London Underground's Strangest Tales

by Iain Spragg

  THE TUBE BOSS AND THE GERMAN U-BOAT

  1906

  The First World War mercifully left the Underground unscathed. The Luftwaffe was yet to be formed, the Germans did not possess the aerial capability to bomb London and Tube stations did not yet have to shelter thousands of civilians from the menace in the skies.

  The conflict did though claim one notable Underground casualty in the shape of Edgar Speyer, an American-born financier and philanthropist from a German family, who in 1906 became the chairman of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL).

  Speyer was a fascinating and generous character. As well as running the Underground from 1906 to 1915, he was the treasurer of Captain Scott’s Antarctic expedition, a close friend of Edward Elgar and Claude Debussy, a Privy Counsellor and chairman of the Classical Music Society. In 1906, he was also created a baronet.

  How he found the time was a mystery.

  His problems started in 1914 when England declared war on Germany. His Teutonic background suddenly didn’t make him very popular and he was subjected to a series of vitriolic attacks in the press accusing him of various, unspecified acts of disloyal and traitorous behaviour.

  Speyer also happened to own a large country house on the north Norfolk coast and not long after the outbreak of war, hostile crowds began to gather outside his plush pad, jeering at anyone who dared to go in or out. He was even accused of signalling to German submarines at night, although exactly what he was supposed to be signalling was never clear.

  ‘Nothing is harder to bear than a sense of injustice that finds no vent in expression,’ Speyer said in a letter to then Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. ‘For the last nine months I have kept silence and treated with disdain the charges of disloyalty and suggestions of treachery made against me in the Press and elsewhere.

  ‘But I can keep silence no longer, for these charges and suggestions have now been repeated by public men who have not scrupled to use their position to inflame the overstrained feelings of the people.

  ‘I am not a man who can be driven or drummed by threats or abuse into an attitude of justification. But I consider it due to my honour as a loyal British subject and my personal dignity as a man to retire all my public positions. I therefore write to ask you to accept my resignation as a Privy Councillor and to revoke my baronetcy.’

  He also stood down as chairman of UERL and headed back to America, no doubt thoroughly sick of the sight of Britain and its mistrustful natives.

  LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!

  1907

  Everyone wants to be in the movies and the silver-screen dream has come true for Aldwych Station, which today is the London Underground’s default location for filming subterranean scenes in Hollywood blockbusters and more modest home-grown productions alike.

  Aldwych was opened back in 1907. In the early days, it was the only station on the short Piccadilly Line branch from Holborn and was built on the site of Royal Strand Theatre in Westminster, which had been demolished two years earlier. Little did the engineers know then that the long-term future of the new terminus would lie in the realm of the theatrical rather than in public transport.

  During the Second World War it was used to shelter precious artworks from the capital’s public galleries and museums, but Aldwych was never particularly popular with paying passengers and by 1993 just 450 people a day were passing through its barriers. It was losing £150,000 a year, London Regional Transport (LRT) faced a bill of £3 million to replace the original lifts and everyone agreed it would be a smart move to forget about the station.

  But that was not the end for Aldwych. As a self-contained section of the network closed at weekends and for extended periods during the week, it had already done a spot of moonlighting as a film set before its 1994 closure, and the bosses at LRT decided to maintain the platform and tracks so Aldwych could live on as a full-time movie location. There is even a fully functioning former Northern Line train down there for directors who want to add a bit of authenticity.

  Today the London Underground Film Office receives over 200 requests a month to shoot on the network and, although there are other locations, it’s Aldwych that hoovers up the lion’s share of the work.

  Since going full-time, Aldwych has been seen in 2004 British horror Creep, 2007 romantic epic Atonement and zombie-shocker sequel 28 Weeks Later. Before it was closed to commuters, it was also used as a backdrop in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, The Krays and Patriot Games.

  Its impressive TV credits include the BBC’s Spooks and ITV’s Primeval, while bands like The Prodigy have also used Aldwych’s platform and disused tunnels to get that unique Underground feel without the inconvenience of a disorientated tourist walking in front of the camera.

  PICK OF THE BUNCH

  1907

  Many different people helped shape the modern London Underground network that we know and love today, but one of the most colourful and well connected had to be Frank Pick, a solicitor by trade who became one of the network’s most influential administrators in the early twentieth century.

  At the very least, he was probably the only Tube employee who could honestly claim to have met Churchill, Stalin and Hitler.

  Pick was put in charge of the network’s marketing and publicity in 1907 when his former boss, Sir George Gibb, was appointed chairman of the new Underground Group, and for the next 30 years he was responsible for every major architectural and aesthetic decision on the system, from the Art Deco design of new stations to the introduction of Harry Beck’s iconic Tube map.

  His other great achievement was his part in the formation of the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933 with chairman Lord Ashfield, the organisation that finally united the disparate and frequently hostile elements of the network under one roof.

  ‘My job is day-to-day to find answers to a continuous stream of questions about staff, finance, traffic, engineering, publicity, supplies,’ Pick explained to his biographer when asked to describe his role as the new board’s chief executive. ‘In no sense am I an expert. I can obtain advice wherever I want it. I merely have to decide but in deciding I become responsible for my own decisions.’

  But it was Pick’s incredible encounters with Europe’s leaders of the day that really grab the attention.

  He met Adolf Hitler at a conference in Berlin in the early 1930s and he also had an audience with Joseph Stalin after his work as a consultant on the construction of the Moscow Metro system. Comrade Stalin was so impressed by Pick’s contribution that he awarded the Englishmen the Soviet Union’s Honorary Badge of Merit in 1932. Pick accepted the honour but years later found his appetite for gongs diminished, and when he was subsequently offered a knighthood and then a peerage by the government, he turned them down.

  Pick met Winston Churchill when he was briefly assigned to the Ministry of Information during the Second World War, but while he and Stalin had apparently got on famously, he and the Prime Minister definitely didn’t hit it off.

  The pair argued about the ongoing propaganda campaign when Pick insisted it was dishonest to spread lies. Churchill erupted and ordered his secretary to ‘never let that impeccable busman darken my door again’. Whether Pick indignantly pointed out he was actually a trainman before showing himself out is not recorded, but his involvement in the war effort had come to an abrupt end.

  He died in 1941 but his life is commemorated with a blue plaque outside his home in London’s Hampstead Garden Suburb. ‘Frank Pick (1878–1941),’ it reads. ‘Pioneer of good design for London Transport, lived here.’

  Churchill may not have agreed but Stalin would surely not have argued with the sentiment.

  SELFISH SELFRIDGE’S NAME GAME

  1909

  Many visitors to London come for a spot of retail therapy and when it comes to shopping there are few more celebrated emporiums than Selfridges on Oxford Street, a Mecca for those eager to splash the cash and melt the plastic.

  Opened in 1909, the world-famous department stor
e was the brainchild of American retail magnate Harry Gordon Selfridge, who was something of a visionary when it came to the whole shopping experience. Selfridge wanted a trip to his shop to be fun rather than a chore and, for the first time, the merchandise was put out on display for customers to examine rather than tucked away behind a counter.

  As a result, Selfridges was an instant hit, but the man himself wasn’t satisfied and the source of his irritation was the nearby Bond Street Station.

  To be fair, the station was already doing a sterling job conveying customers to the store, but Selfridge wanted a tunnel built directly linking the station with his premises and he also desperately wanted to rename it ‘Selfridges Station’.

  His good friend Lord Ashfield was the managing director of the Underground Electric Railway Company at the time and Selfridge lobbied him relentlessly to agree to the new tunnel and the rebranding. The pair had numerous meetings about the idea but – despite rumours that he had promised Ashfield a two-minute trolley dash, loyalty card and an annual Christmas hamper – Bond Street clung on to its original name.

  It would of course have set a dangerous precedent and if Ashfield had acquiesced, we might all now be starting our daily commutes at Tesco Express High Barnet, getting off at Specsavers Charing Cross.

  THE MYSTERY OF THE ONE-LEGGED ESCALATOR KING

  1911

  The nature of technological development means that many innovations which today barely warrant a second glance were once new, exciting and even frightening when they were first unleashed on an unsuspecting public.

  Escalators are a good example and they caused a considerable stir when two were installed by the Otis Elevator Company of New York at Earl’s Court Station back in 1911, linking the Piccadilly Line with the subway that runs below the Circle and District Lines. The new-fangled moving stairs took everyone by surprise and those of a religious persuasion were heard muttering something about the devil’s work.

  Legend has it that London Transport’s tactic to allay passengers’ fears about the new contraptions was to employ a one-legged man by the name of Bumper Harris, whose job was to spend all day riding up and down the escalators in a relaxed and jovial manner to (hopefully) reassure any concerned commuters. It was argued that if Bumper could safely negotiate the escalator with his one leg, anyone could – but cynics were quick to ask exactly how he’d lost the limb.

  Surprisingly little is known about Bumper but the centenary of the Earl’s Court escalators in 2011 sparked a search for more information and resulted in this email to the excellent London-Underground blog from someone called Aaron.

  ‘Bumper Harris was my great-great-grandfather,’ he wrote. ‘He was originally from just outside Bristol but moved to London where he went to work on the new Underground. Whilst working some of his friends played a rather unfortunate joke on him and his leg was crushed between two carriages carrying rubble and he lost his leg.

  ‘He was then employed to ride the escalator at Earl’s Court. After the Underground, he went on to work on the Severn Tunnel and was in charge of all the drainage systems at Standish Hospital in Gloucestershire, where he retired to make cider, violins and became a watercolourist.’

  A diverting story indeed, but the truth is we just don’t know whether Bumper was a real person or an urban myth. There is a small model depicting Bumper on his escalator at the Transport Museum’s Acton Depot but there is no record at all of him in the London Transport Museum’s extensive archives and no mention of him can be found in contemporary newspaper reports.

  It is a mystery that is perhaps best left unsolved.

