Emergency in Ireland during World War Two: Food Petrol Ration Books

Local people from Dublin remember long queues and ration books during this time in Ireland.

When World War Two began in 1939 Ireland declared an official State of Emergency on 2^nd September 1939.

• The Emergency Powers Act was enacted the following day.
• This gave new powers to the Irish Government for the duration of World War Two.
• The Irish Government now had control of censorship of newspapers and all letters.

Rationing of food, clothes and petrol was introduced.

The six years of the war became known as the Emergency to the people of Ireland.

When older irish people speak of the memories of the War they always call it The Emergency.

Ration books were introduced to everyone in Ireland.

Ration books for food

Sean Lemass was appointed as Minister for Supplies in September 1939.

Some of the more important food stuffs that were rationed during and after the war in Ireland were tea, sugar, butter and flour. Bread was rationed in 1942.

Tobacco, soap and clothing as well as shoes were other items. Each ration book had instructions and rules in both English and Irish.

There were pages of numbered squares and each product required a different Ration Book. What was bought and when and in which shop had to be filled out too.

The people of Ireland were lucky though because unlike Britain eggs and meat were not rationed.

In fact Ireland continued to export live cattle and other meat products to Britain during World War 2.

It was hard for the people in the cities to get the chicken, eggs and pork if they did not have a garden or an allotment. Most people had relatives in the country who posted up these necessities.

The Irish Government also provided land in the Phoenix Park for allottments and a lot of people from Stoneybatter took advantage of this.

Christina Kiely. Born 1933. Dublin.

“I'll always remember when my father was in the Irish army during the Emergency. He’d come home on a Wednesday and we'd have a fry.

The table was pulled up beside the fire; we had sausages, rashers, eggs and black and white pudding. The white pudding was different than it is today.

It would break up and my mother would put it in water and make it into gravy. I always remember that because it was gorgeous.

The rationing was terrible though.

We had ration books for the tea, the butter and the sugar. We got more sugar because there were so many people in the house but it was never enough.

My mother would buy some more from this woman who didn't use it so much.

My father had the potatoes and vegetables growing in the garden too.

He'd shoot rabbits in the country side around us and my mother would put them on the table and skin them, then we'd have that for our dinner.

One time he brought chickens home, they were very young and he had them in a box with a bulb in it. They were kept beside the fire to keep warm for the first few weeks.

We never saw fruit like oranges or bananas.

The very first time I even saw an orange was when my brother who was working at the time bought one in town and that was after the war was over.

I remember the day he brought it home all right. Because you see rationing went on for a few years after the Emergency too.”

Rationing of petrol began almost immediately just after the start of the World War 2 in October 1939.

The official allowance for ordinary people with cars was eight gallons a month up to 10 hp; 12 gallons a month for cars 10 - 16 hp. Doctors, priests and vets also received an extra allowance.

For the first few years petrol was not too scarce but by the middle of 1941 things were getting bad with many private cars off the road.

By March 1942 most private cars and many trams were off the road. The trains began to use turf as an alternative energy supply. It worked well but put extra hours onto the journey.

Most people used bicycles or horse traps instead.

In 1942, twenty nine new barges were ordered to be used on the canals for the transportation of turf.

From April 1944, the petrol ration that was still supplied to doctors living in the city was withdrawn altogether. They had to use horse and traps to get to their patients. The priests also had to switch to this mode of transport.

With the shortages in fuel the Irish Government had set up The Phoenix Park in Dublin 7 as a collection point for turf, which was used as the main fuel in Ireland during the Emergency.

Peter Reid, born 1931 Stoneybatter Dublin 7

“This was the time of World War 2 or the Emergency as we knew it then, and there were piles of turf in the Phoenix Park, mountains and mountains of it.

My grandfather was selling the turf then and he used to tell me to go down to get the dockets for it down in Belvedere Road.

Can’t remember how much it was. I used to get the bus fare. I played for the hurling team in St Gabriel’s school and we’d go straight up to the Phoenix Park for practice after school and most of the time it would be those days that I had to collect the dockets for the turf.

