I've been looking into WWII rationing a little in Britain. I knew they rationed petrol, and food by weight (meat by price though). One person's weekly allowance of food would be: one fresh egg; 4oz margarine, four rashers of bacon; 2oz butter and tea; 1oz cheese; and 8oz sugar. (Vegetables and bread were not rationed). Then I found out they also started rationing clothing; apparently near the end of the war, just buying a coat would use up almost a whole years coupons!

Also, food rationing in Britain didn't end until nine years after the war ended! I didn't realise it went on for so long afterwards.

Have you ever used rationing in your writings? It must have been so hard to manage feeding a large family with the small allowances people got.

I haven't written about it, but I once read that the food rationing hurt dogs, which is a detail that might be useful for someone's writing.

*Is going to look this up later* That is something I hadn't really thought of, Jon! Very interesting thought.

Yeah, I never considered that rationing would affect the pets...

I was looking at this the other day, and apparently in poorer families pets had to be given away or sold, as they could not afford to feed them, but in wealthier families they weren't really affected. Zoos apparently had to euthanize their animals as they couldn't feed them - something I hadn't thought about! There were fines if you were caught feeding strays or pigeons in England. Just some slightly interesting tidbits I picked up.

Oh, I hadn't thought of that. It makes sense though.

That note about rationed clothes is interesting; I read that after the end of the war, while people were still on tight economy, a designer made a line of clothing that was considered scandalous, because it used up so much more cloth than the current fashion (Dior's 'New Look').