Sugar Registration Card

[depaor01]

Posted on a local Facebook group page.

 

 

 

 

I had no idea sugar was rationed in WWI and see no references to this document in the forum before. This is Ireland 1918, was there a similar document required  to purchase sugar in the rest of the UK? Anyone come across one before?

 

Dave

[kenf48]

Yes, quite common considering the ephemeral nature of the document, but they were sent to every household in October 1917.  Sugar was the first item to be rationed in January 1918.

Extensive article 

[depaor01]

Strange it happened at the end of the war and not the beginning. Especially when I would think natively reared sugar beet would make the product widely available .

Thanks Ken

Dave

[Dai Bach y Sowldiwr]

Was there much of a sugar beet industry in those days? I thought it didn't develop until a while later (inter war years?

So the UK was dependent on imported sugar cane.

[depaor01]

9 minutes ago, Dai Bach y Sowldiwr said:

Was there much of a sugar beet industry in those days? I thought it didn't develop until a while later

I was speaking from the standpoint of total ignorance really. I think you're right Dai, but I'm surprised sugar shortages and its rationing didn't manifest earlier in the war.

[Jim Clay]

15 minutes ago, Dai Bach y Sowldiwr said:

Was there much of a sugar beet industry in those days? I thought it didn't develop until a while later (inter war years?

So the UK was dependent on imported sugar cane.

Wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_beet - the UK industry became sizeable in the mid 1920s, following sugar cane shortages during the War.

[kenf48]

Sugar prices rose 163% in the first two years of the war, every basic commodity rose in price and there were shortages and queues.

The Governments major concern was bread, grain was dependent on the harvest. The effect on civilian morale was recognised as early as 1916, but the Government vacillated relying on voluntary abstention (sounds familiar).  

 

Rationing for bread, meat and sugar was proposed by Lord Devonport as early as January 1917, he identified consumption as 25,000 tons per week. He identified that while supplies were adequate the problem was distribution.   Devonport resigned in June 1917 and rationing was  not implemented until  Lord Rhondda became Minister for Food Control, initially in London and the Home Counties but soon extended across the U.K.  

 

As a consequence queues virtually disappeared and distribution was more equitably shared.  Unfortunately in many parts of the country even the ration was beyond the means of the working classes.

[hmsk212]

Sugar Permit as opposed to Sugar Registration Card

 

Steve

Edited 1 July , 2020 by hmsk212

[Dai Bach y Sowldiwr]

They certainly did things differently then.

How much bureaucracy, planning and cost was needed to implement such a system!

Printing and distributing books with counterfoils, the clerical time involved in filling it in, signed by an officer, with a system at the other end for collecting the forms and doing something with them (counting them, entering the details in a ledger, putting them in a cupboard, then destroying them. Or just destroying them without looking at them).

All for 6 oz of sugar.

British bureaucracy at its best.

The Hun really didn't stand a chance.