Now I couldn’t refuse the grandfather or there would be murder.

I remember this day it was getting near to an important match we had and of course he wanted me to go up that day.

I remember saying to myself, ‘now how am I going to manage this. And what did I do, I ran all the way, I mean really ran fast, then I got the dockets and got the bus back to the Phoenix Park.

I was late but got there just in time to be picked for the team. We won the Schools Hurling Championship in CrokePark in 1945 with that team.”

By 1943 gas and electricity supplies were severely reduced.

The people of Ireland only had use of their gas cookers for a few hours a day. A Government man was sent around the cities to police the use of the gas in the homes.

He became known in Dublin as the Glimmer man. People tried to leave on the ‘glimmer’, the pilot light, to keep the pot of water hot for tea or a slow cooking stew. Anyone caught using it outside these hours had their gas supply cut off.

No escape from the Glimmer man

Because the Glimmer man had the power to enter any house at any time to check the cookers there was no escape. When the people heard the Glimmer man was in the area they would blow out the pilot light.

But he was up to all the tricks and would usually catch a few households before the cooker had time to cool down. He would put his hand on the cooker, if it was warm the household was in trouble and the gas was cut of altogether for at least a few weeks.

Margaret Ward. Born 1916. Stoneybatter Dublin 7.

“The Glimmer man, oh I remember the panic when he came on the scene.

You were allowed to use the gas for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, but then it had to be turned off.

Now everyone would leave the glimmer on and it gave out a tiny bit of heat, like what you'd call the pilot light these days. Well I needn't tell you the people would use this to cook a stew or boil the water. The kids in the street were always on the lookout for him.

But you see it wasn’t always the same fella. If the kids saw a strange man walking about they'd come running into the houses and let us know.

The glimmer was turned off and if it was the Glimmer man then we all hoped the top of the cooker was cold by the time he got to our house.

He was allowed to come into anyone's house whenever he liked. He would go over to the cooker and if it was hot, then he had the gas turned off and it could be for a long time too.”

Christina Kiely

" Yes we had a rhyme we sang when we played skipping out in the street. It was about the gas rationing and the glimmer. It went ' Keep it boiling on the glimmer, if you don't you get no dinner'. We'd sing that going in and out of the rope."

Bridget Reid. Born 1909. Stoneybatter Dublin 7.

“It was called the Emergency over here; my husband Leo joined the Irish Army straight away. He was stationed in the Curragh first.

The food shortages were terrible, by this time I had four children and Leo was in McKee Barracks. I was able to get tea from him when a lot of people couldn't get it in the shops.

The ration books never gave you enough to do you for the week.

But we managed, you had to. I remember in Manor Street there was a grocers; they had large barrels outside the shop.

One had pigs’ heads in it, the other had the pigs' trotters, all floating in salt water.

People would buy them and bring them home and boil them up. I never did, I couldn't stand to look at them, oh they made me feel sick.”

Peter Reid was eight years old when World War 2 started.

“Before the war we didn't have much money because there was no work then, my father was lucky to get a few days casual work here and there.

There's one particular day that stands out in my mind. There was nothing in the house to eat, now I mean nothing, no tea, sugar, bread; absolutely no food of any description, there wasn't even a stale piece of crust.

My mother had us all going through the drawers and cupboards looking for pennies. She eventually found a trupenny bit and we were able to get something in.

We could never afford butter and you couldn't eat the margarine, it's not like you get today, oh it would turn your stomach. We'd have bread and dripping and that was lovely, you could spread it like butter and the taste was great.

When World War Two broke out my father joined the Irish Army straight away. So it was good and bad for us, I hardly saw my father for those years but he had a regular job and wages. So we had money for food,

There was the Ration books and the long queues to put up with but at least we had the money to pay for it then. The Army paid my mother direct every fortnight.”

Mrs Keenan. Born 1927. Stoneybatter Dublin 7

“Butter and sugar was rationed and tea of course. That was the great thing about my father's job. When he delivered to all the shops he could get some stuff. Alfie Byrne was the Mayor of Dublin at the time and my father knew him from way back.

