Figure 1.--Here we have the clothing allocations for men and boys. The clipping is not dated. Put your cursor on the image to see the list for women and girls. |
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One HBC reader asks, "I'm trying to find out this a question about rationing. A contemporary source indicates, `On June 1, 1941, each British person was issued with 66 clothes coupons to last a year.' My question is, how many coupons would youn need for a woollen dress and a man's overcoat?" HBC not at this time has only limited details, but hopefully we will eventually learn more about the rationing system. We note another source which indicates that each person had about 48 clothes coupons a year. Each garment was assigned a value in coupons. Each individual or in the case of children, their parents, could decide how best to use those coupons. We do not have a complete listing of garment coupon values, nor do we know if the values cahanged over time. One source provides this list of the value assigned to children's clothes:
Mackintosh (rain coat) -- 7, jacket -- 6, cardigan -- 5, trousers (long pants) -- 6, dress -- 5, gym tunic (school dress) -- 4, skirt -- 4, knickers (short pants) -- 2, shoes -- 2, and socks -- 1. Note that long pants needed three times the number of coupons as short pants. Obviously the Government was promoting short pants for boys because they required less material. The number of coupons for shoes seems surprisingly low. Sandals were not mentioned, presumably they had the same coupon value as shoes. A reader tells us that there were three stages to the clothes rationing system. As part of those regulations it was mandated that schoolboys under 5'6" (168cms) couldn't buy new long trousers. Interestingly during the 1950s some schools had uniform regulations stating that boys under 5'6" had to wear short trousers as part of the school uniform. This was presumably a leftover from the war years an example of how school regulations persisted. We do not yet have the precise details on these regulations.
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