IMMENSE CROWD

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27056, 3 June 1953, Page 9

IMMENSE CROWD

Long Night Vigil

(Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON, June 2.

There were unprecedented scenes along the Coronation route last night. Pavements in the Mall, Trafalgar square and along Whitehall were crammed with men, women and children of all ages and from all quarters of the world. By midnight almost every space seemed to be occupied with crowds 30 deep in places.

“Sleeping out” was banned near Buckingham Palace, bul the crowd, which numbered 50,000 at times during the day, filled the pavements and most of the roadway.

It is thought that at least 3,000,000 people will be on the route today in spite of the counter-attraction of the television broadcast. Until a late hour a host of workmen were putting the finishing touches to gay decorations along the route. Thousands of pots of red. white and blue flowers were banked around the Victoria memorial and other points. Others were carried into the Abbey Annex, where women were putting the last stitches in the carpets.

Cold Wet Night There was a long night ahead of those who lined the streets, and they just did- not care. They looked like refugees. They were wet. They huddled together to keep warm. Their blankets were soaked and theii>sandwiches limp and damp. But this great crowd of happy-go-lucky Elizabethans smiled, laughed and sang when the rain streamed down. Cockneys cracked jokes. “Never mind the weather, never mind the rain,” chanted one who brought his family to Trafalgar Square to camp out for the night. Australians and New Zealanders settled down in sleeping bags and hiking tents. Coloured folk from Africa and Jamaica shivered now and then as the rain trickled down their necks. Americans in blue and grey jeans, spread out under rugs and tried to snatch some . sleep.Dozens of pedple clambered up the base of Nelson’s Monument in Trafalgar Square and began to bed down beside the massive statues of lions. The rain lashed them in heavy squalls. They put up their coat collars and pulled their blankets around them. “We couldn’t give a hoot,” they said. The Mall, the broad highway leading to Buckingham Palace, resembled a tribal camp. Mothers and fathers made tents for the children under the trees, and grouped themselves together beside the huge stands. White-haired grandmothers were there, too, determined to sit it out to see the Queen set off for Westminster Abbey. Police reinforcements went to the Palace last night, but could not keep the waiting thousands on the pavements as , the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret left the Palace after a short call on the Queen. The Royal car had to travel slowly through the swirling crowd. Tucked in between a white-haired old English lady, whose main concern was that the Queen “wouldn’t catch a chill in her gold coach” and a French winegrower with enough champagne and cognac for a siege, was a party from New Zealand and Australia. Three young scoutmasters from Sydney were loaded with three haversacks. “They are all well packed with good food, some of it canned stuff from back home,” one said.