The following first appeared in History and Heritage Yorkshire – you can find them here. The photos are courtest for the excellent Leodis photo archive. Take a browse.

We’ve all heard about the rationing. Of food, clothes, petrol, coal, pretty much everything, and the way the amounts people were allowed grew smaller and smaller as the war progressed. We had a National Loaf, devised by nutritionists, incredibly healthy, but supposedly tasteless and grey. Ministry of Food pamphlets offered recipes for families during the conflict. People dug for victory in their back gardens. Unused open areas or bomb sites that had been cleared, every kind of spaces was made over into a veg plot.

That was right across the country. But what changes did the war bring to Leeds? In terms of air raids, the city escaped very lightly. We had some – nine in total – and 77 lives were lost. But there was only one of any great consequence, the Leeds Blitz of March 14-15, 1941 (it was termed a quarter-blitz, comparing it in size to the damage inflicted on other cities). The night began with incendiaries, fires lighting the way for the waves of high explosive bombs that arrived later. In all, about 100 houses were destroyed and around 4600 damaged. Bad enough, but not much when compared to elsewhere, and there would only be one more raid of note, in 1942, when five workers at Kirkstall Forge were killed.

The appearance of the city changed. There were sandbags everywhere, tape on the windows of shops and office, as well as home. Much less traffic on the roads due to strict petrol rationing – handcarts and horse-drawn wagons often replaced lorries and vans (out in the country, horses drew ploughs and threshing machines, as if we’d moved back a century).

The Blackout

The blackout meant that those vehicles which kept running, and only a small number were permitted, had to cover head and rear lights, with only a thin slit for illumination – and that made the 20mph speed limit an excellent idea. Curbs, lamp posts, telegraph posts were painted with black and white stripes to aid motorists. Trams had bells that jangled to warn pedestrians who might be in the way. The windows in trams and buses were covered to stop light leaking, then with netting or tape in case of blasts.

The ARP (Air Raid Precaution) wardens were the ones with the job of enforcing the blackout. Stories have so many of them acting like little tin gods, and probably some did. But it was a thankless job.

The blackout should have been a boon to crime. Yet a number of newspapers reported the expected wave of thefts and robberies didn’t happen. There was plenty of opportunistic crime: where houses had been bombed or families fled, there was looting (not much of a problem in Leeds), and some other illegal activities did flourish – while the duties of the police grew. Prostitution became more widespread, and more blatant, for one small example. Some of the women were honest; others would lure their customers into the dark ness and rob them, either alone or with an accomplice.

There was a rise in bag-snatching, thefts from telephone boxes and standing cars, but greater crime figures seemed to be down. In part, that was due to transportation. Petrol rationing made it illegal for most people to use cars. There was plenty of black-market petrol for sale, but cars on the road were remembered, and easily traced. Which might explain why one of the biggest rises was in bicycle theft.

The Black Market

With rationing, there as the inevitable rise of those who saw the chance to make money by bypassing the law. It could be something as simple as a shopkeeper saving a little extra for favoured customers or fudging coupons. It could be the spiv – a term that came into use with the war to denote the stereotype of a flashily-dressed man selling goods on the corner. Rationing and crime were interlinked, and it was responsible for many of the offences that ended up on police blotters and in court.

One of the most widespread of those was that theft of coupons from Ministry of Food offices. The security was non-existent, and if someone broke in at the right time, there were literally thousands of coupons waiting to be taken and sold. Others forged coupons. Essentially, rationing and coupons created an industry.

Items were stolen – entire lorries of them at times, often tinned food. On a smaller scale, things walked out of the stores for the NAAFI canteens which gave food and drink to service personnel. Other items vanished from work. In Bradford, my own grandfather was arrested and convicted of stealing 99 yards of cloth from his employer. He got off with little more than a rap on the knuckles: just a £5 fine.

Outside the small amount allocated for civilian use, petrol was dyed red to deter theft. However, with a little work and ingenuity, the dye could be removed.

Rationed alcohol offered more opportunities. Much of the whisky supply was reserved for export to help the vital balance of payments. Enterprising crooks worked with chemists and made hooch, alcohol created from different things with the kick of booze, then dyed and flavoured and passed off as the real thing, often in recycled bottles and with carefully printed labels. The customers were often clubs – many operating without a licence – where couple and service people on leave went to relax.  It had worked during Prohibition in the US and proved successful here. However, there were reports of drinkers becoming ill after using hooch, often severely. Cases of permanent blindness, even death, happened.

Physical Changes

There was bomb damage in Leeds. Far less than other places, but it was there. Marsh Lane goods station was pretty much destroyed, and the same with a number of factories along the river. The front of the museum on Park Row collapsed, and there was damage to the Town Hall, aa well as a number of houses, particularly in Armley.

Leeds Museum after the March raid

Model Road, Armley

Some of the physical changes were made as precautions.  Lewis’s, the big department store on the Headrow had the brick blast wall outside its main entrance to avoid any flying glass and debris. Outside, along the middle of the road, stood a series of emergency water tanks to help deal with any incendiary bombs and fires. They were painted in black and white checks to alert traffic and pedestrians at night.

Emergency water ponds were dug all over, although most of them were never needed, thankfully.

The Marks & Spencer store that’s such a familiar sight on Briggate was completed right at the beginning on the war. The company had kept a presence further up the main shopping street since 1909, but this was intended to be the grand flagship store. They purchased and demolished the Rialto cinema at 46 Briggate and built something entirely new and modern. However, in 1940, as they were set to opened, the building was requisitioned by the government for use by the Ministry of Works. A blast wall was erected to cover where the display windows had been (and was soon covered in layers of posters advertising films). The entry for staff was a metal door to the right, still there if you look.

The elegance of Park Square remained, but in a diminished state. The railings around the grass were removed, like most metal, part of a national drive. It was ostensibly to build more Spitfires; the reality was that the metal often just sat in huge, rusting piles in scrapyards.

Food

As mentioned earlier, rationing gradually bit harder and harder. Nutritionists worked on recipes with the Ministry of Food, creating dishes that were both healthy and tasted good (although many might disagree with that). But the reality was that Britons did eat a very healthy diet during the war, better than before it for many, and rationing did create an equality between the classes.

Gardening was encouraged, growing the food that was so desperately needed with imports so limited. There were pamphlets and newspaper columns with characters like Potato Pete. Gardens were made over, empty ground cultivated. A street, even a couple of streets, would use all their scraps and waste to feed a pig that one of them would keep – quite illegally. In return, they’d receive some of the meat when it was butchered.

Fishing was affected, too, with the trawler fleet and the catch depleted, as the Germans considered fishing vessels to be legitimate targets, and mines took their toll. By 1944, the catch was round half the pre-war figure – and that was an improvement over 1941. Fish was never rationed, but the prices rose very steadily as the fighting continued.

These are just a few quick snapshots; there are entire books and studies on each of the topics. The war in Leeds, at least at the beginning of 1941, is the backdrop for my new novel, No Precious Truth. The main character is Woman Police Sergeant Cathy Marsden, one of the very few women in the force back then. She’s’ seconded to the brand-new local squad of the Special Investigation Branch (a real organisation, part of the military police) for three weeks, a period that keeps getting extended. They deal with organised crime and the forces. But suddenly they find themselves facing something very different: an escaped German spy.

It’s published by Severn House, and available as a hardback and ebook from April 1. Buy from an independent if you can, or the cheapest UK hardback price, with free postage, is here. The launch will be at Kirkstall Forge in Leeds (a location in the book) on April 17, 6pm. I hope you’ll show up. All are welcome – they even have their own little train station.