“Like a Child Slave Market” recalls Wartime Child Evacuee

“Like a Child Slave Market” recalls Wartime Child Evacuee

Written by Angela Gooch on April 19th, 2008 in Human Interest, Social History, War and Military.

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“We were picked over like a child slave market”

Seeing the Lancaster bomber during a visit to East Kirkby Aviation Museum today, jolted childhood memories of the war years for Chapel St Leonards WI Press Officer, Sylvia.

World War II child evacuee (refugee)
Sylvia recalled being a six-year-old child when she was a refugee from the British town of Derby.
“I was only six when I was evacuated”, Sylvia told us. “We were just put a name tag on, given an apple and a banana, put in a queue, put onto buses and just sent off. We didn’t know where we were going. I thought my mum and father had given us away!”
Sylvia said there was no communication and she didn’t know for weeks after whether she would be reunited with her parents.

“It was a terrifying experience for children”, Sylvia told us, “because no one told us what was happening - we were just sent away. We thought we were being given away.

“When we arrived at our destination, we were sat in a little school room with a label saying our name. We were just sat there while the people of the village walked around and picked who they wanted.

“Now, I think of it as a child slave market”, Sylvia said, “But back then, it felt so..so humiliating and upsetting because they seemed to pick all the pretty ones first, If your face didn’t fit, you were the last to be picked!”

Sylvia recalled she was one of the first evacuees to be retured home. She went on to tell us that she remembered sitting on the cellar steps with her grandmother during a bomb raid over Derby. She heard a bomb drop in the street causing the tin bath to clatter off the cellar wall.