Love

The stories that we have found have uncovered the fact that love was a hot topic for Barrow’s Shipyard Women of WW2. They might have been working long, hard hours, but  they were also falling in love.

Finding love during World War II was a common blessing for many. Perhaps it was the close proximity of working side by side, or the strain of living under constant threat, people sought comfort in one another.

In fact, immediately after the war in 1946, 385,000 couples were married!

Despite the ongoing rationing couples were ready to celebrate their love, much like Mary C. Tulip and her husband Arthur W. Tulip, who met during the war and remained happily married until their dying days.

Other couples were not so fortunate. Vera Mckenzie, had only been married for 3 months, when her husband was killed in service.

Lust was also in the air. And of the 5.3 million British babies born between 1939-1945, more than a third of them were illegitimate! Living under the constant threat of death, many couples no longer felt that waiting for marriage was truly necessary, and this led to a real boom in children born out of wedlock.