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Timeslip At Waterloo Station?

I had no idea that the underground was ever used as shelters in WWI.

The Germans initially used airships to bomb the UK in January 1915. London began to be hit in May 1915.

Tube stations were used as bomb shelters. Here’s a well- known painting from 1918:

iu


The Underworld by Walter Bayes.

maximus otter
 
What I hadn't realised until recently is that Lancashire in the UK was bombed by Zeppelins during WW1. There is still evidence of shrapnel damage to houses to be seen. Whether there were purpose built air raid shelters I don't know. I suspect this type of bombing was more widespread than the population was led to believe at the time.
 
I read an account of a WW1 zeppelin raid on the village I grew up in, in the NE of England. A young boy from a village a couple of miles away was killed in the attack.
It was reported that large gangs of children stayed out overnight, sleeping in fields and woods.
My village wasn't of any strategical importance other than a few collieries, the German aircraft had targeted Newcastle and Sunderland and were heading South with bombs left over.
 
I read an account of a WW1 zeppelin raid on the village I grew up in, in the NE of England. A young boy from a village a couple of miles away was killed in the attack.
It was reported that large gangs of children stayed out overnight, sleeping in fields and woods.
My village wasn't of any strategical importance other than a few collieries, the German aircraft had targeted Newcastle and Sunderland and were heading South with bombs left over.
My mother and her parents moved away from London to Warrington during WWII, and she often told of being on a country lane when an aircraft flew low overhead and she could even see the pilot waving at her, at which she automatically waved back -- then realised it was a German plane... She later learned that it must have been part of an attack at Liverpool docks which left many dead.
 
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of information about the WWI Home Front especially compared to WWII. Even I don’t know much and I did the wars as part of my History degree. WWI is always about the politics and trench warfare. I know there were air raids (zeppelins freak me out by the way) and ships even came close enough to fire at places, this I learned of not that long ago. But I don’t really know to what extent there were raids and if there were as many shelters as WWII.
Might be worth sending an email to the London Transport Museum. They might have photos taken at that time. They do take a while to reply, though!
 
Interesting thanks.

Here it is.
View attachment 24881



I used to be this buildings postman back in the late 1980’s. I can’t remember exactly which firm was located at that address, but it’s possible it was the headquarters of the Morning Star - they definitely were in the Farringdon road back then.

Each morning, when I’d deliver a bundle of letters and parcels to the MS, the foreman of the post room would try to convince me into joining the British Communist Party. :D

The building is now a lot smarter than I remember it. Thanks for posting. Its brought back a few memories.
 
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of information about the WWI Home Front especially compared to WWII. Even I don’t know much and I did the wars as part of my History degree. WWI is always about the politics and trench warfare. I know there were air raids (zeppelins freak me out by the way) and ships even came close enough to fire at places, this I learned of not that long ago. But I don’t really know to what extent there were raids and if there were as many shelters as WWII.

Here are three good books from my own collection on the subject of WW1 air raids on the UK:

0DE65163-A025-44AE-8DD0-39BB389331F7.jpeg


maximus otter
 

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My mother and her parents moved away from London to Warrington during WWII, and she often told of being on a country lane when an aircraft flew low overhead and she could even see the pilot waving at her, at which she automatically waved back -- then realised it was a German plane... She later learned that it must have been part of an attack at Liverpool docks which left many dead.
My grandmother apparently had the same experience when they moved to Blackpool just before the start of WW2. Pilot of( probably) a 109 flew very low and waved at her. She always said she could see his face clearly.
 
A bit of history I learned recently regarding use of the London Underground as shelters in WW2. It wasn't planned. Working class Londoners had to break into the stations to begin with because there weren't adequate "official" shelters.

They didn’t want you people to shelter down there as they thought they would stay down there and not come up again. That’s the excuse I was told.
 
Might be worth sending an email to the London Transport Museum. They might have photos taken at that time. They do take a while to reply, though!
I might have a look online. I don’t suppose they’ll be people to look up such things. Hopefully they are safe at home.

These are very odd times. I get a weekly email from Transport for London. The past few weeks it is saying don’t go anywhere.
 
As I mentioned on another thread, the aircrew of four Zeppellins shot down over England in WW1 (and the crew of the only WW1 aircraft shot down over England) are buried in the German Military Cemetery at Channock Chase (Staffs). The site was formally ceded by Staffordshire CC to Germany (West) in 1959.
 
