In the weeks after Easter Tuesday, deliveries of basic foodstuffs such as milk and bread stopped. Shopkeepers shut their premises and fled to the safety of the countryside. Water was contaminated by sewage pollution. The Army brought potable water to distribution points; wardens helped carry supplies to elderly people. Toilets were not to be used because of sewer pipe damage, and people were instructed to use buckets and bury the contents. Gas was turned off in some areas, leaving many households without lighting or cooking facilities. Many chimneys were blocked by dislodged bricks. When lit, billowing clouds of smoke filled people’s houses, having nowhere else to escape to. Replacement of lost ration books involved considerable paperwork, form filling and bureaucracy, and the signing of the form still had to be witnessed by a Justice of the Peace, even despite the emergency conditions.[1]
Water pressure was around half the normal in areas including Falls Road and steel pipes needed to be swiftly shipped in from England. Fixing the pipes was not the only task at hand. An unexploded bomb at the Oldpark pumping station slowed down repair works, as did two unexploded bombs. The bombs which had detonated fractured gas and water mains. In the days following the bombings, a strong smell of gas lingered across Sandy Row, Falls Road, Victoria Street and various other parts of Belfast. Gas supplies were entirely closed down in large areas of north Belfast. At Atlantic Avenue and Sussex Street, water flowed heavily into the gas mains.[2]
As the days went on, food rotted in shops; animal carcasses lay by the road sides. Rumours spread that cholera, dysentery and typhoid were spreading throughout Belfast, causing considerable public anxiety.[3] Typhoid vaccines were given out at the Royal Victoria Hospital, just in case the disease struck.[4]
First Aid Kit (with contents). Courtesy of Northern Ireland War Memorial.
At the time, the idea of stress was relatively new, having been developed in its modern sense as a diagnosis by Hans Seyle in 1936.[17] Doctors had noted remarkably high levels of anxiety and stress in London since the Blitz began in September 1939, followed by the onset of stress-related diseases and problems, many of which were physical.[18] Oral history testimonies from the Belfast Blitz confirm this relationship between psychological stress and physical illness that seriously affected the well-being of some of Belfast’s citizens.
Violet Sloan blamed the stress of being bombed to her ‘alopecia areata’, a disease which attacks the follicles and causes hair to fall out. After the first night of major air raids, she noticed that ‘wee baldy balls of hair would have come out’. Violet’s family swiftly departed to the countryside where she told her grandmother about her hair problems, who responded by telling her ‘that’s your nerves’. For the rest of the year, Violet made regular trips to the Royal Victoria Hospital where she remembers doctors encouraging her to wear glasses through which light was shone for up to five minutes. Violet’s hair problems persisted for three years. Even after that, small bald patches remained scattered over her head which made her feel deeply self-conscious about her appearance.[19]
Following the Blitz, Patsy Moneypenney developed a stammer which affected her throughout her life. She recalled:
They had to get us out because the house was in flames, because of that, the next morning, I had shell shock. I couldn’t speak and for up ’til…I mean, up ’til this day I would have a stammer sometimes at school and all I, it was really very nerve wracking because you couldn’t speak and then people made fun of you.[20]
Stomach Ulcer advertisement from British Medical Journal.
