From the beginning of the war, precautions were taken to 'black-out' all lights. This was essential as it soon became clear that most bombing raids would take place at night. It was thought that a light even from one house would be used as a target, by an enemy plane on which to drop its bombs.
Each night everyone had to make sure that not one chink of light escaped from the windows and doors of their homes. Heavy curtains or blinds could be effective but some windows were simply painted over or covered with cardboard or thick paper for the duration of the war.
Going out of their home at night, people had to remember to switch off the light before opening an outside door. Once outside, there were no street lights and what few cars, buses and lorries there were, were fitted with special headlamps that gave out very little light. Lampposts and kerb edges were painted white or with luminous paint, but this did not prevent a number of deaths caused by people walking into solid objects or under the wheels of the few vehicles still running.
Night work in open air, on farms or at railway sidings had to be done with no light and in factories, nearly all with sealed windows, workers had to operate with no ventilation and only artificial lighting.
The black-out was partially lifted on September 17th 1944 (coastal regions were still affected) and replaced by a 'dim-out', in reality this was only a less stringent form of black-out, but it was welcomed at the time.
There were laws against allowing light to escape from buildings and by the time the black-out ended, nearly one million people had been prosecuted for breaking the black-out regulations. Most people were only fined but one man was sentenced in February 1940 to one months hard labour for allowing light to be seen from his house.
Opinion polls conducted during the war, nearly always had the black-out at the top of their most disliked inconvenience list. The black-out occasionally came in handy as an excuse for 'wrong-doers', when a father and his son were summoned to court in Northumberland for being persistently late for work without reasonable excuse, the father stated that he had knocked a woman down in the black-out on the way to work (in January) and he didn't want the same thing to happen again, so he started out later, the son's excuse was not given in the account. The story was not accepted and the magistrates found both men guilty and fined them ｣2 each. They were taken to court by the Ministry of Labour and National Service.
[source: 'North East Diary 1939-45': by Roy Ripley and Brian Pears]