AS the First World War progressed, food became scarce. Queues grew outside shops, and malnutrition crept into poorer communities.

In 1916, it became illegal to eat more than two courses in public at lunch, or three courses at dinner, and people could be fined for feeding pigeons or stray animals. Then, the U-boat blockade bit, and supplies became thinner still.

Despite the negative effect it had on morale, the Government felt compelled to introduce rationing on January 1, 1918, and Sheila Ross of Darlington has kindly lent us the ration book from which her grandmother, Jane Ross, fed her husband, Isaac, and their two children, Sylvester and Hannah.

Jane and Isaac had married in Crook – they gave their address as Freeholders Homes, High Hope Street – before moving to Hopetown in Darlington where Sylvester was born in 1900.

“While my grandmother was expecting a baby, she said that if he was a boy, she would name him after an inspirational preacher whom she had heard, Silvester Horne,” says Sheila.

Horne was the leading nonconformist preacher of his day. He came from Sussex, started out as a journalist before becoming a Congregationalist minister and them, such was his gift of the gab, he was elected as a Liberal MP for Ipswich. He married the daughter of an MP, and had seven children, the youngest of whom was Kenneth Horne, the famous comedy broadcaster of the 1950s and 1960s.

When the First World War broke out, the Ross family was living at Sadberge, to the east of Darlington, and Isaac is believed to have been working as a labourer. Jane helped with the finances by walking to Middleton St George to sell her homemade cakes.

Jane’s ration book was issued on January 1, 1918, by the Darlington Rural Food Control Committee. It shows that she registered with Sadberge butcher TL Bell to get her meat, and with JS Nelson in the village to get her bacon and butter and margarine. For her other provisions – certainly lard, sugar and tea, and probably cheese and jam – she registered with the Dinsdale branch of the Darlington Co-operative Society, which was in Middleton St George.

However, it looks as if the Rosses weren’t keen on lard. All the greeny-blue coupons for their meat have been used. All the pale blue coupons for their sugar have been used. All the pinky coupons for their jam have been used. But the browny-red coupons for their lard remain uncashed.

Sylvester won a scholarship to Darlington Grammar School, which transformed his life and enabled him to join the Inland Revenue. When working in the Bishop Auckland office, he met his wife, Dora.

“When he was at the North Shields tax office, they had a camera club and he had always been keen on photography and doing his own printing,” says Sheila, his daughter. “I remember one year, it would have been about 1938, that my mother decided that we weren’t going to have a holiday but we would have days out from our home in Whitley Bay.

“One of the days was to Durham Cathedral, and I can remember my father wanting to take a picture of the light coming through the Sanctuary Door onto the columns. My sister and I were told in no uncertain terms to stand still and not to move a muscle.

“I also remember him developing the print in the blacked out kitchen. My sister had gone to bed and my mother and I were listening to the radio when he walked in with the tray in his hand. He showed the print to my mother who said: ‘Well, we made sure there was no one else there when you took the photograph’.”

Because in the bottom right hand corner, it could just be a couple of chemical stains from the blacked out kitchen, or it could be the shadowy figure of a man from centuries ago, wearing doublet and hose in the medieval fashion, and staring at the door as if he’s waiting for someone to come through it.

Perhaps a newspaper reproduction of a 1930s print is not the best way to prove the existence of ghost, but as sure as legs are legs, and he’s distinctly got two of them, there is something spooky in the corner.