SZ/OEMU/56/8 - [OEMU. Casualty Survey II. Correspondence and papers concerning school essays]

SZ/OEMU/56/8

File

[OEMU. Casualty Survey II. Correspondence and papers concerning school essays]

1942-1943

21 items Mixed

World War, 1939-1945 -- Children -- Personal narratives
World War, 1939-1945

Contains correspondence and papers regarding the analysis and coding of children's essays on their air raid experiences in Hull and Birmingham. Details of how to decipher the codes are included.

Contains 21 items of correspondence and papers regarding the analysis and coding of children’s essays on their experiences of air raids on Hull and Birmingham. Details of how to decipher the codes are included. It is possible that the idea of using children’s essays to gather evidence for the psychological survey was inspired by a similar project organised by Susan Isaacs at about the same time and involving evacuees in Cambridge. There are indications that she had knowledge of the Hull/Birmingham investigation.

The following 20 files contain essays written by school children in Hull and Birmingham about their experiences of air raids. There are some 2100 of these essays (all now preserved on microfilm), a few of which have been illustrated by their authors. Only a small number of the Birmingham essays survive.

The essays were written by boys and girls of ages ranging from 10 to 16 and deal with the actual events during an air raid, how the raid affected them and their families, life in air-raid shelters, and attitudes to the German bombers. The majority of the files are divided into sub-files either alphabetically or by age of the author.