AIR-RAID SHELTERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 129, 27 November 1940, Page 8

AIR-RAID SHELTERS

BAD CONDITIONS

MENACE TO HEALTH

LONDON, November 25,

Intolerable conditions in air-raid shelters are revealed in a leader in "The Times, " which, basing its strictures on the report of the commission which recently sat under Lord Horder, deplores the absence of a central coordinating authority to improve the situation.

"The Times" says that specific shelters, notably in the East End, suffer from known defects and are the scenes of known scandals. They are consistently vilely overcrowded, they lack in some cases all sanitary provision, and where such provision exists in a primitive form it lacks all privacy; they lack reasonable degree of lighting, and they also leak. They have mud floors.

"Hundreds of people pass the greater part of their days under these conditions of stench, filth, vermin, and darkness —conditions which have continued without improvement and sometimes with gradual deterioration for ten weeks," it continues.

"These appalling shelters are exceptional, but they constitute a sore which, unless it is cured, may result in widespread pollution of minds and bodies."

The leading article declares that persons who are endangering the health and amenities of their fellowshelterers cannot be removed. Verminous adults cannot be cleansed, and also otherwise offensive persons cannot be compulsorily removed. There are cases of persons suffering from infectious diseases who have had to stay or have been allowed to stay for many hours in a shelter before their removal could be arranged.

"It seems, therefore, that there is not only divided and unco-ordinated responsibility but that also in some directions there is a lack of the necessary powers for any authority," it comments.

The "Daily Mail," in a leader, asks why, after the Minister of Health, Mr. Mac Donald, promised improvements in shelters, the conditions are unchanged in some tube stations. "They may be better in so far as the human animal has adapted himself, but they are worse in so far as the season of infectious disease and lowered vitality is upon its," it' states. "Doctors have warned us that if influenza and diphtheria become rampant among the tube population they will produce unprecedented epidemics."