Orb Street Air Rade Shelter Disaster

[colin6789]

have just found out from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission web site that some possible relatives were killed in the Orb Street Air Raid Shelter, in Southwark , on 12 September 1940. I have not been able to find anything about it on Google. I know that a lot of people were killed in the shelter, but cannot find any details about it. Can anybody give me any information or where to get any.
Thank You

[dot.hawkes]

Bancroft, Peter. The railway to King William Street and Southwark deep tunnel air-raid shelter. Woking: The author, 1981. 29 p., illus. ISBN 0950741604.
Might be something on it in the above publicayion.
The best way though would be to look at the GRO INDEX FOR DEATHS for the Q4 of 1940 under the surname of these relatives, they would have been registered by the general register office on instruction of the coroner.

[MustafaTickl]

Here is a map showing Orb Street - it is near the Elephant and Castle. During the blitz I lived for a while at Jacobs Island and am familiar with the area. I cannot recollect anything about Orb Street, the major tragedy known to me was the bombing of the Druids Arch shelter on 25 October 1940 killing 87. However, the Local History Search Services at 211 Borough High Street, SE 1, will be able to help you - tel [phone] or e-mail [email protected]

[colin6789]

Thank you, maybe I have been slightly misled by the Casualty Details from the Commonwealth War Graves Commision. It says 'Died at Orb Street Shelter. Maybe the shelter was not hit, but thay were taken there injuried from a bomb. A few others also died at Orb Street Shelter, some at New Kent Road shelter and some in the surrounding area. Maybe an early pathfinder plane or a latecomer after the all clear. Over 1000 civilians were killed in Southwark alone.
I was born long after the war but comming from Oxford which had very little bombing dispite having factories making Spitfire radiators and Lancaster wings, I have seen German arial photos of them, but there was only one attack and that only hit and airfield by the main Morris factory where aircraft were broken up for scrap.

[MustafaTickl]

Bermondsey, Rotherhithe and Southwark were very badly devastated during the blitz and I have very clear memories of some large areas reduced to nothing more than a shoulder high heap of bricks and rubble and some roads completely lost. I remember Druids Arch because a couple of people I knew were entombed there and another one had a nervous breakdown afterwards and subsequently lost his mind and spent the rest of his life in an institution. Some time in the 1980's I had to return to the area to deal with a couple of large buildings which were sliding into the Shad Thames which necessitated historical research by me and I found the Southwark Local History Search Services to be excellent and I am sure that they will be able to help you with Orb Street. Regarding Oxford, I had a friend (now passed away) who was a brother of the man who invented the Morris Oxford !!

[colin6789]

Thank you for that, I will try the Southwark Local History Search Services.
The irony is that the Cowley car works is now owned by the Germans BMW, who have knocked down all the old bits including the last bit af the orphanage that my Grandfather and his two brother were brought up in, and the Spitfire radiator factory was owned by the Jananese before it was closed and turned into apartments and a bussiness park.
Did yoyu know that the cowley factory made the wings for the Dambuster Lancasters as well as midget submarines. The basic parts of these were later used to make Iron Lungs for TB victims.

[dot.hawkes]

ooo what orphange was that? I am looking for an orphanage early 20C (possibly catholic) in the Poplar/Limehouse area with no luck and I know Southwark is close by.

[colin6789]

Sorry this one was in Oxford, at Cowley where the BMW factory is, was British Leyland. It was an Industial School, part of the poor house. Part of it was there when I was training there in the late 1970's, used as the union and appentice association and I thought it was listed and could not be demolished, but it is not there now.

[DarrenP]

My maternal grandfather's first family (his wife and 12-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son) were killed in the Orb Street shelter bombing: the family name was Soundy. My grandfather survived because his children were thirsty and he had gone to collect water from the stand-pipe at the opposite end of the shelter, and so survived when the bomb hit and killed most (I believe) of the other people in the shelter. According to contemporary relatives his wife's body was found over a mile from the shelter. He married again and his new wife (who's sister and father were killed in a Portsmouth air-raid in 1940 or '41) had a baby boy who died at 3 months old in 1943. They then had my mother in 1944 and her brother a couple of years later. My grandfather died in his Thirties and so I never knew him, and his widow went off with an American chap, abandoning her two children to an aunt. I discovered recently that she had died in 1999 in Islington, about twelve miles from where my mother had lived in Worcester Park since the early 1960s! There is not much on the Orb Street disaster, but I think I have a casualty list somewhere.