11th January 1941. Bank Tube Disaster.
The Underground had been used in World War I in the wake of attacks by the Gotha air raids, but this was eventually banned by the Government. However bombing was on a bigger scale in the next war so it was left to Phil Piratin, later a Communist MP., who led a march into the London Underground in 1940, which became the accepted mode of deep-shelter.
Now London’s population took to the Underground in great numbers, but with dire results for today on 11th January 1941 a bomb hit the Bank Tube Station causing a giant crater near the Bank of England. The resultant blast down the tunnel caused the death of 111.
People increasingly under threat decided to take measures into their own hands, occupying not just the Underground and Tilbury railway arches, but also the Chislehurst and Dover caves which were set to become communities of refuge for thousands with bunk beds and entertainment laid on.(1)
Trials had been going on for some time at Shoeburyness in Essex where a full size scale model of a London Street had been subjected to semi-armour piercing bombs.
2,000,000 sandbags became available to local authorities. It was also revealed that plans for the evacuation of London were drawn-up, if necessary.
It was back on the 9th February in 1939 that the Home Office announced they were to provide air-raid shelters two years after the Commons had voted on November 16th to erect them in all the major cities, this despite Labour Party thinking that they might increase the rates. First came the partly pre-fabricated Anderson shelter.(2)
It cost about £7 (twice the weekly wage) and the small curved 6ft by 4ft 6inches (extendable), corrugated iron construction, could be erected by two people, required a hole in the garden, if one had one. This was then covered with soil. Families earning less than £250 a year (the majority), received their shelters free.
In Stepney, London where the first big raid was centred on 7th September, 200,000 still lived twelve to a building in Victorian slum tenements that crumpled and burned furiously.
1.5 million shelters had been distributed free by the outbreak of war, to protect six million people, with 50,000 being turned out a week, but still a third short of the target. Three million shelters were built throughout the war, their designer a Scottish engineer William Paterson being later knighted.
The portable Morrison shelters which housed two adults and two young children and installed downstairs round a table were issued free to those whose income was less than £350 p.a., otherwise they cost £7/12/6 being issued in January 1941 in time for the mini-blitz.
In June 1940 Britain’s biggest shelter was opened in London intended eventually to house 11,000. However in 1943 tragedy struck when 178 died at the entrance to the Bethnal Green shelter when a woman with her baby tripped causing people above to fall on top. A later report said practice anti-aircraft rockets fired from the nearby Victoria Park caused the panic.
One advocate of more deep-shelter provision was the Communist Daily Worker which was suppressed January 1941 to August 1942 as undermining public morale. It said the war was a capitalist plot against the workers, demanding commandeering of large houses and opening-up of large private shelters.
Tom Hopkinson in Picture Post Magazine November 1940 criticized public shelters, ‘in that good shelters are shut to people, when big business buildings with a vast pyramid of steel and concrete and labyrinth of rooms are locked with notices, ‘’This is not a public shelter’’…whilst those in public shelters have a bucket behind a canvas sheet and one water tap’. As always class reigned supreme. (3)
(1) The Chislehurst Caves became an underground town eventually with authorities putting in services with designated areas, the lettering can still be seen.
(2) So named after the former Governor of Bengal and senior civil-servant in the Colonial Office and from 1938, Home Secretary.
(3) Picture Post ceased on 1st June 1957.
Ref: wikipedia.org
Ref: telegraph.co.uk/ 5.8.2015. History of Tube in Pictures.
8th March 1941. Death and Destruction.
In World War II London was the most heavily blitzed city with eighty-five major raids; Liverpool and Birkenhead and Birmingham had eight major raids.(1)
In the evening of Today in 1941 death and destruction was seen over a wide area of London with 129 killed. Buckingham Palace was hit and Barnes and Croydon Fire Brigades reported a new type of incendiary bomb which on impact threw up rockets 200ft into the air.
Liverpool Street Station, Dean Street and Cloak Lane Police Station were hit, but probably the biggest disaster was the destruction of the Café de Palais where 34 died in the basement including the singer ‘Snake-Hips’ Johnson.(2)
Google Images.
After the bombing of the Palace the Queen is recorded as saying, ‘I’m glad we’ve been bombed. It makes me feel I can look the East-End in the face’, though one East-Ender interviewed said, ‘at least they could go back to their roaring fires’. The monarchy wasn’t always as popular as we have been led to believe with booing being noted on their excursions to the East End.
