LONDON SHELTERS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 40, 27 November 1940, Page 5

LONDON SHELTERS.

“STENCH, FILTH AND VERMIN.”

CRITICISM IN THE PRESS.

LONDON, November 25.

The intolerable conditions in airraid shelters is revealed in a. leading article in “The Times” which, basing its strictures! on the Horder report, deplores the absence of a central coordinating authority to improve the situation.. The newspaper, says that specific shelters, notably in the East End, suffer from known defects and are scenes of known scandals.

“They are consistently vilely overcrowded and lack in some cases all sanitary provision, and where such provision exists in a primitive form, it lacks all privacy. They lack any reasonable degree of lighting and also leak. They have mud floors. “Hundreds pass the greater part of tlieir days under these conditions of stench, filth, vermin' and darkness—conditions which have continued without improvement, sometimes even with gradual deterioration, for 10 weeks.

“These appalling shelters are exceptional, but they constitute a sore which, unless cured, may result in far more widespread ; pollution of minds and bodies.’’ •

The newspaper declares that, persons endangering the health amenities. of fellow shelterers cannot be removed. Verminous adults are uneleansable. Also, otherwise offensive persons cannot be compulsorily removed. There are cases' of persons suffering from infections diseases who had to stay, or were allowed to stay, for many ■hours in a shelter before their removal could be arranged. The. “Daily Mail,” in a leading article, asks why, after Mr Malcolm MacDonald, the Minister for Health, promised improvements to shelters, conditions are unchanged in some tube stations.

“They may be better,” the newspaper says, “in so far as the human animal lias adapted himself, but worse in so far as the season of infectious disease and lowered vitality is upon us-. The doctors have warned us that if influenza and diphtheria become rampant among the tube population they will produce unprecedented epidemics.