.

Most of the nails and screws that my father used were second-hand and had been recovered from one place or another. One of my jobs was to straighten the nails if they were bent. I do not suppose that I was very good at it, but it would have kept me entertained. We had to use special ‘U’ shaped nails to secure the chicken wire.

The hens that my father believed to be the best layers of eggs were a cross between Rhode Island Red and White Leghorn. These he bought as 12 one-day-old chicks and was raised in boxes in our house. They were fed on crumbs from slices of bread that had been baked hard in the oven of the Yorkshire Range and then rolled with a rolling pin until it was ground down into very small crumbs. They thrived on this and were soon large enough to be put in the pen to live.

Having built the first pen and installed the first dozen chickens my father moved on to build the second pen that was of a similar design to the first.

So far the operation had been legitimate but when the first chickens had matured and started to lay eggs my father bought a further 12 one-day-old chicks. I loved to go with him to by the chickens; he would check them to see that he was not being given any cock birds. Cock birds presented two problems the first being that they did not lay eggs and the second was that they would crow early in the morning and annoy the neighbors who would then complain. Complaining neighbors was not a good idea because they were a source of food for the birds and we did not want to attract the attention of the authorities.

When the second dozen chicks had matured and were placed in the second pen we had 24 birds to feed. This meant that we had twice as many birds as we had rations to feed them. The way that we overcame this was to supplement their feed in various ways. The ration of meal was cooked in a pan with water, to this was added all the potato peelings that we could get our hands on. The birds would also peck at and eat leaves from cabbages and cauliflowers. The flower of the cauliflower would be removed and the leaves still attached to the stalk would be hung upside down in the run for them to peck at. They would scratch in the earth in the run and eat any worms, insects and minerals that they could find. They were also fed grit to help with the forming of the shells of their eggs.

With 24 hens each laying one egg per day we soon had a good supply of eggs, which we could use for barter.

Very soon our neighbors, including some that we were not that friendly with, started arriving at our door with potato peelings, cabbage and cauliflower leaves wrapped in newspaper, in the hope that they would sometimes receive an egg in exchange.

In the cellar of our house was a very large earthenware jar, which was much bigger than me. It was filled with a mixture of isinglass and water. Isinglass is a gelatinous substance prepared from the swimming bladders of the sturgeon, cod, and other fish.
This fluid would prevent air passing through the porous shell of the hen’s eggs. We would store many eggs in this jar and an egg that was stored in this way would be as good as a fresh new laid egg when it was removed from the jar and cooked.

At some time we acquired a full grown Rhode Island Red hen, which was to become my pet, she had a circular hole in the web between two of her toes that looked as if it had been made by some kind of punch. She was duly named “Hole-in-the-Foot”. This bird became the matriarch of our chickens. If any other bird stopped laying it would be quickly dispatched, plucked, drawn and cooked in the pot with a new chicken taking its place. This would not happen to “Hole-in-the-Foot” because she would go broody very quickly. So when we needed new one-day-old chicks we would place “Hole-in-the-Foot” in a special hutch that had been made for her. When she laid an egg it would be removed and a pot egg put in its place. She would then go broody, as a result of this clutch of pot eggs, and we would buy the new chicks. We would remove a pot egg one at a time and replace each one with a chick until she was sitting on the full batch, which she would then raise as if they were her own. Needless to say “Hole-in-the-Foot” eventually died of old age and was buried with great ceremony in the back garden.

Another spin off of keeping chickens was that the mature manure from the runs would be used in the garden for fertilizer, a valuable commodity in wartime.
Trains transported parcels around the rail network these also included baskets full of racing pigeons. Railway drayman would collect and deliver the parcels at Darnall railway station located at the top of Station Road. The dray was a low horse drawn cart used for delivery of goods; the bed was at chest height to allow for easy loading and unloading.

The manure from the horses that pulled the drays up and down our street was another rich source of fertilizer, for the garden. I was always on stand by with a bucket and hand shovel to collect the horse manure before some other kid off the street got to it first. Other horse drawn drays that could be seen on Station Road during the war were those used by the milkman, coalman and rag and bone man.
We would also pick up any lumps of coal that may have fallen from the coalman’s dray nothing was left to go to waste.

Another black market activity took place when a pig from the allotments adjacent to High Hazels Park Darnall was taken to the cellar of a local building on the corner between Prince of Wales Road and Handsworth Road where it was slaughtered and butchered. The meat was shared up and the evidence was eaten within 24 hours.

My maternal grandmother had two jobs. In the morning and at night she would clean the offices in the works of Davy and United Engineering Co. Ltd. at the bottom of Prince of Wales Road and in the day she was a sales assistant in a dress shop called Linda Lee’s across the road from Darnall Church of England.

My grandmother had a friend at the dress shop called Joan Pollard who had been a very attractive woman she had driven ambulances during the Sheffield Blitz; and this had resulted in her suffering disfiguring burns to her body and face. One day she had given to me the wristwatch that she had used when driving the ambulance, it was the first time that I had seen a watch with an illumines face. It was most impressive under the bedclothes and I kept that watch for many years.

I was very proud on one occasion when Joan Pollard took me into the center of Sheffield for lunch at The British Restaurant. The Ministry of Food had set up communal kitchens known as British Restaurant that were run by local food committees on a non-profit making basis. The idea was for people to have a good quality wholesome meal without using the coupons from their ration book. The British Restaurant was more like the inside of a works canteen with very large queues. To a child the inside the restaurant was tremendously loud with the noise of cutlery being scraping on plates, chairs scraping on the floor and the many conversations. All this added to the excitement of being taken on a day out in town. The main meal would cost around one shilling and six pence (7 ½ p). All of the food that was not used would be used as pigswill so that there was no waste at all.

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