In some cases, particularly serious conditions were seemingly brought on by the stress of the Blitz. During the First World War, incidences of heart problems had risen among soldiers and civilians, and remained an issue in the Second World War. Ann Gardiner remembered her mother taking ill with cardiac problems soon after the Blitz, thought to be triggered by stress, which caused her to be laid up for a year. Her mother was unable to continue teaching, and a nanny was employed to look after young Ann.[9] Robert McCourt’s grandmother suffered from heavy asthma which greatly troubled her. During the Monday Blitz, she took a heart attack, struggled to breathe and passed away.[10]
Curiously though, and for reasons unknown, stomach problems were top of the list of war-related medical complaints in the 1940s.[11] Bernadette Keenan’s house was badly damaged during the Blitz, and her family temporarily departed for the countryside. Bernadette’s mother was in her early 40s but, despite her relatively young age, became seriously ill with perforated stomach ulcers shortly after the bombings. Perforating stomach ulcers incidences had risen during the London Blitz, and doctors blamed intense psychological stress for triggering this major physical emergency. Often, stomach ulcers remained latent, un-noticed and symptomless until extreme stress caused them to rupture, with the stomach’s contents overflowing into the patient’s body. In light of such severity, Bernadette’s mother was hospitalised at the Royal Victoria Hospital. Fortunately, she survived, although doctors had initially been fatalistic about her prospects of surviving.[12]
Some people exposed directly to bombings developed skin conditions. Esther Fyffe recalled her brother Roy acting panicky for years afterwards when travelling through dark train tunnels, or if he heard a plane flying overhead. Immediately after the Blitz, Roy also developed psoriasis, a skin condition involving much flaking associated with stress.[13] Jean Spiers also developed psoriasis, which she attributed to Blitz-induced stress. When Jean returned to Belfast sometime after Easter week, she found herself covered from head to toe with a rash, and ended up in hospital where doctors diagnosed her with the skin disease that now covered her body. Jean’s skin problems persisted throughout her teenage years, until she was around seventeen or eighteen. What exactly triggered the psoriasis is hard to decisively establish, but Jean was convinced that it’s root cause was the psychological stress of the Blitz.[14]
Belfast Blitz aftermath. Image source unknown.
Physical health problems were experienced on top of the grief, anxiety and trauma that ruined the lives of Belfast’s citizens in the early 1940s. Hannah Renwick recalled her father suffering a nervous breakdown. After Easter, he returned from a weekend trip to Armagh to discover his house reduced to rubble. His son, John, was missing, and the father found his son’s body in one of the makeshift morgues. The nervous breakdown which ensued affected him until well into the 1950s when he was finally able to secure work as a petrol pump attendant.[15]
Of course, not everyone directly exposed to the Blitz developed persistently poor physical or mental health afterwards. Marion Kirkpatrick was buried in a collapsed house, and suffered severe stress. However, she didn’t perceive the experience as bearing lasting health consequences. As Marion recalled:
Well you see I was only fifteen and I was more or less able to get on with my life y’know as I say and really speaking my health wasn’t really that badly affected. Being young I had something to look forward to, the rest of my life y’see so as I say it didn’t affect my health really anyway, except the claustrophobia that’s the only thing.[16]
Nonetheless, the physical and psychological aftermath of the Blitz hit some people hard, aggravating hidden health problems and sometimes causing enduring problems for years.
[1] Doherty, Post 381, pp. 69-71.
[2] PRONI, MPS/3/57, ‘Post-Blitz Situation Reports following Raid on 15th/16th April’, 1941.
[3] Doherty, Post 381, p. 78.
[4] Elaine McClure, Bodies in our Backyard (Lurgan: Ulster Society, 1993), p. 54.
[5] Mark Jackson, The Age of Stress: Science and the Search for Stability (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
[6] C.C. Spicer, D.N. Stewart and D.M. de R. Winser, ‘Incidence of Perforated Peptic Ulster: Effect of Heavy Air Raids’, Lancet (1942); C.C. Spicer, D.N. Stewart and D.M. de R. Winser, ‘Perforated Peptic Ulcer during the Period of Heavy Air Raids’, Lancet (1944).
[7] Northern Ireland War Memorial, Oral History Interview BBP20, Violet Sloan.
[8] Northern Ireland War Memorial, Oral History Interview W&M104, Patsy Moneypenny.
[9] Northern Ireland War Memorial, Oral History Interview W&M66, Ann Gardiner.
[10] Northern Ireland War Memorial, Oral History Interview W&M142, Robert McCourt.
[11] Ian Miller, A Modern History of the Stomach: Gastric Illness, Medicine and British Society, 1800-1950 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2011), chapter five. See also Ian Miller, ‘The Mind and Stomach at War: Stress and Abdominal Illness in Britain, c.1939-1945’, Medical History, 54 (2010).
[12] Northern Ireland War Memorial, Oral History Interview W&M85, Bernadette Keenan.
[13] Northern Ireland War Memorial, Oral History Interview BPP13, Esther Fyffe.
[14] Northern Ireland War Memorial, Oral History Interview W&M3, Jean Spiers.
[15] Northern Ireland War Memorial, Oral History Interview W&M124, Hannah Renwick.
[16] Northern Ireland War Memorial, Oral History BPP25, Marion Fitzpatrick.