1,000 SLEEP IN HILL CAVES

Greymouth Evening Star, 5 December 1940, Page 10

1,000 SLEEP IN HILL CAVES

ELECTRIC LIGHTS AND CARPETS While London is planning vast extensions and improvements to shelters, a small town in the south has found safety at practically no cost at all. Caves run deep into an adjacent hill, and here come not only the local inhabitants, but people in cars from places many miles away, and even a number of homeless refugees from the East .End of London writes Campbell Dixon, in the London “Daily Telegraph.” By night these modern cave-dwel-lers, numbering perhaps 1,000, present, an astonishing spectacle. The caves, where mushrooms grew till recently, have been lighted dimly by electricity. In the semi-darkness hundreds of candles and hurricane lamps stuck in the walls gleam, flickering on a scene which for eeriness might challenge one of Gustave Dore’s illustrations of Dante’s Inferno. Across some of the natural recesses in the walls carpets have been hung, converting them into something very like the cave-woman’s first bedchamber. Here whole families rest with a certain measure of privacy. Others, still more ambitious, have brought stretchers and even iron bedsteads. The shelterers are of all ages, from frail old people cheerfully enduring discomfort and cold to infants waking from deep sleep to cry fitfully while mothers try patiently to hush them. They are, too, of all classes. The supervision is admirable. A Home Guard watches the entrance. Inside, a canteen with a bowl of flowers on the table, is run by three devoted young women. Between] 8.30 p.m. and 11 p.m. they serve 500 cups of tea, and after 6 a.m., when the exodus begins, another 300 to 400. People bring their own cups and jugs, usually presented by a child on be-half-of a family. A boiler to provide constant hot water is being installed. The place is damp and unhealthy, but everything possible is done to mitigate discomforts and dangers. A Red Cross nurse, listening to the wondrous chorus of coughs and snores, is as alert as any roof spotter for signs of whooping cough, and she makes a regular tour with cough medicine, for which those disposed pay Id. A sanitary squad provide what conveniences are practicable at short notice, and where sleep in some London shelters is made difficult by chatterers, here a supervisor calls for silence at 11 p.m. If the shelter is to be used through the winter some form of heating and more elaborate sanitation will be essential. The organisation established in a week, however, shows what can be achieved by energy and public spirit.