Blitz Kids (46 page)

Whilst the girls were understandably attracted to Allied servicemen, there was another, less obvious, source of potential sexual partners: prisoners of war. In south London, one group of prisoners were housed in a timber yard surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, through which they were able to converse with the locals. In the latter years of the war, Fred Rowe watched the behaviour of some of the local girls:

Fred’s reaction was extreme: he asked the mother of one of his friends, who was working in a munitions factory, if she could get him a gun so he could shoot some of the German prisoners. Sensibly, she refused his request. Instead, he and his mates took their revenge more innocently:

One of the main changes seen in wartime was that teenage girls increasingly spent their leisure time in pubs. For the new generation of young women – many working in munitions factories – they worked as adults and expected to live an adult lifestyle. By 1943, three times as many women were drinking in pubs than had done so in 1938 and the percentage of under-twenty-fives drinking in London pubs had increased from 3 per cent to 18 per cent. Surveys showed that from the age of fourteen, London’s teenagers increasingly went to pubs independent of their families. Girls between sixteen and eighteen generally went into pubs, taking it for granted that they should do so if invited by a man. One sixteen year old noted: ‘We go down to the Hammersmith Palais and if we meet some nice fellows we go out for a drink – nothing in that is there! Similarly, a fifteen year old admitted:

As a result, some pubs actually started to look more like youth clubs. One study found around one third of drinkers at weekends were female. Of these, significant numbers were in their mid-teens. Observers noted large numbers of young girls, well dressed and heavily made-up, going into a pub unescorted. Most were seventeen to eighteen years old and were drinking beer. The pub was so full that it was too packed for dancing. Though a few soldiers and sailors were in the pub, most were civilians. People were pushing through the crowd,
elbowing their way to the bar. To those watching, the kids seemed concerned about little except fetching beer and flirting with the opposite sex. It was also clear that the pub’s staff were rushed off their feet and had no time to consider whether their customers were underage or not. Amidst the clamour, observers noticed that sex was widely discussed among the youths.

The licensee of one of these pubs noted:

The landlord noted that the youth were well paid, their wages giving them an unexpected independence: after all, they were earning more money than most of their parents ever did.

Whilst most of the girls were just out to enjoy themselves – using the pub as an escape from the factory and the threat of death – there was an underlying feeling among the authorities that pub-going by women was related to prostitution. Making this connection was
understandable
. Both the Home Office and the London Probation Service reported that around 50 per cent of girls admitted to remand homes had been frequenting pubs and clubs, and: ‘these girls are of a type which would in any case have got into trouble through their associating with American, Canadian or other soldiers, and that drinking has been an incident in the course of their downfall rather than a cause of it.’
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Schools also noticed how wartime conditions influenced pupils. Head teachers complained that children attending public dances under war conditions were conducive to immorality and a false understanding of sex. In some areas local politicians blamed the BBC for lowering their entertainment standards. Furthermore, the behaviour of the country’s young women did not go unnoticed by its politicians. One MP told the House of Commons that juvenile delinquency was caused by: ‘consorting of our young girls with troops … it is the diseased mentality of some of these young girls that leads them to throw themselves at the heads of the troops, and, in some cases, to affect their
lives and future for many years to come’.
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Another MP reported, ‘it has been very disappointing to see young girls, many of whom have probably only just left school, hanging about the places where soldiers congregate’.
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In Leicester, the landlord of a pub complained to police about American servicemen bringing in underage girls. Not all landlords were so scrupulous. One south London pub became notorious as a place where the local girls consorted with servicemen. The pub had a bad reputation as one of the toughest spots in the area, and by 1943 it was frequented largely by Canadian soldiers and girls who were under the legal age for drinking. Arriving at the pub, observers noticed a pool of vomit outside the main door. Inside, they were confronted by a room crowded with servicemen and girls, all shouting to be heard over the sound of a piano playing to the accompaniment of five
seventeen-year
-old girls standing up and singing. A few people were dancing, others were kissing and embracing. One Canadian was seen talking passionately to a seventeen-year-old girl, his body pressed up against her. A considerable number of the crowd were under the legal drinking age. A sixteen year old was sitting on lap of a Newfoundland private and kissing him. Elsewhere a merchant seaman was kissing a fifteen-year-old girl, whilst a Canadian soldier was overheard asking a sixteen-year-old girl if she would take him home.

