Blitz Kids (47 page)

As a counter to the concerns, the police took the trouble to stress that not all absconders were likely to turn to prostitution. Some of them just wanted to be in the West End to savour the atmosphere and see what all the fuss was about.

The Ministry of Health noted that the female absconder was likely to contract VD because: ‘she has absconded with the object of finding sexual excitement or because she is driven by immorality as the easiest means of finding maintenance while at large’.
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They had no choice but to lead immoral lives because they needed a means of support. The
ministry further noted that infectious girls were an ‘immediate menace’.
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One approved-school runaway, who later became notorious, was Elizabeth Maud Baker. Born in Wales in July 1926, Betty Baker was later described by the headmistress of her approved school, in Sale in Cheshire, as a ‘complete misfit’ who was ‘clever, calculating and attractive’.
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In February 1940, aged just thirteen, she stole money from her mother’s purse and ran away from her home in Neath to Swansea. There she claimed she been sexually assaulted by a man named Phillip Hall. He was charged over the offence but was found not guilty. During the investigations, Betty Baker was medically examined, revealing that, despite her tender years, she was no longer a virgin. Three weeks after the initial incident she was again picked up by Swansea police, this time unconscious in a gutter. Once again she claimed sexual assault but nothing was proven. As her father, given leave from the Army to attend court, admitted, she was ‘too old for her years’.
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She was sent to the junior approved school just days after her fourteenth birthday, as her mother had told the courts that she was beyond control. As the police in her hometown described her, Betty Baker was a strong-willed girl but with loose morals.

Not long after arriving she was reported to be troublesome and a malign influence who was encouraging other pupils to enter her wayward world. As the headmistress noted, Betty was ‘a prostitute type and encouraging others in it’. She also noted that her ward was: ‘fond of the male sex and very untruthful’
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and ‘cold-blooded and completely callous’.
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Like so many other girls, attracted to the glamour of wartime, Betty became a serial absconder from the school. On her first ‘escape’ she took another girl with her and they spent the night in an Army camp. Whilst on the run with Denise Selby, Betty told her that if they wanted money they should ‘let soldiers do things to them’.
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The second time she absconded, Betty headed for Cardiff; on the third occasion it was London. After one of her escapes from school, Betty admitted spending her first night of freedom in a field with a soldier she had just met.

As a result of her ‘immoral’ behaviour, Betty Baker was ‘sent up’ to the senior school to prevent any further influence over the younger,
more innocent, children in the school. Her behaviour prompted the school’s headmistress to suggest that a special centre for sexually precocious girls, between thirteen and fifteen, should be established.

In November 1942, just two months after her sixteenth birthday, the ever-promiscuous Betty returned to her hometown to marry a man she described as her ‘half cousin’. More than ten years older than her, and serving in the 1st Airborne Division, Private Stanley Jones was reportedly violently drunk on their wedding night, meaning that the two never lived as a married couple. Instead, she returned to her previous ways. As a married woman, she was released from the care of the approved school and soon headed to London. There, her search for glamour, excitement and the company of soldiers eventually led her into the arms of a man who would change her life. As she later told a policeman, after arriving in London she became a ‘bad girl’.
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By 1944 the approved-school runaway would become of the country’s most notorious teenagers. 

3 March 1943 was a dreary day that started like so many wartime mornings in London’s East End. In Bethnal Green the local population stirred at 6 a.m. as they raised themselves from their bunks in the local air raid shelters or the beds of their homes, and prepared to go to work. In the tube station shelter, children folded up their blankets and got ready to return home, have breakfast and go to school. It was just another normal day.

After the horrors of the Blitz and the seemingly endless bombing of 1940 and 1941, a sense of calm had returned to the area. People had grown to accept their situation and learned to live with wartime conditions, and they continued to go about their daily lives. Though the bombers seldom came any more, thousands continued to spend each night in the shelter. The underground existence had become a way of life. Working men went there to ensure they got a quiet night’s sleep and mothers wanted their children to be safe.

One of those who had settled into shelter life was Reg Baker. Finally growing homesick after more than two years in a small Oxfordshire village, Baker had returned home in 1942. He was never certain why he had made the decision to go home; quite simply, he seemed to want a change. Even in the dark days of 1940 and 1941, when his parents had endured almost nightly air raids, he hadn’t been worried about what was going on at home: ‘I didn’t think too much about it. The
family wasn’t affectionate enough to worry. It’s still your family but we were still having an adventure, I was with the farmers, out collecting the harvest.’

