For London underground the 20’s and 30’s were heady days. The system reached its apogee in terms of style and service. It was managed by men of unparalleled effectiveness and vision. As its network expanded – albeit on the surface as well as underground – so the size and shape of modern London itself emerged. It led the world in terms of architecture, art and graphics to stamp a corporate image that remains globally familiar. As the dominant partner in London Transport, it demonstrated the potential for success in a public corporation. At either end of these decades London Underground played its part in serving the Nation and contributing to victory in both of the World Wars.
At the start of the First World War in 1914 the London Underground was poised for growth. All but the Metropolitan (together with the Hammersmith and City Line, which it owned) were incorporated in the Underground Electric Railway Limited, which had been formed by the American tycoon, Charles Tyson Yerkes. During the war the Underground seemed to pursue a business as usual policy. The Bakerloo Line was extended to Watford and the Central Line to Ealing Broadway. Posters suggested a rather relaxed attitude to the war. One of 1913 showed a humorous view of punting on the River Thames with slogan, ‘Up the River by Underground’; one of 1915 showed a view of the planets with the words, ‘By Underground to Fresh Air’; and another of the same year an idealised view of the country-side with the calming slogan, ‘Why bother about the Germans invading the country? Invade it yourself by Underground!’ To be fair, there were also many examples of the more expected recruitment posters and warnings about dangers of the war displayed.
The most serious danger in the First World War in London was bombing either by Zeppelins or planes. From the start of the war, sheltering in the deeper tubes was encouraged. There were very few alternatives as this form of warfare was new. Luckily, the raids were few and far between. The 86 stations were thought to have a capacity of 250,000, although 300,000 sheltered in stations in February 1918. Whenever the attacks were more frequent about 100,000 used to go to shelter in the system before any warnings were given. There were complaints about this as they interfered with the passengers. As the Underground was perceived as safer and with the additional numbers due to many troops moving around the capital, the use of the system increased dramatically during the war. People became more accustomed to using the underground.
Eventually, it was decided that trains should proceed slowly during raids.
The other obvious impact of the war was on the workers themselves. Many men either volunteered for the forces up until 1916 or, thereafter, were conscripted. Only the job of train driver counted as a reserved occupation. All other jobs could be taken by women. Although managements were reluctant to employ women at first, by 1915 there were female booking clerks, ticket collectors, porters and lift attendants. Women had also taken on the job of train guards by 1916, which made them responsible for the safety of the passengers on the trains. Over 4,000 Underground Railway staff joined the forces, and, as is attested on the War Memorial that can still be seen in Baker Street Station, many of them were killed in the conflict. After the war the women lost their jobs as the men returned. Second War
The impact of the Second World War from 1939 to 1945 on the London Underground was much more profound and dramatic. The war was not unexpected and plans for the emergency were made as early as 1937. It was rightly feared that the bombing of London was an inevitability. A London Transport Air Raid Precautions Committee was formed. The main thrust of its work was to ensure that, as far as possible, the transport system in London would be kept running. This was important not just so that the city itself might continue to function as the country’s capital but also to provide for all the necessary additional movement of people occasioned by the war. The evacuation of over half a million children, for example, could not have been accomplished without the help of an effective and well organised transport system, with the Underground network at its heart.
The flooding of the system was regarded as a possible wartime danger. The tunnels under the Thames were only 10ft (3m) below the surface and it was thought that they might be fractured by bombs. For a short time in 1938 – when there was thought to be danger of war during the Munich Crisis – the tunnels were blocked with concrete plugs and through services suspended. This was an unsatisfactory solution, and by the time of the outbreak of war there were 25 flood gates at 19 stations. They each weighed 6t and were worked electronically from Leicester Square. The danger was not just from the river but also from water mains and sewers. On 14 October 1940 at Balham 64 shelterers were killed as the station filled with water and sewage. Mercifully, such disasters were infrequent, as were direct hits on stations by bombs.
