Escaping the Bombers: The Experience of Children Evacuated during WW2 in Scotland

cw: abuse

When I was at primary school in Fishcross, in the 1960s, I went on a school trip to Dounans Camp in Aberfoyle. We were housed in wooden dormitories and I remember the huge sports fields. One of my teachers was from Australia and I still have vivid memories of him teaching us how to throw a boomerang! In fact, the wooden dormitories of Dounans Camp had accommodated children and young people evacuated during the Second World War. The concern about air attack and bombing at the start of the war, and then actual bombing raids, meant that thousands of children were evacuated from the cities, and moved to stay with families and in residential care in the countryside. Scotland also welcomed children from across Europe, and refugee children from the Netherlands stayed at Dounans.

Wars around the world are having a huge impact on children and young people, costing them their lives and health, their security, and their families. In Scotland, it is still within people’s memories that evacuation took place and children and young people were cared for in a range of camps, hostels, residential homes and schools, and in families across the country. Some were sent overseas to the colonies, but, as we shall see, tragedy ended this route of evacuation.

The British government made early plans for evacuation, and even before war was declared, the order came to ‘Evacuate Forthwith’. In Scotland, some 176,000 people were evacuated, nearly 100,000 of these were mothers with their children and over 62,000 were unaccompanied children. [i] Almost immediately, however, children and families started to drift back to the cities, and as time passed, and the bombers did not come, more returned. [ii] In the spring of 1941, bombing raids on Glasgow and Clydeside led to a second wave of evacuation. About 12,000 unaccompanied children were evacuated at this time, along with some 100,000 mothers and their children.[iii]

Dounans was one of five camps in Scotland, which were to be used as educational outdoor centres during peacetime or as evacuation camps during war. Opened in 1940, they were immediately filled with evacuee children.[iv] However, the camps were just one way that children were accommodated because of evacuation.

In the first wave of evacuation from the cities, most children and mothers were taken in by families in small towns and villages, and this process was often random and ad hoc. Evacuation brought together two different worlds and highlighted Scotland’s social divisions. While for some, the experience was positive, for many, tensions were created because of this culture clash. Host families were shocked by the poverty and poor condition of evacuees, and many children had head lice and skin infections. There were complaints about poor toilet habits of the children, misbehaviour and the ungrateful attitudes of evacuees. The reasons that evacuees returned home were varied. Some left because of the unwelcoming attitudes of their host family. Others struggled with country life, the quiet and the lack of entertainment. Evacuees could feel unsettled living in their hosts’ larger homes with modern facilities, and “the class-divide was obvious to all, and this manifested itself in evacuees feeling uncomfortable and believing they were being judged…”[v]

In planning, then, for further evacuation, alternatives were sought. By the summer of 1942, 106 hostels of different types had been set up with accommodation for over 3,500 children.[vi] Many private country houses were converted for use as residential schools or evacuation hostels. For example, some forty girls were billeted in Invermay House, Forteviot, and three sisters recount their happy times at the House.[vii] Barns Hostel School in Peebleshire, and Nerston Residential Clinic in East Kilbride were both opened in 1940 for ‘difficult’ or ‘delinquent’ children, and both, in their different ways, were experiments for therapeutic care.[viii] For a period, 25 youth hostels were staffed and used to accommodate groups of children, particularly disabled children.[ix] The Department of Health and the Scottish Save the Children Fund opened the first residential nursery for evacuated children under five years of age.[x]

The evacuation also affected existing residential establishments. Some Quarriers’ cottages were “bursting at the seams” due to children being placed because of the bombing or children having lost a father.[xi] All the schools for deaf children except one, were evacuated to country houses, hotels or castles. [xii] Barnardo’s opened eight evacuation homes across Scotland, primarily to take children evacuated from their homes in England. Some boarding schools in England also moved their pupils to Scotland. For example, the Atholl Palace Hotel in Pitlochry became the home of the Leys School, Cambridge, between 1940 and 1945 because the latter was requisitioned as a hospital.[xiii]

As well as children from the Netherlands, refugee children came from across Europe. Schools were set up for the children of allied forces, such as residential schools for Polish and Norwegian children.[xiv] The ‘kinder transport’ brought Jewish children to Scotland. A number of residential hostels were opened, and children were placed in orphanages, approved schools, boarding schools and convents. Most children, however, were fostered in Jewish homes.[xv]

A relatively small number of Scottish children (462) were evacuated overseas to the Dominions of Canada, Australia and South Africa. The scheme ended, however, with the sinking of the City of Benares by torpedo, with the loss of over 250 lives, including 77 of the 90 children being evacuated.[xvi]

The children and young people evacuated in Scotland had a wide range of experiences. This was highlighted in the recollections of children evacuated to the village of Dunning. Some had fond memories and recalled their time as happy and carefree.

You see, Dunning was a complete contrast to Glasgow. Glasgow was all cement streets and what have you. Whereas, Dunning? Country. Wildlife. Fishing. Shooting. Running wild. (Walter, child evacuee)[xvii]

Many children were homesick, and some were so upset that they returned to Glasgow after weeks or months to be back with their families. Others suffered isolation and cruelty. In a study of a group of evacuated children from Clydebank, while most parents had no complaints about the treatment of their children, a number of others did raise issues.

… some of the complaints were serious: children locked in a room; damp beds; lack of bedding; lack of cooking facilities; bed linen not changed after other children had slept in it…poor food.[xviii]

Thousands of children and young people in Scotland had to leave their homes under the threat of bombs, along with many more across Britain. Their experience of evacuation had significant consequences for post-war welfare policies. While, undoubtedly, child welfare developments in the 1940s were grounded in policies of previous decades, the stark lessons of evacuation accelerated consideration of issues of poverty, health and education.[xix] In the immediate years after the end of the war, the central features of the British welfare state were put in place.