LONDON’S ORDEAL

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 142, 12 March 1941, Page 5

LONDON’S ORDEAL

Widespread Effects Of

Raids Sidelights on the extent to which London has suffered in recent air raids are given in a letter from a London merchant to his Wellington representative. The letter is dated January 11 and the writer remarks, quite casually, that barring a break at Christmas, he had not had his clothes off at night since last August. “You cannot imagine what the city is like,” runs the letter. “From Mark Lane Station to Mark Lane on that side every third building is gutted, and, going the other way, 'right round to the Minorles is more or less all wiped out. The P.L.A. building is in a bad way inside, though the external walls seem intact. The places opposite Mark Lane Station are entirely gone. Well, a lot of it was scheduled for demolition in any case in connexion with the Tower Hill improvement scheme, but it was to have been spread over a number of years. Now it has been done in one hit, and the scheme can be made five times as extensive. Apart from having its windows and a lot of its tracery blown in, St. Dunstan's Church lias so far escaped, but every building round the church on both sides has gone.

“On most days I have been lucky enough to get a sandwich at midday, and on two recent occasions I have been to the Corn Exchange, and there managed to secure some food by candle light. I was in the Bank of New Zealand on Wednesday (after the last big raid) and, noticing it was 1 o’clock, thought I would drop into Simpson’s for the ‘fish ordinary,' but found the place a charred ruin, so the old dinner, with all its traditions, has ceased to be —after 170 years.”

The same letter discloses the state of office business. It says that it was now impossible to purchase a typewriter outright; one had to hire them, and that could be done only for short terms. On top of that most of the stationers’ stocks had been cleared out and there seemed little prospect of replacement.