Surviving the Blitz: A Family's Resilience in Coventry

Frank Hopkins was born in 1890 in Coventry and served in the First World War as a fire watcher. He worked through the local Christadelphians. After this, he worked at the Armstrong Sidley factory making ammunition during the Second World War.

He married Mabel Lucas, and they had five children. Their son Len was called up to serve. The two youngest of the five, Gladys and Joan, were children during the war and were looked after by their mother. They remember Coventry before the war as a friendly and neighbourly place, though one which was shaken by an IRA bombing in August 1939.

Mabel worked at the county court doing administrative and office work. It was a hard life. When the Blitz began, many of Gladys and Mabel's school friends were either killed or evacuated, but Mabel wouldn't allow them to evacuate as well. Instead, they went to air raid shelters in Coventry. Mabel was a very private person and had a strong sense of what shelters they should and should not go to, seemingly premonitions of which was safe, and which was not. In one case, she made them move because she feared her daughters mixing with drunk people, and that shelter was then bombed. In another case, she avoided the Gas Street shelter and it was bombed the same night. There was no gas and electricity across the city during the Blitz. Windows in their house were blown out by bombs and not replaced for the rest of the war. Joan never cried; Gladys could only cry silently.

On the night the Cathedral was bombed, it went early in the night after being struck with too many incendiary bombs. They knew then, and had it confirmed in the morning, that the cathedral was hit even though it was not supposed to be a target. The same was true of the Coventry hospital. There were communal graves to handle all of the victims.