THE ENGLISH FLOODS

Evening Star, Issue 19760, 10 January 1928, Page 5

THE ENGLISH FLOODS

LONDON’S CATASTROPHE MANY PEOPLE TRAPPED IN BASEMENTS FULL EXTENT OF DAMAGE BEING REVEALED. Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, January 9. Though there is a danger of a further catastrophe until Tuesday night there has been no recurrence of the floods on Sunday night. The details emphasise the horror of the tragic happening which was increased by the total unpreparedness of the victims. “Good Goa! The river is overflowing. Quick 1 the children!” cried one woman to her sleeping husband. This was typical of the first warning in many homes. The terror was increased by the failure of the lighting. Galloping mounted police gave warning in many eases, while in others police or firemen were quickly on the scene, otherwise many more would have been drowned, as sleeping in basements is common in the poor districts near the river. Trapped men and women in Westminster must have known their doom as surely as sailors in a sunken submarine.

The heroine and the hero of the tragedy were Miss Frankie Isse and Frank Wellshcr. The woman woke to find the bedroom half-full of water and the furniture floating around. She escaped through a window, where she found a boy drowning, and hauled him to safety. Wellshcr lost his life trying to rescue people in a Westminster basement. Ho was a champion swimmer. He had brought some men and women to an upper floor and had returned to the basement, but the door banged behind him, and was held by the force of tho water, so that AVellsher was unable to escape. The full extent of the damage is slowly being revealed. Billingsgate Market, in Thames street, was flooded, flu position being very serious. A Yeoman of the Guard, who was sleeping in the dungeon of the Tower of London, awoke to find his trestle bed floating, and when he jumped out it was into 4ft of water.

insurance experts point out that insurance for such damage is not recoverable unless specified in the policy. Poor homes will be the greatest sufferers. Beds and furniture are covered with filthy slime, while pianos and other valuables are spoiled. Occupiers of some wrecked homes earned considerable money by charging fees to curiosity mongers. Thus women stepped from luxurious cars and paid halfcrowns to see real life chambers of horrors with broken doors, overturned furniture, and drying bedding. Much of tho damage is not so serious as was at first feared. Thus alarmist reports spoke of the damage to pictures at the Tate Gallery as running into hundreds of thousands of pounds. It is true that many sketches were engulfed, hut Sir Charles Holmes, director of tho National Gallery, says that they survived better than anyone hoped. Most of tho sketches were pencil outlines without public interest as real treasures. They were exhibited on th’e ground floor, where the uninjured sketches are drying nicely, as they were promptly laid out on the floor of the gallery and the _ corners pinned down to prevent crinkling. A doy.cn Landseer paintings were seriously damaged, and this is probably the worst loss at the Tate Gallery. Water poured through a breach in the river wall into the Hurlingham polo ground at Putney, and the lawn tennis courts at Ranelagh Gardens, where the water is like a river. The bursting of the sea wall at Maklon, in Essex, also caused serious damage, and the River Colne overflowed its banks at Colchester. Fifty motor cars parked for a dance near Maldon were found by their owners in 4ft of water.