Plan to create memorial for station war widows
PLANS are under way to honour Glasgow’s war widows at the station where they collected the ravaged bodies of loved ones.
An underground area of Central Station was used as a make-shift morgue during the First World War with women forced to walk through rows of bodies to identify husbands, fathers and sons.
Paul Lyons, who runs sell-out tours of the underground said plans are underway for a plaque to honour the women, a new mural and war poetry in Scots.
He revealed how the British Army at the time had callously said it was a “waste of resources” to clean up the wounds of the dead before they were identified by relatives. A position they later and sleepers and there will also be a changed. re-created bookstall displaying
The women would pay historic newspapers as well as shop unemployed men they found loiterfronts, old-fashioned vending ing upstairs at the station a shilling machines and gas-effect lighting. or two to carry the bodies home. Old rails which have been replaced
Mr Lyons said: “Men start and on other lines will be laid by Network fight wars but it’s the women who are Rail trainees on the old track bed. left to pick up the aftermath. There are also plans to introduce a
“I’ve waited seven or eight years standalone tour of the roof of Central for this and I’m now to get a plaque Station and create an underground to remember the women of museum. Glasgow. Paul, who has worked at Central
“History doesn’t give them their for 20 years and is former duty manrecognition.” ager of London Euston, discovered a
A massive six-month project is also wheelchair, dating from around 1917, about to get underway to return a in a sealed up cupboard a few days derelictgo.Victorianplatformtoitsa former glory, complete with a vintage He said: “Railway stations such as steam engine. Central, Edinburgh Waverley and
Network Rail is to lay old tracks King’s Cross in London were used as temporary mortuaries during WW1.
“There would be rows and rows of bodies. Two stretchers are still here.
“The army’s responsibility stopped here. It was your job to come and identify the body.
“The woman had to walk up and down the rows. The army, changed their position of this but at that time said it was waste of resources to clean up the wounds of the dead.
“Of course the women weren’t strong enough to lift the bodies so they paid unemployed men from upstairs a couple of shillings.
“The men who had survived would come off the trains at platform one.
“One woman turned up at platform one every day for two years waiting for her husband until she got the telegram.”