We survived the Bethnal Green Tube disaster
VIVID RECOLLECTIONS: Eyewitness Babette Clark looking after for her sister-in-law. “She was holding Barry and saw the crowds at the entrance so she turned to go back home,” recalls her daughter Sandra Scotting.
“Unfortunately the tide of people coming towards her just threw her back through the doorway and down the stairs. She lay on her back with Barry in her arms while people fell on top of them.”
Barry died along with Ivy’s mum yet for many years was never discussed.
“Mum never spoke about that night and nor did my sister,” says Babette. In fact all were sworn to secrecy but the truth emerged once the incident children went to school to find empty desks and employees realised their colleagues were missing.
“In many cases they have only been able to tell family and friends what happened to them fairly recently,” says Ivy’s daughter Sandra.
“With people being killed at home and abroad in the war they just had to get on with life, yet for the Tube shelter survivors it has been with them for ever. It was a very traumatic event for mum.”
Their anguish was worsened by the discovery that the government also suppressed details about the lack of basic safety measures such as lighting and handrails, details that the council had previously reported to them.
It is one reason Sandra was one of a group of people who set up the Stairway To Heaven charity to establish a suitable memorial, believing that the plaque placed above the staircase entrance on the 50th anniversary of the tragedy was inadequate. That campaign finally came to fruition just before Christmas last year when the memorial was unveiled on a chilly December day.
The ribbon was cut by Joan Martin MBE who was the casualty doctor on duty at the nearby hospital on the night of the tragedy, treating the injured and dealing with many of the victims.
She has since sadly passed away at the age of 103, never able to forget the trauma of that night. “She carried it with her throughout her life stating that it was the worst night of her medical career,” Sandra reveals.
Like everyone else present at the unveiling ceremony to the new memorial Dr Martin took comfort from the fact that now at least those involved in the Bethnal Green Tube shelter disaster will never be forgotten.
For Babette it is a poignant legacy of a catastrophe that she feels could have been avoided: “It happened and it needn’t have happened. It is just very sad.”