Service marks worst wartime civilian disaster

A memorial service was held on Sunday to remember the 173 victims of the Bethnal Green Tube station disaster, the biggest civilian loss of life in a single incident in Britain during World War Two.

Families of the victims walked from the St John On Bethnal Green church to the east London station where they laid wreaths and flowers.

The disaster took place on March 3, 1943, when hundreds of people seeking shelter from a feared German air raid were crushed in a stairwell.

Someone tripped and scores of people were suffocated in the ensuing panic. Among the dead were 62 children and 84 women. It took years for full details of the incident to emerge.

"Huge numbers of people from the east of London were touched by this tragedy," the Conservative MP for Romford, Andrew Rosindell, told the BBC after the service.

"It's something we must never forget. It's wonderful that so much is being done to remember all those poor souls who lost their lives," he said.

Survivor Alf Morris, who was 12 at the time, was saved by an air-raid warden who pulled him from the bottom of the stairwell by his hair and arms.

"I was hollering and hollering as it hurt, but she didn't let go and eventually pulled me free by grabbing me from under my arms," he told the Web site of the Stairway to Heaven memorial group, which campaigns for a new permanent memorial to be erected outside the station.

"My aunt was trapped against a wall," he added. "They grabbed hold of her shoulders and pulled her free and she left her coat and shoes behind.

"She was black and blue all over. Another couple of minutes and she would have been dead."

The Reverend Alan Green led Sunday's service during which the names of all the victims were read out.