As the Great War dragged on, food supplies in Luton and elsewhere were reaching crisis point. Shoppers queued for hours, often for little or no supplies of essential commodities, and Luton's controversial Food Committee - made up most of food suppliers - insisted on meeting behind closed doors.

On December 22nd, 1917, the Beds & Herts Saturday published a stark message under the heading of 'Don't buy greedily'. The article read:

"There is a very grave food shortage, and in order to carry on the war successfully we must husband our food resources and make them go as far as possible. These are facts the importance of which increases with the sinking of every ship, the eating of every loaf.

"The spectre of famine is threatening the national larder, and making our shopping basket light. Every woman on her marketing mission most bear this constantly in mind and face the situation patriotically.

"Women are the buyers; women feed the world. A woman who, because she has a full purse and an empty patriotism, 'manages' to get more than her share of butter or bacon, tea or sugar, or some food commodity of which there is a shortage, is making her poorer sister go hungry.

"The housewife who conducts her marketing mission greedily, and disregards the privation her selfishness will cause women with less money to spend, is playing into the hands of the enemy and betraying her country."