One difference compared with WWI as noted by the Times Literary Supplement in 1942 was the apparent shortage of war poetry, though R.S. Thomas and T.S.Eliot made some amends.
Reg. Mills. Spirit of Civilian Heroism. East End, Nov. 1940. London Fire Brigade Museum. One of paintings exhibited in America 1941 by London Brigade for propaganda.
Wartime painting was well represented by Leonard Rosoman (later to design stamps) who as a member of the Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS) was to record in paint what others were describing in other ways.
(c) Leonard Rosoman; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation. Shoe Lane, London.
Photos of the time sum up the stoicism for example after Holland House, London was destroyed in 1940 records with three gents with trilby hats and raincoat calmly surveying the book shelves; a milkman delivering over bomb debris and bombed-out shops saying ‘Business as Usual.
Stoicism. Google Images.
We tend to overlook the companies responsible for much of the rebuilding of bomb-damaged public buildings one notable example being Mowlems involved in restorations including the Parliament Buildings (Palace of Westminster), Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace. This is not to ignore the valiant efforts made by workers from all over the country drafted into rebuilding of the devastation throughout the country.(3)
Finally as quoted by Daniel Swift in his, ‘Bomber Country: the lost Airmen of WII’ he reminds us of the different perceptions of wartime when Al Alvarez spoke, as a child in north London, that the bombed-out houses were exciting and described the ‘beauty of the debris and tangled rubble’. Children were free to roam and find adventure where they would, war or no war.
(1) Liverpool was to experience extensive bombing in WWII and its resurgence was seen in 1956 when Lord Woolton unveiled the Epstein bronze statue above the main door of Lewis’s restored store after its bombing in 1941. The bronze ’Resurgam’ signifying the rebirth of Liverpool.
The impact on smaller towns would have been relatively greater, but with less national publicity as with the Warwickshire town of Nuneaton which on May 17th 1941, suffered serious damage with 100 killed and much property damage. The area was targeted owing to its being a big munitions area.
(2) One of the casualties of the upper-class gathering was the second wife Patricia of the 2nd baron Cullin of Ashbourne who incurred serious injuries resulting in the loss of legs. Cullin served as a Major in the Royal Signals.
(3) John Mowlem was founded in Swanage in 1822.
References:
IWM.org.uk. Shoe Lane Pic.
historytoday.com/Pic.
Pinterest.
14th October 1940. Disaster on Balham High Road.
On this night in 1940 a bomb dropped on Balham High Street SW 17 created a crater so deep it buried and flooded the underground station killing many who were using it as an air-raid shelter.
People moving by as the bus is lifted.
To add to the carnage, in the blackout, a No 88 bus Registration ST 5056 fell into the hole, leaving only visible, incongruously, the advert on the rear ‘Have you Macleaned your Teeth Today’? and on the side, ‘Bonds for Victory’.
Unusual to modern eyes is the absence of hoards of ‘first responders’ and the extensive cordons now thrown around incidents, in fact being regarded as another inconvenience of the blitz. One or two are gazing-on, and there is a car parked up the road, but most are just going about their business.
Balham Tube, cross passage.
The scene was a mass of devastation with tram lines with the road surface still adhering, lying on top of a mountain of debris. It did damage nearby buildings, but those on the other side of the road were largely unscathed.
Elephant and Castle Tube Station, six stops away.
Balham High Road c 1965.
It is uncanny to see above the spot where most people are oblivious of the disaster on that fateful night in 1940.
Until 2010 there was a plaque in the underground station saying 68 were killed, (mainly in the underground), but as this was unconfirmed a new plaque omits to number the casualties.
What is utterly bizarre in hindsight in these types of disasters is the juxtaposition of ordinariness with unreality as buses are expected to sail majestically down the street, not end in a crater in the street; it goes against ones logic of things: order becoming chaos.
Remarkably the station was back in operation by the following January.
References:
BBC. WW2 ‘People’s War’: Elizabeth Lister.
ww2today.com.
dailymail.co.uk/news/Pics.
francisfrith.com/Pic of 1965.
23rd August 1944. Home Front.
In the blitz Britain’s towns and cities experienced horrific devastation and loss of life, but there were to be sporadic disasters in many areas, though little reported, after the main bombing onslaught had ended in May 1941.
