On Thursday, August 31, 1939, three days before war against Germany was declared, London was gripped by a sudden panic. A mass exodus began as cars laden with luggage headed out of town. Nine of the main routes away from the city were made one-way and sealed to incoming traffic. Almost overnight some 393,000 schoolchildren, plus a further 257,000 mothers and children under five, were ferried from the capital. Elsewhere, in what has been called “the great cat and dog massacre”, 400,000 animals were killed in a few days in anticipation of the coming conflagration.
For city dwellers who have recently been through lockdown, those first days and weeks in the wartime capital have an oddly familiar feel. Cinemas and theaters were temporarily closed, and prosperous districts emptied as “To Let” notices went up outside well-heeled homes. Bicycles became popular as petrol rationing began, and people worried about jobs as firm after firm closed down. Guy Fawkes Night was canceled, and school closures meant that those children left behind suddenly found themselves without any education at all. Walking home one night through north Harrow in the eerie pre-Blitz blackout silence, one Londoner remarked that “all the streets were deserted as though plague had struck and the death-cart had made its daily collection”.
