Food rationing was not introduced until comparatively late in the First World War, when scenes like this became a fact of life as German submarines proved effective against our shipping and food shortages developed.

This is a queue for margarine outside Keighley Industrial Co-operative Society’s Central Stores in Brunswick Street in 1917.

The photograph illustrates a variety of fashions of the period, with clogs outnumbering boots and shawls almost as common as hats.

In 1917, Keighley’s reputation for food economy attracted the attention of the national press. Flower-beds in parks were planted with potatoes, cauliflowers and cabbages. Part of the golf links went under oats, the Trade and Grammar School boys dug up their football field and school classes were taken outdoors for lessons on wild edible greenstuffs.

“Keighley”, declared the Daily Dispatch, “is believed to hold the record for economy in this country”.

To encourage frugality, a shop window in North Street displayed an ideal day’s rations for one man. Inevitably, there grew the story of a visitor from Barnsley surveying its contents – six small sausages, half a loaf and half a saucer of sugar. “By gum,” he said, “we eat that at Barnsley while we’re waiting for dinner. If that’s what they do at Keighley then I’m off home by the next train!”