On This Day, 20 April 1918

Birmingham Daily Post

Saturday 20 April 1918

CHILDREN’S RATION CARDS

QUEUE SCENES AT MARGARET STREET

DIFFICULTIES OF THE OFFICALS

The system has not yet died out in Birmingham. This week it has been strongly in evidence every afternoon outside the Food Office in Margaret Street. The reason was the enormous number of people, principally women, who had gone to the office to exchange their children’s ration cards for adults’ cards. All children on attaining the age of six years become entitled to cards issued to adults, and this weak it has seemed as though all the children in Birmingham reached the age of six during the current month. To effect an exchange forms of application were obtained, and these having been filled up were posted to the Food Office or taken there personally together with the child’s meat card and the registration dockets from the butcher and bacon retailer. Most people preferred take them, and as the afternoon is the most convenient time for working men’s wives the thoroughfare has been crowded in the vicinity of the office between the hours of two and five o’clock.

…

A “MOTHER AND BABY” TRICK

It was not had yesterday as on other days, and the work was accomplished by tea time, but to stand in the street for hour or more was a sore trial to mothers with babies. One might have imagined at one period that all the babies in Birmingham were taken to Margaret Street. Perhaps there was method in that. The women soon became aware of the fact that all mothers with babies were taken out of the queue and conducted into the office, so that the little ones might not be kept in the cold longer than was absolutely necessary. The result was that mothers who had been attended to with considerate expedition promptly lent their babies to other women who had none, so that they too might have an interview with the officials without undue delay. The trick was noticed by many of the staff, but there was no time to cross-examine the applicants, and elderly women with young babies and young women with babies often not their own obtained a preference through the one fact that each was carrying a baby. Those people who had gone to the office without babies and had none to present patiently waited their turns. They sympathised with the little ones, and did not grumble at the obvious trick which was often played by their more astute sisters.