LADIES organised by a Riddlesden and Morton Banks War Comforts Committee pose, probably in the Riddlesden Scout hut, early in the Second World War.
Six months into hostilities they had knitted 116 pairs of socks, 114 helmets or balaclavas, 93 pairs of mittens, 54 scarves, 25 pairs of gloves, 23 pairs of stockings, three pullovers and a “helmet-scarf”.
At Christmas in 1939, 55 Riddlesden and Morton men serving with the forces overseas, and another 61 at home stations, received gift parcels.
Knitting for the forces became a major activity early in the war, even being blamed for a temporary decline in library book issues. Seventy women in Bocking, Lees and Cross Roads worked on gloves, scarves and mittens for the crew of “a war vessel which is somewhere on the high seas under Commander Pigott”, whose local wife supplied the wool.
The whole female population seemed to be knitting – the Parish Church Mothers’ Union, elderly tenants of the Foster Gardens bungalows, and the Devonshire Street Women’s Friendly Society, who produced 30 blankets, while the Women’s Patriotic Club specialised in hospital bags “used for keeping any valuables wounded soldiers may have when brought to hospital”.
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