It's about the common man being coerced into going to fight a war and being promised all sorts of benefits when they got back - things like houses, sensible war pensions and decent living conditions - promises that were never really kept. [The National Health Service started out well, but has become a laughing stock - you can be given a 6 month waiting time for an appointment with a specialist, whom you could see that afternoon if you went privately.... ]

If your husband went to war to fight for these things, and then died fighting for it, you got nothing but the basic pension. Quite often women were made homeless as a result, if the tenancy of the house were in the man's name (about 98% of the cases I looked at) and the landlord was unsympathetic - you were booted out into the street with what you could carry. As long as he was alive and earning a soldier's wage, it was OK, when that went, so did the house.

This is not history, this is still happening now - more women are left intestate and are evicted by banks/building societies, than are divorced.

LTS