One such happened at 10.30 am Today in August in 1944 when 61 were killed, including 31, five-year old children, two teachers and the three-man crew of a B24 Liberator, when it plunged to the ground in a rain storm at Freckleton, near Preston, Lancashire.
The plane hit the Holy Trinity Primary School and the Sad Sack, Snack Bar used by the Americans, and three houses.
The plane had left the Warton, United States Air Base, after repairs and attempting to return in a tremendous storm with wind of 60 mph, even a water-spout was reportedly seen over the Ribble Estuary.
However it was little reported nationally, as people weren’t in the mood for more woes, there was a feeling of disaster fatigue, and Paris had just been liberated.
In the previous year in January 1943, Sandhurst Road, Elementary School was hit in Catford, South East London leaving thirty-eight children and six teachers dead. Here again the wider public weren’t informed as the Censor refused to sanction Press pictures for fear of undermining public morale.
Two months later witnessed the Bethnal Green, London, disaster on 3rd March 1943 when 1500 people hurried to shelter in the Tube Station, after being alarmed by new anti-aircraft guns firing from nearby Victoria Park. 173 died, including more than 60 children, after someone had stumbled down the steps, causing a mass fall.
Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison agreed to an official inquiry but no report was released until January 1945, with Government fears of causing mass panic.
One unfortunate choice of an air-raid shelter was demonstrated with a lone aircraft attack on the North Shields lemonade factory of Wilkinson’s, just before mid-night on Saturday 3rd May 1941, when four bombs completely demolished the works leaving 107 dead.
The Borough Surveyor had been granted permission from the Home Office for a shelter in the cellars to accommodate 188 people. However after the attack casualties were probably increased by heavy machinery and chemicals from upstairs crashing down.
There was a twenty-eight days’ embargo on photos of bomb damage in the press and captions were imprecise regarding the location and date.
Despite evacuation of children, and even adults, early in the war, disaster was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it was this sporadic nature which helped to unnerve people on the home-front.
References:
wikipedia.org
itv.com/news.24.8.2014/Pic.
northshields173.org/story/Pic.
29th December 1940. Second Fire of London.
Captured by Herbert Mason, Chief Photographer Daily Mail, whilst fire-watching at their HQ in Tudor St, London on 29/30th Dec. 1940.
The 1940 autumn Blitz on Britain culminated in an attack on the night of 29th/30th December, so severe as to be described as ‘the 2nd Fire of London’.
The raids came at a time of slack-tide so the low water level would impede fire-fighting.(1)
14 firemen died, 31 Guildhalls were destroyed along with 19 churches, Paternoster Row home of the book trade was lost with millions of books, after 24,000 High Explosives and 100,000 Incendiaries had fallen.
St Paul’s Cathedral was saved from the hundreds of incendiaries, by the rooftop fire-watchers scooping them to the ground.(2)
Milkman carrying on regardless.
Holland House, Knightbridge, Library. Unfazed browsers.
The blitz had begun, in earnest on September 7th 1940 as Goering changed tactics from attacking radar units and airfields to civilian targets. Some say a mistake.
It was shortly after 5 pm when the drone of 300 enemy bombers escorted by double the number of fighters, using the river as a guide, came up the Thames bombing Woolwich Arsenal, a power station, gas works, the docks and the city.
Two hours later another 250 bombers followed by others throughout the night, until the last attack at 4 am; Luftwaffe pilots spoke of London being an ‘ocean of flames’, after 100.s of tons of high explosive and incendiaries.
marriage-a-la-mode?
A nice cup of tea.
The German High Command described it as a reprisal for the residential bombing of their cities including Berlin. Among the civil casualties were the Mayors of Westminster and Bermondsey.
The British Museum was damaged and St. Paul’s was only saved by the devotion of the fire-watchers every night brushing off incendiaries.
In total over 60,000 (30,000 in London alone) civilians were to be killed in WWII.
(1) This is not to underplay the devastation elsewhere, nor forgetting Coventry. which is explored elsewhere.
(2) Manned by architects and others who knew the vast intricacies of the building.
References:
wikipedia.org/blitz.
booksforvictory/pic of library.
bbc.co.uk/September 7th 1940/pic of milkman.
twitter.com. marcal isern/pic of wedding.
Pinterest/pic of cup of tea.
dailybritain.wordpress.com 