In another south London pub, two girls in sea-scout uniforms were seen waiting to meet soldiers. Across the room a drunken sixteen year old was crying and powdering her face, whilst a Canadian soldier sat with his arms wrapped around her. Apart from the underage girls, there were few civilians in the bar. The behaviour caused a witness to describe London pubs as places: ‘where extensive drinking by young girls was found in conjunction with picking-up, there was an atmosphere of free-and-easy sex behaviour which might be called exhibitionist’.
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The connection between the behaviour of girls in pubs and the spread of venereal disease did not go unnoticed. As one London social worker noted in 1944: ‘The spreader is the habitually promiscuous woman who evades treatment: often very young, irresponsible, unstable and of poor intelligence; she frequents the bars of public houses and often drinks a good deal.’
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The situation was just as extreme in other parts of the country. Some
of the pubs around the ports of northern England were described as being little more than markets for women. A 1943 report on venereal disease on Tyneside found that the town’s promiscuous women and prostitutes had started early, often before the age of seventeen. The blame for girls turning to prostitution was put on the advertising industry, which promoted a false view of the world. This contrasted sharply with the reality of their lives, being brought up in drab homes with limited opportunities.

At one pub, nestling in the docks of a north-eastern town, unescorted sixteen to eighteen year olds were seen drinking gin and lime. The girls were very young and appeared to prefer sailors, seemingly because they had more money. The pub’s middle-aged patrons openly complained about the young girls who they believed to be inviting their own downfall, describing them as ‘bloody little bitches’.
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At one pub, two seventeen-year-old factory girls were seen chatting with sailors. One of the girls said to the sailor: ‘Would you like to come and stay with me for the night? I’ll be a good little wife to you and you can have it hot and strong.’ He replied, ‘How much money will you want from me if I come?’
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The couple then left the bar to conclude the transaction. Other girls openly negotiated the price of a night’s company with the sailors.

It was not just the question of preventing teenage girls from sliding into a life of prostitution that vexed the authorities. There was also the question of treating juveniles infected with venereal disease. Normally, females were admitted to isolation wards of hospitals where they remained through the early, infectious stages of disease. However, since a high proportion of the patients were professional prostitutes it was deemed unsuitable. Quite simply, the authorities did not want to put impressionable teenagers in a situation where they would mix with, and possibly be influenced by, older women ‘on the game’. Instead, girls were sent to ‘approved schools’ which had independent treatment facilities. There, they received three months of treatment to cure syphilis, which was followed by periodic treatment for eighteen months as an outpatient. Whilst under treatment, the girls were not allowed ordinary clothes in order to prevent them leaving. During the initial infectious period, the girls were kept segregated from the other patients.

During the war years, the medical facilities of the approved schools had plenty of work. The girls sent to these schools by the courts were the subject of widespread concerns, in particular with regard to their morals. The girls were ordered to the schools for a variety of reasons, including: criminality, being beyond the care of their parents and sexual promiscuity. Those under the age of fifteen were admitted to junior schools, with those over fifteen being sent to senior approved schools. It was intended that these schools would make the girls continue with their education, teach them work skills and social responsibility, allowing them to leave ready to continue a respectable life. Pre-war, the schools had shown a significant success rate, with many girls returning to society and never reoffending. During 1939, 367 girls were admitted to approved schools as being in ‘need of care or protection’ or being beyond the control of their parents. By 1942, the annual figure had risen 80 per cent to 642.

With the onset of war, accompanied by the influx of glamorous and mysterious foreign soldiers, shifting morality and general uncertainty of life, there were genuine concerns over the behaviour of some of the girls. In 1941, the number of girls entering approved schools with venereal disease was 134, with eleven cases found among girls below fifteen years of age. By 1942 the population of 800 girls in approved schools contained 146 cases of VD, with two cases of syphilis for every five cases of gonorrhoea. In particular, the Ministry of Health reported of the population of approved schools that, ‘immorality among girls under 16 is causing much anxiety’, and that the ‘semi-delinquent type of girl and young woman’ was causing a danger to the population by spreading venereal disease.
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The Ministry of Health was concerned over girls absconding from approved schools. There were increasing numbers of wartime
absconders
, both boys and girls, who were attracted by the general excitement of the unsettled situation. In particular, the girls ran away to find ‘excitement and keep’ with soldiers.
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During 1942 there were 528 incidents of absconding from senior approved schools, out of a population of 800 girls. Some of these absconded on a regular basis, whilst others returned within hours or days. However, it remained a serious concern and that year forty-two girls were sent to borstal for absconding. Traditionally, absconding from approved schools meant
heading for the ‘bright lights’ of a big city, but – in wartime conditions – that meant heading straight to the blacked-out streets of London or to areas with many large camps.

The scale of the problem was such that Scotland Yard requested that the schools alert them of girls absconding in order that the policemen on the beats of the West End could try to spot them as soon as they arrived, specifically before they could change clothes and put on their make-up. A police van, known as the ‘Children’s Wagon’, was regularly sent on duty to public parks. Policewomen patrolled railway stations, the main bus stations, milk-bars and late night cafes on the lookout for runaways.

During 1942, ‘C’ Division of the Metropolitan Police, which covered London’s West End, arrested thirty-seven runaways. Of these, five were under the age of fifteen. More than a third of them – including some of the under-fifteens – had contracted a venereal disease. During one period, of the twenty-six absconders who returned to approved schools with venereal disease, 50 per cent were below the age of fifteen. As one police report noted: