Belsize Park, Goodge Street and the Oval, as well as the Swiss Cottager. There was also the Subway Companion, which was short-lived in its ambition to be distributed to all tube stations being used as shelters. ‘Greetings to our nightly companions, our temporary cave dwellers, our sleeping companions, somnambulists, snorers, chatterers and all who inhabit the Swiss Cottage Station from dusk to dawn,’ ran the Swiss Cottager’s first instalment. Each issue offered information and advice: ‘a Committee of Shelter Marshals has been formed. It hopes to act as a bridge between you and the London Passenger Transport Board, and also do what it can for each and every person using this station at night. If you have any suggestion or complaint – if you think something should be installed, provided or remedied, please let us know and we shall do our best to meet your wishes.’ ‘To guard against colds and infection … a face mask can be made with a few inches of surgical gauze, or even butter muslin. Sprinkle it with a little oil of eucalyptus and tie over the face with a strip of tape at bedtime. We understand the government intends to do something about face masks. Unfortunately, intentions are a poor medicine and instructions a useless preventive.’ Exhortations: ‘there is still far too much litter in the station at the “All Clear”. It is the prime duty of each and every one to leave the station in a clean and decent condition. Dustbins are provided in the station for refuse.’ ‘Do not bring camp beds into the station. Three camp beds occupy as much space as four blankets or a single mattress, so the available space is reduced by one fourth. YOU might be that fourth person turned away for lack of room.’ ‘Don’t expect home comforts or plenty of elbow room. Suffer a little inconvenience to make room for the next person.’ ‘Vibration due to heavy gunfire or other causes will be much less felt if you do not lie with your head against the wall.’ ‘Please do not contribute to any unauthorised collection. Members of the Committee may be recognised by their carrying a yellow armlet with the letter “C” in black.’ ‘It is your duty to report anyone spitting to a member of the Committee or a Warden.’ Jokes: ‘Our morning paper tells us that one person in every eight snores. This station seems full of eighth persons.’ (Government-issue earplugs were supplied at stations: proof against the noise of Ack-Ack guns, perhaps, but maybe not snorers.)
Aldwych station, on a branch of the Piccadilly Line, was closed at the end of September and converted into an underground shelter. It had been reckoned that it would be able to accommodate 7,500, but although this was over-optimistic, once the walls had been painted, the rails removed and the track covered over with sleepers, and two hundred bunks and lighting installed, some 2,000 people were able to shelter in the tunnel that ran from Aldwych to Holborn. The space was extended in the spring of 1941, taking over part of the tunnel where the Elgin Marbles and other treasures from the British Museum were being stored. Westminster Council donated 2,000 books from the borough’s libraries for the shelterers’ use, educational lectures were arranged to pass the time, the left-wing Unity Theatre put on the lighter sketches in its repertoire, and ENSA (the Entertainments National Service Association, or ‘Every Night Something Awful’, depending on your point of view) imported entertainers such as George Formby, as well as Shakespearean plays and a projector for films underground. A local vicar conducted a regular service at the Aldwych shelter, and a play centre was provided for small children at Elephant and Castle, with a qualified teacher to provide handicraft lessons. Such diversions spread to other shelters during that long winter underground (soon fifty-two stations had a library), and at the request of the Mayor of Bermondsey, one of the most-bombed boroughs in London, the LCC sent instructors to the shelters to teach drama, dressmaking, handicrafts and first aid, while children were provided with paper and paints, and produced ‘violent masterpieces in which Spitfires bring down Heinkels amid sheets of flame’.
But there was one thing that no one could provide: any guarantee of safety. On 7 October 1940 seven shelterers were killed and thirty-three injured at Trafalgar Square station when an explosion caused the concrete and steel casing over an escalator to collapse, bringing down an avalanche of wet earth. The next day nineteen were killed and fifty-two injured – most of them refugees from Belgium – at Bounds Green station in the northern suburbs, when a house next to the station was hit by a bomb and toppled over, causing a tunnel to collapse and bury the victims in masonry and debris.
On 14 October a heavy bomb fell on Balham High Road in south London just above a point where underground tunnels intersected. It caused a sixty-foot crater to open, and immediately a double-decker bus fell into it. Below ground a deluge of ballast and sludge, dislodged by the explosion, engulfed the platforms where six hundred people were sleeping, and gas from fractured pipes seeped in. Sixty-eight were killed, including the stationmaster, the ticket-office clerk and two porters. Many drowned as water and sewage from burst mains poured in, soon reaching a depth of three feet. The toll would have been even higher had not two LPTB staff wrenched open the floodgates. Seven million gallons of water and sewage had to be pumped out before salvage work could begin. For weeks afterwards those sheltering in nearby stations along the Northern Line were aware of a ‘ghost’ train that slipped quietly along the track around midnight clearing the debris of the Balham disaster, a tragic cargo that included shoes, bits of clothing, handbags, toys and other heart-stopping possessions.
At a minute to eight in the evening of 11 January 1941 a bomb fell on the booking hall of Bank station in the City, and a massive explosion tore through the station. It blew a massive two-hundred-foot crater in the road, which was so large that a bridge had to be built over it to get traffic flowing again. Many passers-by were killed, but in attending to them the rescue services did not realise at first that there was even greater carnage underground. The blast from the bomb ‘travelled through the various underground passages, and in particular forced its way with extreme violence down the escalator killing those sleeping at the foot of it at the time, and killing and injuring others sheltering on the platform opposite the entrances’, while some people were hurled into the path of an incoming train. A total of 111 people were killed at Bank, including fifty-three shelterers and four underground staff. An inquiry into the disaster opened on 10 February 1941. ‘It is difficult to convince people that even when they are 60 or 70 feet underground, they are not safe,’ remarked the chair. It had been alleged that inadequate sanitation was a key factor, as there were only a few chemical toilets in the station, and since these were soon overflowing, many declined to use them, and were queuing to use the conveniences in the booking hall when the bomb fell. The inquiry found that in fact no deaths and only a few minor injuries could be attributed to this. There was no first aid post on the platform, and there was no emergency lighting. There had been other recent ‘incidents’ in the area (notably on 29 December 1940), so roads were closed and access to the station was difficult, while fallen debris cut off access to the Central Line (both the Central and Northern Lines pass through Bank), meaning that it had taken doctors and stretcher parties more than an hour to reach it. While the injured waited for the medical services to arrive, a Hungarian refugee doctor, Dr Z.A. Leitner, who had himself been injured in the blast, gave more than forty morphia injections as he ministered to the injured single-handed in the gloom and choking dust. At the inquiry the hero doctor paid tribute to those he had helped. ‘I should like to make a remark. You English people cannot appreciate the discipline of your own people. I want to tell you, I have not found one hysterical, shouting patient. I think this very important, that you should not take such things as given – because it does not happen in other countries. If Hitler could have been there for five minutes with me, he would have finished the war. He would have realised that he has got to take every Englishman and twist him by the neck – otherwise he cannot win this war.’
* In fact the much-feared ‘trogs’ would be found in the Ramsgate caves; with the approval of Herbert Morrison they were forcibly ejected.
The Warden. For some time before the blitz he was regarded by most of his charges with anything from cool indifference to active suspicion as a Nosey Parker.
But
