School Dinner Canteen-letter to The Times (1917)

Post date: Mar 02, 2014 2:33:47 PM

In the Kent archives there is a bundle of papers (ref: P385/25/8) which include a cutting from The Times of 5th July 1917 -a letter dated July 1st from "One behind the scenes". I suspect that the letter was from Greville Livett, Vicar of Wateringbury for the following reasons:

• its inclusion in this file of loose papers.

• he had in the previous year, 1916, had a letter published in The Times -see Notes of Songbirds (1916).

• the facts cited generally fit Wateringbury (reference to mothers working in factory is a bit difficult).

• the style and content is very similar to his reports in the parish Magazine -see School Canteen and Food (1917). 

A transcription follows:

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES

Sir, -In reference to the flour problem, experience of a school children's dinner canteen may be of some use at the present juncture. Probably in all classes of the community waste of bread has been reduced to a minimum, but in the homes of the labouring classes any appreciable reduction of actual consumption can be effected only by communal effort. If an experiment that is being tried in a few places, here and elsewhere, were extended throughout the land the bread problem would be solved. The population of this parish is about 1,300. Most of the mothers work in field and factory. The dinner canteen established three weeks ago feeds, on five days a week, 125 children, of whom a considerable number had been in the habit of taking their dinner to school. By careful calculation the amount of bread saved seems to have averaged 6oz. per child. The flour used in the canteen is negligible, and the amount of bread saved may be reckoned at 60 quartern loaves per week, or more than 1 1/2 cwt. of flour. Each child pays 10d. once a week for his slip of 5 tickets. We mean to make the scheme self-supporting, but we may have to raise the price to 1s.  At present we are receiving some gifts of vegetables. We use plates and spoons of tin, which were given to us at the start. A working-men's institute gives is the use of a large room, which we have filled with loaned tables and forms. The county education committee have allowed their cookery teacher and her class of girls to cook the dinner on one day a week. The gas company has subscribed liberally to meet cost of gas for cooking. The scheme requires careful organisation. Five working mothers have joined our committee, and others give help. We are fortunate in having many other voluntary helpers: a secretary who runs the show, a treasurer who sells the tickets, two caterers who draft a weekly menu and purchase all the food, 16 cooks, of whom two are on duty with an assistant each day to help cut up vegetables for the next day, and many others who help to serve the dinner, which consists of a good stew of meat and vegetables and some sort of cereal pudding, and takes about half an hour. The school teachers generously give up part of their precious dinner hour to marshal the children. The object is to save flour, but incidentally the children get a wholesome change of diet which all appreciate-except one boy, who has not yet learned to like what he calls slops! 

Yours obediently,

ONE BEHIND THE SCENES

July1

See also Food Economy (1917), School canteen and food (1917) and School dinner canteen -menu (1917).

Notes:

On 2nd May 1917 the King had issued a proclamation appealing to people "to reduce the consumption of bread ... by at least one-fourth of the quantity consumed in ordinary times". Proclamation read in churches on next 4 Sundays. (Full quote in Terry Chapman's The First World War on the Home Front p.181)

Lord Devonport, minister of food, exhorted in May 1917 (quoted in Andrew Marr's The Making of Modern Britain p123): "We must all eat less food and , especially, we must all eat less bread... The enemy is trying to take away our daily bread. He is sinking our wheat ships. If he succeeds in starving us, our soldiers will have died in vain. " Devonport resigned the next day to be replaced by Baron Rhondda.

National Kitchens were set up. The first opened on Westminster Bridge Road on 21st May 1917 and Queen Mary and Princess Mary served there on its opening day. 169 national Kitchens were in operation by the end of the war. The object was to reduce food waste and allow women to do war work.