Back in Bethnal Green he had swiftly adapted to the old ways of city life. Although he was initially shocked to see the vast swathes of destruction, he soon settled down: ‘Kids can adjust very easily. One minute I was surrounded by cows and green fields. Next I was back in London, picking up shrapnel from the bombsites.’ Though it did not affect him, he soon learned that many people he had known had died. He had to get used to discovering that shops he once frequented were no longer there, replaced by open, empty spaces. Even his own street had changed, with one of the three blocks at Gretton Houses having been destroyed.
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The empty space had become an allotment where Reg soon put his newly acquired ‘green fingers’ to use by growing vegetables. Other things had not changed: his mother still spent long hours scrubbing offices in the City and his father lived between work and the pub.

The biggest change of all was the new routine of subterranean life that had emerged since 1940. Some people appeared to live almost entirely underground, only emerging when they had to. For Alf Morris, arriving at the shelter for the night had become part of the routine of wartime life: ‘When we went down, there was no need to line up. Mr Hastings, the head of the shelter, just gave us our bunks.’ For the people of Bethnal Green, the station had become part of their everyday lives: morale was high; people held wedding receptions and Christmas parties underground; there were toilets, a library and a room for social functions; a priest even performed services in a temporary church. There was a hall for concerts and plays, medical facilities and even a room to isolate children with infections. Families had their own, pre-allocated bunks and a sense of community had emerged. Teenagers like Alf Morris and his mates even found themselves girlfriends among the population of the shelter. It was a far cry from the chaos of 1940 when people had simply staked a place by rushing to the station and laying out blankets. What had been survival had become a way of life.

Settling back into London life, Reg Baker followed his family to the tube station shelter. Every night when the shelter opened its doors, his mother would go down there and settle in. Later in the evening, Reg
would join her and then, just before the lights went out, his father would arrive from the pub:

The routine of life meant people were always coming and going from the shelter. Families would enter, settle in, then send the children ‘up top’ with the instruction that they were to come down immediately if the sirens sounded. The local boys and girls would congregate around the junction and lark about. They would play on the pinball tables in a nearby arcade, or go to the baked potato stall, or to a nearby cafe famed for its ham sandwiches. Alf Morris enjoyed the freedom on the surface, playing with his mates and chatting to the girls, but he knew he could not stray far: ‘My mother wanted to know where I was. When the raids started we ran down the shelter – and you did run. The door was closed soon after the siren had sounded.’ Once safely inside, the ‘Alert Sounded’ sign was illuminated and people settled down to await the morning.

Yet despite the routine of underground life, there were plenty of concerns about the Bethnal Green tube shelter. It could take up to 10,000 people, with beds for more than 3,000. But there was a problem: everyone entered via a single route. The danger to those attempting to enter the shelter was already well known to the local authorities. In 1941 the Civil Defence Authority had reported:

As was later noted by the Court of Appeal, the civil defence authorities had clearly contemplated the probability that heavy air raids would result in an uncontrollable and dangerous, rush of people seeking shelter:

One member of London County Council, who in 1942 had tried to enter the shelter at night whilst carrying a baby, recalled having to feel for each step with his feet, telling the local chief warden it was ‘a death trap’.
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It was clear that, with a predicted lapse of seven minutes between the sounding of the alarm and the fall of the first bombs, it would be impossible for thousands of people to safely enter Bethnal Green station.

The authorities were also aware that with a cinema and numerous pubs nearby, and many bus routes passing through Bethnal Green, an air raid at certain times of the day was likely to cause a mass rush to the shelter. Such were concerns that the local ARP had approached the police to ask that crowds be dispersed from the nearby junction. Yes, there were concerns about the state of the entrance, but this was 1943 – the tide of war had slowly begun to turn, the bombing of London had abated and a sense of normality had returned. The lack of wardens to control access to the tube station was seemingly inexplicable, but the crowds arrived each night in an orderly manner.

Yet 3 March 1943 was not a normal night. All the circumstances that the local ARP had imagined as their nightmare scenario – an unexpected air raid, a large crowd rushing for the shelter, people jumping off buses to seek sanctuary, pubs and cinemas emptying – were all about to come true. It would be a night that left an indelible mark on the area. The local ARP personnel knew that a warden was necessary to control a large crowd, but they had no way of knowing when to expect an unusually large crowd – all the signs were that the bombing was finished anyway and there was no reason to expect a
bigger than average turnout on 3 March. They were wrong. For the first time for many months a mass crowd, rather than the usual evening arrivals, tried to enter the shelter.

