That would suggest around 140,000 every night of a raid, though fewer if the figures included nights in which there were no attacks. The peak was on 17 February 1918 with 300,000 crowding into the system, well above its official capacity. This prompted enquiries in Parliament about hygiene and disease, but the Home Secretary, Sir George Cave, allayed fears by announcing that the stations were in every case thoroughly cleansed and disinfected by the management before traffic was resumed – a claim that was probably more propaganda than substance considering the task faced by the Underground Company, which had lost many of its staff to the war effort.
Indeed, the greatest social impact of the war on the Underground was the employment of women for the first time in the history of the system. They took over the men’s jobs in large numbers and were essential in keeping the network running. At the height of the war, half the 3,000 District’s employees were women, and a third of the 4,000-strong Metropolitan workforce. Whole stations came under the control of women, with the newly opened Maida Vale leading the way, though it shared a male stationmaster with three neighbouring stations. The Railway Gazette grudgingly recognized this as ‘preferable to employing hobbledehoys’ and women continued to take on newtasks, replacing gatemen on trains in 1917, but the roles of guard and driver remained the preserve of men. Women received the same wages as men, which, given the gender inequalities in other industries between the two, was a remarkably enlightened policy, forced on the management by the trade unions. However, the women were displaced by men returning from the war and the system reverted to being entirely male-operated.
It was not only people who found shelter in the Underground during the Great War. Sections of the tube system were used for the storage of museum treasures and paintings, clearly a sign that the authorities were concerned about widespread bombing, even though, in the event, the threat never materialized. The disused platform at Aldwych was sealed off, and in September 1917 over 300 pictures from the National Gallery, about one tenth of the collection, were housed there until December 1918. The miniature post office railway, being built to transport mail between sorting offices using automatic trains, was used to store parts of the collection of the Tate, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Public Record Office. 4 The Victoria & Albert used a nearby spare station tunnel at South Kensington, shared with cases of china from Buckingham Palace. All these precautions were carried out too late in the war to be useful and proved unnecessary since, after that damaging raid on 17 February 1918, there were only two further attacks, London had strengthened its air defences and the Germans had largely lost faith in their ability to win the war.
When the attacks ended, the Daily Mail published a map of where bombs had fallen; there was a clear pattern of attacks along main arterial routes and in the centre of London. The final toll was 670 deaths and nearly 2,000 wounded. The Underground was not a specific target but the railways had been and several stations and lines were attacked, though damage was fairly minimal. Indeed, more disruption was caused by the authorities’ decision to suspend all underground and main line railway traffic during raids than by the consequent damage. As mentioned before, this rule was later relaxedand trains were allowed to proceed slowly during attacks, which was a sensible compromise between safety and the need to keep transport links functioning in wartime.
The war highlighted the vulnerability of the system to attack. Indeed, to protect the system itself, the Underground Company had wanted to install flood doors in case bombs caused a breach. In response to the outbreak of war, four temporary barriers were created. They consisted of steel framework supports in which heavy timber
Indeed, the greatest social impact of the war on the Underground was the employment of women for the first time in the history of the system. They took over the men’s jobs in large numbers and were essential in keeping the network running. At the height of the war, half the 3,000 District’s employees were women, and a third of the 4,000-strong Metropolitan workforce. Whole stations came under the control of women, with the newly opened Maida Vale leading the way, though it shared a male stationmaster with three neighbouring stations. The Railway Gazette grudgingly recognized this as ‘preferable to employing hobbledehoys’ and women continued to take on newtasks, replacing gatemen on trains in 1917, but the roles of guard and driver remained the preserve of men. Women received the same wages as men, which, given the gender inequalities in other industries between the two, was a remarkably enlightened policy, forced on the management by the trade unions. However, the women were displaced by men returning from the war and the system reverted to being entirely male-operated.
It was not only people who found shelter in the Underground during the Great War. Sections of the tube system were used for the storage of museum treasures and paintings, clearly a sign that the authorities were concerned about widespread bombing, even though, in the event, the threat never materialized. The disused platform at Aldwych was sealed off, and in September 1917 over 300 pictures from the National Gallery, about one tenth of the collection, were housed there until December 1918. The miniature post office railway, being built to transport mail between sorting offices using automatic trains, was used to store parts of the collection of the Tate, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Public Record Office. 4 The Victoria & Albert used a nearby spare station tunnel at South Kensington, shared with cases of china from Buckingham Palace. All these precautions were carried out too late in the war to be useful and proved unnecessary since, after that damaging raid on 17 February 1918, there were only two further attacks, London had strengthened its air defences and the Germans had largely lost faith in their ability to win the war.
When the attacks ended, the Daily Mail published a map of where bombs had fallen; there was a clear pattern of attacks along main arterial routes and in the centre of London. The final toll was 670 deaths and nearly 2,000 wounded. The Underground was not a specific target but the railways had been and several stations and lines were attacked, though damage was fairly minimal. Indeed, more disruption was caused by the authorities’ decision to suspend all underground and main line railway traffic during raids than by the consequent damage. As mentioned before, this rule was later relaxedand trains were allowed to proceed slowly during attacks, which was a sensible compromise between safety and the need to keep transport links functioning in wartime.
The war highlighted the vulnerability of the system to attack. Indeed, to protect the system itself, the Underground Company had wanted to install flood doors in case bombs caused a breach. In response to the outbreak of war, four temporary barriers were created. They consisted of steel framework supports in which heavy timber
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