Record View
- Tragedy at Bethnal Green : report on an inquiry into the accident at Bethnal Green Tube station shelter
Book
Record ID:
Author:
Edition:
- Abridged ed.
Publication date:
- 1999
Publisher:
- The Stationery Office
Place of publication:
- London
ISBN:
- 011702404X
Dimensions:
- 19 cm.
Extent:
- 79 p.
Illustrations:
- ill.
Series:
Summary etc:
- The accident at the air raid shelter in Bethnal Green Tube station occurred on 3rd March 1943. For two days the government withheld information about the tragedy in order to prevent word reaching the enemy. Eventually, an inquiry was held in secret, the results of which were published at the end of the war in 1945. This is a copy of that report.
Laurence Rivers Dunne (1893-1970), magistrate, was asked by Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary, to investigate the tragedy. He examined eighty witnesses in around a fortnight, and tendered his report by 23 March. Although protesters in the East End demanded a public inquiry, Dunne interviewed witnesses in camera so as to 'minimize public demoralization'. He reported on defects in the shelter's structure, lighting, and supervision, and rebuked responsible officials, but concluded that structural faults were subsidiary causes of the catastrophe. 'This disaster was caused by a number of people losing their self-control at a particularly unfortunate place and time', he concluded (TNA: PRO, HO 45/25221, Dunne's report, paragraph 62(a). Morrison's decision to defer the report's publication raised a local outcry, and caused complications when litigation over the accident was launched in 1944. The report was finally published in 1945.
Class number:
Subject - topic:
Notes:
- Originally published as: Report on an inquiry into the accident at Bethnal Green tube station shelter on the 3rd March, 1943. London, HMSO 1945. Laurence Rivers Dunne (1893-1970), magistrate, was asked by Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary, to investigate the tragedy.
Shelf reference:
- G76 BET
Locations:
- Library Mezzanine