News - Safety Row
 

Clive D. W. Feather wrote:
In article , Paul Weaver
writes
If the stairs or escalators were crowded then people are unlikely
to be killed when falling - too many people in the way!
Wasn't there an incident in the East End in WWII?

Bethnal Green.

One person tripped on the stairs, and around 150 were killed in the
resulting crush.

173 actually. Details at
http://tube.tfl.gov.uk/content/metro/03/0303/04/

(Ignore the photo captioned "The worst civilian disaster of the second
world war" which shows an unrelated incident, possibly the bombing of Bank
station.)

--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

News - Safety Row
 

Paul Weaver:
Wasn't there an incident in the East End in WWII?

Richard J.:
Details at http://tube.tfl.gov.uk/content/metro/03/0303/04/

(Ignore the photo captioned "The worst civilian disaster of the second
world war" which shows an unrelated incident...)

Also ignore the part about "For 48 hours prime minister Winston
Churchill withheld information on the tragedy". The disaster
happened on on the evening of Wednesday, 1943-03-03; most of the
details were publicly announced the following evening and reported
in the Times for the day after that.

What was not published at the time was the location of the disaster;
the Times merely described it as "a London tube shelter", withholding
not only the station, but also the district and, probably the most
important thing to conceal, the fact that it was an incomplete station.
A report on the inquest, two weeks later, revealed that it was in
"East London".

Also not published initially, as the web page says, was the part about
what caused the crowd to surge in the first place -- i.e. a new
defensive weapon whose sound was presumably mistaken for a new bomb.
--
Mark Brader | "If I quoted each [part] that had serious problems,
Toronto | [the author] could sue me for copyright infringement."
| -- Steve Summit

My text in this article is in the public domain.