Do you remember?
Lippi’ and Leg-tan
Blitz of Christmas1940 was the first major attempt by the enemy to obliterate the centre
of Manchester, heart of commerce, but many other serious raids were to follow and it became routine to prepare for a night in the air-raid shelters.

Most people made sure that their precious belongings were in a safe place and essential items were kept on their person, such things as Insurance policies, Birth certificates, Ration books and Identity cards were usually put in a metal box if they were left in the house, it was thought that a fire wouldn’t get to them in a metal box.

Some of the things that became familiar were the names of foodstuffs and the use of utility items, and the slogans, for instance “Dig for victory”, “Make do and mend”, “Careless talk costs lives”, and no end to medical advice from feeding baby to looking after Grandma.
Vitamin diets were literally rammed down our throats.

Other familiar things were siren suits, siren boots, leg tan, Pancake (face powder), Outdoor girl (lippi), cardboard covers over a sponge cake to make it resemble wedding cake, whale meat, horse meat, spam, dried egg, dried onions, dried milk, dried potato, snook, and those wireless programmes like “Itma” and Vera Lynn, Music while you work and much more.
Ethel Connor

A Night To Remember
At 7pm on the night of the 22nd December 1940 just three days before Christmas the people of Manchester became the targets of Adolf Hitler’s bombers, the Blitz of 1940 brought the war close to home, it was a night that I shall never forget, it was the night that brought death and destruction to many, as for myself just 11 years old I witnessed the devastation caused by a German bomber and a floating land mine, it had landed between two rows of terraced houses, Pearson Street and High Burton Street.

Of the people who died that night some were my school friends who I would never see again, one thing that sticks in my mind was the rescue of those trapped beneath the rubble, people crying for help, a never ending chain of willing helpers, myself included, brick by brick we helped uncover those trapped, they say that when one life ends another takes its place, from that rubble, dirty, bemused and bloody, I helped carry a new-born baby out of that devastation, how mother and child had survived was a miracle.

In 1981, some 40 years later I was working for the City Council, when by chance a young apprentice who had come to work a the depot, and the reminiscences of one of the older men, the subject of the Manchester Blitz became the topic of conversation, that young apprentice made the remark that his father had been a child who had been rescued that night, it was only then did I realise that this lad was the son of the baby I helped to rescue some 40 years ago, his name if I remember was England, but I never did get to meet his father, but it’s a small world. A J Shannon