Bombing of Agate/Hallsville School Canning Town West Ham 1940
Hundreds of people were sheltering in the school in Agate Street when it took a direct hit at 3.45 a.m. on
Tuesday 10th September 1940
Death toll has always been disputed I saw a plaque that stated 137, Newham stated 73, Rumour Stated 500 The film says 600! My mum was Sixteen at the time and tells a different story!
Ritchie Calder, a reporter on the now defunct Daily Herald newspaper, described how he had found 'thousands', rather than hundreds, sheltering at South Hallsville.
'From the first glance it seemed to me ominous of disaster. In the passages and classrooms were mothers nursing their babies.
'Whole families were sitting in queues perched on pitiful baggage waiting desperately for coaches to take them away from the terror of the bombs which had been raining down on them.
'These unfortunate people had been told to be ready for the coaches at three o'clock. Hours later the coaches had not arrived. Women were protesting with violence and with tears about the delay.
'Men were cursing the officials who only knew that coaches were expected. "Where are we going?" "Can't we walk there?" "We'll take a bus!" "There's a lorry we can borrow!"
The crowds clamoured for help, for information, for reassurance. But the officials knew no answer other than to offer a cup of tea.
'I knew that Sunday afternoon, that as sure as night would follow day, the bombers would come again with the darkness, and that the school would be bombed.'
And so it was.
'Filled with foreboding', Calder 'hastened back to central London.
'Three times I warned the Whitehall authorities during that evening that the people must be got away before more bombs dropped and certain disaster overtook them.
'Local folk back at the school were making equally frantic efforts to force the local authorities to act.'
But the displaced East Enders were still huddled in the school at 8pm on Monday when the alert sounded.
At 3.45 on the morning of Tuesday, September 10, 'the inevitable bomb' scored a direct hit on South Hallsville School.
Half the building was demolished, and hundreds of tons of masonry crashed down on its occupants.
Rescue workers, frantically digging and scrabbling in the ruins, tried to free the injured, while a cordon was thrown around the area to keep people from seeing what was happening, and the censor warned the Press there were to be no reports or pictures of the tragedy, so devastating would the effect be on the morale of the already shattered population.
