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| Title |
Rationing in the Second World War. |
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| Description |
There was terrible rationing, but farmers there again didn't feel the rationing as much as people in towns or cities because they had their own bacon, their own fowl. At least they could have a meal, they might've maybe got fed up with it, the same meal six or seven days a week but they had, they had all, and they got extra sugar and extra flour for heavy manual labour. And they did get sugar in the harvest time for jam making. In towns it was different. They had no, they had just to go buy it or else get out and cross the border where they bought butter, sugar, meat, at black market prices, y'know, dearer than what would be the controlled price like. Swanlinbar was boomin', before the war Swanlinbar was, well very little business in it and Blacklion would have been something similar. Well, when the war years come, everybody was goin' to Swanlinbar and Blacklion for what was short here and they were takin' into both places what was short there, tea, bicycle components, tyres, all the rest of it for bicycles and flour. There was more flour here than there was in the south and it was thirteen shillings, that was old money now I'm talkin' about, for eight stone. It was two pounds if you got it to the border and if you got it far enough in it was even dearer. It was a least two pounds. There was people smuggling, they made lots of money.
Ref: 90-26-48.
Interviewer: Sandra Matchett, Fermanagh County Museum.
© Fermanagh County Museum. |
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| Speaker |
Patrick Kerrin |
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| Sound |
90-26-48.mp3
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