After the experiences of the First World War it had been decided that it was more important to keep the tube running than to let people shelter on the platforms. The management has rejected the idea of turning the stations into public shelters given the risks of overcrowding and the concomitant insanitary conditions. Not unnaturally, most Londoners opposed this restriction when the Blitz started in 1940. The first raids were on 7 September 1940. When the crowds turned up at Tube stations to shelter it was impossible to turn them away. It was not long before every available space in the 79 deep tube stations was occupied by over 170,000 shelterers – dubbed ‘Tubites’ by the press – each night of the Blitz. Churchill himself intervened to make sheltering in the Tube official policy in October 1940.
In reality there was little to be done to stop this. Instead the shelterers had to be organised. "Period Reservation Tickets were issued by Local Authorities and Casual Shelter Tickets, valid for one night only, could be obtained as an emergency measure during an alert. The scenes in the stations during the Blitz have provided very familiar images, as have the sketches made by artists such as Henry Moore. The shelterers were not just left to fend for themselves. The provision of food gives some idea of how quickly the Underground adapted to the situation – and this can be seen in film material available at the London Transport Museum. Eventually, there were 120 station canteens and 1,000 workers employed at six centres for food preparation. ‘Tube Refreshment Specials’ toured the system to bring tea and cocoa and baskets of buns and other nourishing food for the shelterers. This provided more opportunities for women to ‘do their bit’ in the war effort and morale was much boosted in this way. The shelterers in some stations, such as Swiss Cottage, produced their own newspapers and from 1940-41 there was a general magazine called "The Subway Companion".
Rose tinted
Happy memories of being safe as a tube shelterer have long been retold. Myths have also been created. Alongside the sing-songs were the snoring and the smells. There were insufficient toilets and the shelterers were crowded behind white lines on the platforms to allow for passengers to continue to use the trains. On many of the lines the trains continued to run late into the night as well as early in the morning. There were still disasters. Some 152 were killed directly due to bombing. On 3 March 1943, 173 people were killed in a crush on a staircase that happened because a mother carrying her baby had tripped in the dark. You had to be near a station to be able to shelter there. As the war went on so more people began to chose not to shelter in the Tube – although numbers increased when the V1 and V2 attacks started in 1944. The numbers who sheltered in the Tube tend to be exaggerated. In fact, only four per cent of Londoners regularly used the Tube stations as shelters.
Despite all the dangers and privations of the War, the London Underground made a significant contribution to the war effort. Many of the employees went off to fight; women took on almost all of the jobs – and this time kept them after the war; there were relatively few casualties due to enemy action; and the system as a whole was quickly repaired and in use after damage. There was much about which the workers and managers could justly feel proud in 1945.
Golden years
The interwar years of the 20s and 30s were the Golden Age of the London Underground. In large measure this was due to the work of Albert Stanley (from 1920 Lord Ashfield) and Frank Pick. Stanley, who became general manager of the Underground Electric Railway Company of London (UERL) in 1901, provided great vision and drive for the company, while Pick, the assistant general manager, worked with dedication, devotion and attention to detail to give the company clear leadership. Both men were seconded to the government during the Great War which gave them invaluable insight into the working and thinking of the civil service.
They both understood that London needed a properly integrated transport scheme – which made them open to Herbert Morrisons’ idea of London Transport – and they were willing to make use of any government funding that might become available. They knew that the system’s survival and growth was dependant on subsidies.
Plans were made for the expansion of lines before the First World War. These were put into effect in the 1920’s.The Central Line was extended to Ealing Broadway and the Hampstead Line was pushed on from Golders Green to Edgeware – an area that had no alternative main line train services. The City and South London Lines and the Hampstead Line were also linked at Euston. These changes were partly financed by the Trade Facilities Act, which was the response of the post war government to the crisis of high unemployment. It was not a direct subsidy, but the UERL benefitted to the tune of GBP 5M. The integration of the Hampstead Line with the City and South London on what is now the Bank branch of the Northern Line did lead to a very rare but disastrous tunnel collapse in 1923 near Borough station, which set off a huge gas explosion which left a great crater in Newington Causeway. It took a year to clear up this mess.
South of the River, the extension from Stockwell to Morden was completed in 1926 – all in tunnels until it neared Morden. To the North, the extension to High Barnet was not started until 1937 and it was only then that the line took up the name ‘Northern Line’.
