| Popis: |
Childhood in Worcestershire was interrupted by the First World War; punctured by a multitude of activities involving food production and harvesting, raising funds for war charities and school closures to view visiting tanks. The rural population is often perceived as being more conservative and patriotic than their urban neighbours, but this study suggests a more complex picture. School absences steadily increased during wartime, caused not only by the numerous childhood illnesses but also by the disruption to the household that wartime and a father’s absence might produce. Children looked after siblings, stood in food queues for their mothers and undertook new tasks in allotments, gardens, smallholdings or farms. When attending school, the curriculum was abandoned frequently for children to participate not only in patriotic activities such as knitting comforts for troops or gathering eggs for wounded soldiers but also in more practical, economically useful activities such as growing vegetables and picking blackberries. |
