Talk : remembering or forgetting animals in the second world war 1939 -1945
A helpful animals and air raids pamphlet…
I am giving a talk this month on Saturday June 28th 2025 at 2pm at the Hastings & St Leonard’s museum. This year we’ve nationally been commemorating people who died in the war 80 years ago but where – and how – is the other past history of cats and dogs (and budgies) known? At the start of the war in September 1939 there was no Nazi bombing, yet in those first days many thousands of dogs and cats, particularly living in London, were killed by their owners. Although many domestic animals survived and have been remembered by many families, where is this part of a former past history known nationally? And where are local and national monuments to these pet animals erected today?
This is organised by The Hastings & St Leonards Museum Association, probably the oldest such Museum Friends group in the country, formed in 1889. Since 1905 it has raised funds to support the Museum & Art Gallery as well as being represented on Hastings Borough Council’s Museum Committee which advises the Cabinet on all matters related to the Museum & Art Gallery. There is a cost of £5 – not for me as a speaker -but to go towards our funds to help the museum continue to operate in these financially dire times.
The meeting is near Hastings station at Durbar Hall – ground floor – in Hastings Museum and Art Gallery in John’s Place on Bohemia Road TN34 1ET.
Faith, the church cat, protecting her kitten in September 1940
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