That evening Alf Morris was at home with his family. The radio had already announced there had been an RAF raid on Berlin the previous evening and the family expected the Germans to retaliate by bombing London. Still, they had been bombed many times before and felt that, if the alarm came, they would be safe in the deep tunnels of the Central line. Then, just before 8 p.m. the radio went off: ‘When that happened you knew there was going to be an air raid. This night, my father said to me and Aunt Lill, “You make your way to the shelter and I will fetch Mum and the baby.” At that time my sister was three weeks old.’

Picking up the blankets, they left the house and began walking towards the shelter. At this point the air raid warning had not yet sounded, but other families had also started to head to the shelters:

As the sirens sounded, Reg Baker was a couple of streets away, at home with his father. His mother was already safely in her bunk in the tube station, just waiting for the rest of the family to arrive: ‘The siren went and Dad was in the toilet. I said “Shall I run on, Dad?” But he said, “You’d better wait for me.” So I waited. We walked through into Roman Road.’

By this time the crowds were beginning to grow. Desperate not to be caught in the raid, people rushed from their homes to the tube station. Alf Morris was in the ever-growing throng that was converging on the single entrance, with its single, dull bulb. Picking up speed, Alf told his aunt: ‘Come on, Aunt Lill, the guns are going to start.’ He knew it would be safer to get underground before the anti-aircraft guns started firing. The rain of hot shrapnel from ack-ack shells exploding overhead was known to be potentially lethal: ‘We got to the station, but
still the guns hadn’t fired. Everyone was going down the stairs as normal. Everyone was steady – ladies and gentlemen helping each other.’ So far, so good: ‘I got halfway down and the rocket guns started firing in Victoria Park.’

Not far behind Alf Morris was another local boy, twelve-year-old Peter Perryment. He had been walking towards the shelter when his mother told him and his seventeen-year-old sister Iris and seven-
year-old
cousin Barbara to run on ahead. Reaching the shelter, they were soon caught in the middle of the heaving crowd. Peter and his sister managed to get through the crowd and on to the stairs.

At that point everything that the authorities had thought could go wrong did go wrong. As the new rocket guns – that no one had heard before – started firing, there was a rush for the shelter. The scream of these new weapons struck fear into the hearts of the locals: was this some deadly new weapon being unleashed on them by Hitler? Reg Baker was terrified by the sound: ‘My dad said, “Get down!” I didn’t know what was going on – I’d been in Oxfordshire during the Blitz. I hadn’t experienced this. Then we got up and ran to the entrance.’

Two full buses arrived at the stop just outside, disgorging their passengers into the growing crowd. The local pubs emptied as drinkers sought sanctuary. Customers left the local cinema to go to the one place they had felt safe at the height of the Blitz. Seeing the growing crowd, Reg Baker and his father made a fateful decision. Just as they approached the top of the stairs, they realized the crowd was growing too big:

Not everyone rushed for shelter. Some of the local youths had work to do. As the alarms sounded, fifteen-year-old James Hunt mounted his bike and rushed towards the ARP depot where he had to report for duty. On the way he heard the launching of the anti-aircraft rockets. Such was the blast that he was almost knocked off his bike. He made
his way through the crowds to reach the ARP post, where he awaited instructions.

At the tube station shelter, as the crowds grew thicker, jostling to get down the steps, it reached a critical mass. Alf Morris was almost at the bottom of the nineteen steps. Everything seemed normal: yes, it was crowded but he knew every inch of these steps from having walked up and down them almost every day for more than two years. Then it changed: ‘As the rockets went up, everyone thought it was bombs coming down. People behind us called out, “There’s bombs! There’s bombs! Get down!” Those of us on the staircase tried to walk down quicker. But the people behind us pushed us down.’ Later, some said an old lady had tripped, falling forward and bringing those behind her crashing down into a deadly heap. Others said it was a woman with a child, who stumbled, fell, picked herself up, then escaped to safety as those behind her crashed down on to the steps. Whatever had happened, those at the bottom fell forward and were crushed by the weight of those behind.

There was sheer panic as the crush grew. Alf Morris could feel the weight of people increasing around him as he was forced forward, his feet lifting from the floor.