  One thing is certain – escalators were a big hit on the Underground. Although nine dresses were torn, one finger pinched and one commuter on crutches fell over in their first week of service at Earl’s Court, some 550,000 people travelled up and down them in the first four weeks. London Transport was won over and extended their initial one-month licence period.

  Between 1911 and 1915, a total of 22 escalators were installed on the network and today they are as familiar a sight on the network as confused tourists with dangerously oversized rucksacks, harassed office workers and, the most chilling of all, an entire carriage packed with noisy excited children on a school trip.

  GAS TRIAL GOES WRONG

  1912

  Ozone is a naturally occurring gas that was first discovered in 1840, but it was in the 1980s that it really made a name for itself when scientists scared the life out of us by revealing the ozone layer was depleted and we were all in imminent danger of being burned to death by the sun’s ultraviolet rays.

  Suddenly we all learned to love ozone. But back in the 1910s, Tube commuters were not nearly as keen on the gas when it was deliberately pumped into the network.

  The bosses at London Underground were not trying to poison their passengers. Not only is ozone harmless, its oxidising effect also freshens air and kills bacteria, and the idea was to make the network smell altogether fresher and eliminate some of the nasty whiffs that are inevitably created when thousands of people are crammed into confined carriages below the surface.

  When the pumping of ozone began in 1912, however, the reaction was not quite as positive as intended. What was envisaged was a fresh sealike scent wafting over the platforms, but passengers were unimpressed by the sharp smell of the ozone, reminiscent of chlorine, and many complained of feeling nauseous whenever the fans were switched on.

  Accepting defeat, London Underground quickly abandoned their ozone experiment, but the gas still occurs naturally on the network when the high-voltage electricity used to power the trains reacts with the surrounding air.

  No scheme has been suggested to tackle some of the other unwanted gas that permeates carriages today, but a passenger charter in which commuters agree to eschew baked beans would certainly be a good start.

  THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES

  1915

  Like many businesses in the early twentieth century, the Underground was not exactly renowned for its pioneering attitude to sexual equality in the workplace. Men ruled the roost and women’s involvement with the Tube was almost exclusively limited to making the tea and looking pretty.

  All that began to change in 1915 as war raged in Europe and some of London’s women were finally entrusted with the day-to-day running of one of the network’s stations, paving the way for future generations of female employees.

  The historic shift in working practices came with the official opening of Maida Vale Station in a now-affluent area of northwest London in June 1915, part of an extension of the Bakerloo Line from Paddington to Queen’s Park. The station required two ticket collectors, two porters, two booking clerks and two relief ticket collectors to run smoothly, but with an increasing number of men abroad fighting in the Great War, radical measures were required.

  The solution of course was to recruit female staff and – resplendent in their uniforms of black leggings, blue tunics and broad-brimmed felt hats – the eight pioneering women took up their new jobs as Maida Vale opened its doors to passengers for the first time.

  An all-female station was certainly revolutionary but even more surprising was the decision by the line’s owners – the Underground Electric Railways Company of London – to pay its new staff the same salary as their male counterparts a full 60 years before the implementation of the Equal Pay Act.

  That Maida Vale was still technically run by an off-site, male stationmaster was a mere detail.

  The following year the London General Omnibus Company (LGOC) also began to recruit women; in all it was estimated that 5,551 women had been employed on the Underground during the war years.

  One of the beneficiaries of the Maida Vale revolution was Hannah Dadds, who made history in 1978 when she became the first ever female Tube driver on the Underground.

  Born in Forest Gate in 1941, Hannah initially worked as a ticket collector and then guard on the network and ignored the Neanderthals and nay-sayers when she decided to enrol at ‘driver school
’.

  It took her seven weeks to learn the ropes but on 5 October 1978 she qualified, despite the instructors’ thinly disguised hostility to her presence. ‘I was asked more questions than any man,’ she recalled. ‘There was five of us from the District Line together in the classroom – four men and me – and I was definitely asked more questions. Even if a question wasn’t directed at me to start with, the trainer would come back and say, “Do you agree with that, Mrs Dadds?”’

  Hannah drove without incident or accident until she retired at the age of 53. She moved to Spain but was back in Britain in 2004 when she was invited to Buckingham Palace to meet the Queen as part of the Women of Achievement Awards.

  She passed away in 2011 at the age of 70 but her legacy lives on in the shape of the ever-increasing number of female drivers on the network. In 1990 just 30 of the Underground’s 2,500 drivers were women; by 2001 the number had risen to 167.

  That rise was in no small part thanks to a series of adverts calling for female recruits run by London Underground in between articles about orgasms and Jimmy Choo in Cosmopolitan magazine, a campaign that proved a resounding success.

  ‘The Tube recorded a peak-time performance last month, largely because of the impact of women drivers,’ reported The Times in 2002. ‘They have endured taunts from male colleagues and abuse from passengers but the army of women drivers recruited by London Underground have proved that they are better than men at making Tube trains run on time. Managers believe that their influence has helped to end a culture of absenteeism and militancy in the workplace.’

  HOLDEN, HITLER AND THE NEW-LOOK TUBE