Alfie would have packets of tea in his pocket, paper bags with an ounce in each. When he'd meet the people in the street he'd shake their hand and give them the tea, especially the poor.

My brother - in - law worked in a grocery shop and the owner got a lot of stuff from the North, so if there was anything going we usually got some.

My mother would get the flour from him and she'd make loads of bread, some for the neighbours too. You see we had to do with the black bread, well not exactly black it was more a dirty brown.

The meat wasn’t rationed but it was very scarce.

We had to queue up at the butchers at eight thirty in the morning for the sausages or you got nothing. Now you could only buy a few sausages and a couple of rashers and if they ran out then that was too bad for those at the end of the queue.

My eldest brother was sent up to Donegal during the Emergency.

He was working at Clondalkin Paper Mills at the time. There was a ship torpedoed off the coast of Donegal and it was carrying pulp for the mills.

He was sent up there to oversee it being taken off the ship. They could only bring a little bit off at a time because the boats they were using were so small.

But all the time he was up there the fishermen would give him salmon. He's send it down here, rapped in tarragon moss, and whoever was coming to Dublin would give it to my mother.

Now it was huge, so she'd cut it up and the neighbours would get some too. You see here in Kirwan Street in Stoneybatter anything that the people could get, it was shared amongst the neighbours, and we’d get a bit too.

They were that type, they all helped one another.”

Peter Delaney. Born 1910. Stoneybatter Dublin 7

“My five children were all born during or by the end of World War 2. Even though everything was rationed, we seemed to be able to manage. It was hard, but you just got on with it.

We had to have the ration books. Kathleen, my wife, now her father was still alive then and he was a chauffeur in Kildare. He'd bring us up food from there.

Also my mother would get the flour from her parents. She'd collect it from the train station and make the bread. I also had a vegetable plot. They had the Polo Ground dug up in the Park.

A lot of people in the Buildings here in Stoneybatter rented a plot. I grew the vegetables and loads of potatoes. There were plots over there where O'Devaney Gardens is now. That's how we managed to get enough to eat during the rationing in the Emergency.”

1945 saw the end of World War 2. The Emergency Powers Act was repealed on 2^nd September 1946. Even though World War Two ended in 1945 it was another six years before rationing came to an end in Ireland on December 17th 1951.

That summer of 1945 Ireland had experienced a tremendous amount of rain.

It had all but destroyed the wheat harvest. Bread was once again rationed in Ireland. Unfortunately this was followed by one of the severest winters in Irish history. There was even more demand for fuel and many factories were on short time because they could not use the machinery.

The people of Ireland were suffering badly from the extreme cold and had to queue up for hours at a time when they heard of turf being delivered in their area.

Christina Kiely “We all thought it was great when World War Two was over but oh we had a terrible winter then. My mother had to break up anything that would burn.

At one time we all had to live in the front bedroom because we couldn't use the rest of the house, it was just too cold.

We had to queue up for the turf all day in Dorset Street in Dublin. When we got word that a load of turf had come in then either me or my mother would take turns standing in the queue. A couple of hours at a time we'd have to do.

It was really just as bad then as all those years of the Emergency.

I can't remember how we got it home though. It was aul wet stuff too, but it was better than nothing. The boys would spend a lot of time in the woods gathering the sticks, we'd burn anything, old shoes were always good.”

The Emergency of WW2 in Irealnd began in 1939

Local people still have vivid memories of long queues, food shortages, ration books and bombs during The Emergency in Ireland.

But the years of World War Two also evoke fond memories of family togetherness and kindeness from neighbours.

Peter Delaney “We were able to keep going, we managed to get the food from here and there. Sure it was grand, we got through it.”

Mrs Keenan “My granny would say, ‘Now the one thing I can always say is that during the Emergency there was all these shortages in Ireland but we never suffered badly from rationing here in Kirwan Street.

All the neighbours stuck together, so when one of us got something extra we all did. It was like that here then and any where else in Stoneybatter too.’

© Copyright 2012. L.M.Reid. All rights reserved.