The extension of the Piccadilly Line had to wait for the passage of the Development (Loan Guarantees and Grants) Act of 1929. This was part of the Labour Government’s response to the growing economic crisis. Under this scheme, the government paid the interest on the loan that was needed to build the new lines all the way out as far as Cockfosters to the north and Northfields to the west. All this work was completed within three years – a stunning achievement.
This was all done in style. An attempt had been made to use a consistent style in the station design on the Yerkes lines before the First World War. Leslie Green was responsible for this. The very familiar blood red glazed tiles may still be seen at the entrances of many central London stations.
The keen eye will also be able to spot Art Nouveau design features on numerous details within the stations, as on ventilation grilles.
This early excursion into corporate branding was followed up in 1908 with the first appearance of the red circle with blue bar for the name of the station. In the 1920s this became the logo for the Underground as a whole and then from 1933 the emblem for London Transport as a whole – including the buses. The new Underground lettering, with a larger U and D at either end was also introduced – by Pick – in 1908. Edward Johnson’s alphabet became standard for all Underground posters and notices from 1916.
The architect Charles Holden became the principal designer for the new stations of the 1920s and 30s extensions. He worked very closely with Pick. They went together on a tour of Scandinavia, Germany and the Netherlands and Holden was heavily influenced by the latest modern trends in public architecture.
Pick’s influence was to insist not only on excellence in building design but also that the same principles were applied to all the features of the station. While the stations may have different shapes, there had to be a consistency of design. Above all they had to be welcoming and passenger friendly. Many of these stations are still in use and stand out as architectural jewels in otherwise drab suburban developments. Holden’s greatest triumph was the newly designed Piccadilly Circus station, which was opened just before Christmas 1928.
Guide lines
The most significant gift to posterity from this period was the Underground Map of Harry Beck. This was first designed in 1931 and fully circulated in 1933. Up until then all the maps had been geographical in nature and, as the system had extended, had become increasingly complex and perplexing, especially to those now used to the Beck interpretation.
Beck produced a diagrammatic guide to the Underground with no attempt to represent the surface geography or present the real distances between stations. Straight lines are used with angles of 45 and 90 degrees only. Whether or not electronic circuit diagrams inspired Beck is debatable – most think not. What is not debatable is that Beck, a UERL employee, was very badly rewarded for his work: he received just over GBP 10 in 1933. He did not share in the royalties for a plan that has been copied in so many different forms ever since. The Harry Beck map has stood the test of time.
The 20’s and 30’s were the era of Metro-land. Strictly, this term applies to the housing developments that sprouted along the Metropolitan Line to the North and West of London. A great deal of land had been acquired by the company as the line was extended and the process of development had started before the First World War in places such as Rickmansworth, Uxbridge, Northwood and Watford. The company formed the Metropolitan Railway Estates Company and from 1919 to 1930 its director was Robert Hope Selbie, the General Manager of the Metropolitan Line. The housing developments were advertised in the Metro-land magazine which sold the country-side idyll that had become in easy reach of London both for work and play. The irony was that as more houses were built so the quality of the countryside deteriorated. House sales of Metro-land were a financial boost to the Metropolitan Line.
The UERL was not blind to these opportunities. When Yerkes insisted that the Hampstead line be taken as far as Golders Green, he saw the potential of the green fields that lay at the end of the line. By 1914 there were 471 houses at Golders Green, where there had been just a farm. Just north of the station the building of Hampstead Garden Suburb was also under way. Wherever the Underground was extended, so London itself grew – very rapidly in the 20’s and 30’s. The southern end of the Northern Line had effectively linked what were a series of villages.
The population of Morden in 1926 was around 1,000. By 1931 the census showed that it had grown to over 12,000. Development was particularly strong when the Underground reached an area that was not well served by alternative cheap transport, such as Arnos Grove, where all the spare land was snatched up by builders. The housing boom went on until 1934 and it transformed what became the London suburbs. The Underground was a key factor in this in giving a shape to the initial developments.
Unfinished business
This Golden Age of the Underground was not sustained after the war. There was a crying need for investment in 1945 after six years of making do and patching up. The austerity of the immediate post war period meant that little progress could be made. Nationalisation in 1948, although a logical step, left much to be desired.
As the Underground reached its centenary in 1963 it was easy to see that at the very least a facelift was needed. The London Underground had become a national institution, but one with a question mark over its head
