CHAPTER 5 EMERGENCY FEEDING

Although, happily, the Emergency Feeding Scheme was never required to operate in full, plans had been prepared under which mass feeding of the public could have been arranged as follows:-

So that the public could assist themselves, a number of brick ranges were erected in various parts of the town and these would have been available for boiling water and communal cooking. Arrangements were also made for the distribution, if necessary, of salvaged ranges and coppers for similar use and the Girl Guides Association undertook to give demonstrations in trench cookery. In addition to the foregoing, thousands of houses were, of course, already equipped with ranges for solid fuel and we would also have been able to call upon neighbouring Authorities and London Region for mobile services to assist us. Even without such assistance from outside, we estimated that under the first nine items listed above we could have provided something over 25,000 meals three times a day and this, of course, would have been additional to self-help provided by householders. Emergency food stocks were available either at our own Depots or at Ministry of Food Depots in the locality. The Mobile Canteens and Mobile Feeding Units arc referred to in more detail elsewhere in this record.