As I mentioned on another thread, the aircrew of four Zeppellins shot down over England in WW1 (and the crew of the only WW1 aircraft shot down over England) are buried in the German Military Cemetery at Channock Chase (Staffs). The site was formally ceded by Staffordshire CC to Germany (West) in 1959.
One for the strange coincidences thread really but I drove right past here on my way home from work today (my line of work is field based but I generally work an area covering the other side of Wolverhampton out into south Shropshire and so seldom travel anywhere near Cannock). I arrive home, head straight on here for a quick nosey, click onto this thread and... this is the post that greets me :dunno:
 
A bit of history I learned recently regarding use of the London Underground as shelters in WW2. It wasn't planned. Working class Londoners had to break into the stations to begin with because there weren't adequate "official" shelters.

The stations weren’t designed for use as shelters, as demonstrated by the disaster at Bethnal Green station in March 1943. The greatest civilian loss of life during the war.
 
What I hadn't realised until recently is that Lancashire in the UK was bombed by Zeppelins during WW1. There is still evidence of shrapnel damage to houses to be seen. Whether there were purpose built air raid shelters I don't know. I suspect this type of bombing was more widespread than the population was led to believe at the time.
In the 1960s I had an elderly teacher. He must have been close to retirement. He told us about seeing zeppelins in the sky when he was a child ( we were in Yorkshire but am fairly sure he came from somewhere like Kent?)

I found his descriptions haunting and compelling.

We have a tonne of pics of zeppelins in my husband’s family album as my husband’s grandad was an engineer working on them. I know there are a lot of pics of the R100. I should scan and put online as those photos would interest some people and have never been seen by anyone apart from husband’s family...
 
A bit of history I learned recently regarding use of the London Underground as shelters in WW2. It wasn't planned. Working class Londoners had to break into the stations to begin with because there weren't adequate "official" shelters...

One of the cheats of revisionism is to work on the assumption that we all unquestioningly believe that our ‘myths’ were cut from whole cloth, when actually they are most often a reflection of the real result of an extremely uneven process - none of which is at all hidden to anyone who reads the odd history book. It was never planned, but one of the things that the British were good at during the war, both at individual and administrative level, was a kind of ruthless pragmatism – as in, okay, that’s not at all what we had in mind, but it kind of works, so carry on.

It’s also worth pointing out that Laurie Penny’s linked source in that Tweet is the Communist Party of Great Britain – so I think one needs to be extremely careful that one stream of propaganda is not simply getting replaced with another. (At one point they accuse the pre-war authorities of backing Franco, Mussolini and Hitler – conveniently forgetting that post Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact they meekly followed the party line, not changing policy until Barbarossa, which means that at the time those working class East-Enders they applaud for their anti-authoritarian efforts first started getting the shit bombed out of them, the Communist Party of GB was effectively allied to the men flying the bombers. Funny they don’t mention that.)
 
That has to be minimum length. I find it odd that I can't focus on the length of that counter. I'm a very visual person and tend to remember detail, but that counter seems to shift in my memory from small to several feet in length, I can't pin it down.



Yes I'm Doll Feet. I've exchanged several pms with Carl, including details I wouldn't want made public at this time, for the record. I appreciated his serious and respectful approach, I'm not getting any younger and was happy for details to be queried while I'm still around to clarify. I've never thought of it as a timeslip though. It was difficult for me to add the detail recently of what happened in the cafe (the visual and auditory information of where my boyfriend was), and there is another detail I haven't discussed, because in an incident that stretches credibility to start with it's a detail that wouldn't help (and I can only apologise if that sounds like a carrot on a stick to garner "attention", IRL I'm a very private person who shuns attention) but it would indicate that there was a non-human (at the least non alive human) element that was very aware of the situation. Timeslip just isn't a term that fits for me. That this incident was overseen/stage managed by something fits for me. In cases of timeslips that I've read about I have wondered if the odd detail of money being accepted without comment would indicate that it wasn't the appropriate term for those either, whatever the outward appearance.

I've wondered if there is actually a room there with an entrance elsewhere, but the contraption looked to be (placed) on the counter rather than the counter being built around existing pipework. It looked well maintained. It crossed my mind that cleaning the thing wasn't a job I'd have relished.
I'm returning to the Piccadilly Circus case quickly, because early last year another researcher asked if I could prepare a summary of the Doll Feet experience. I was Ok with the idea but felt I had to ask for Doll Feet's approval. To my surprise she agreed, and said she was anxious to have not just the vanishing cafe affair but also some of her other strange experiences put on record, as together they seemed to show some degree of interconnectedness. So we exchanged around 200 messages on Digital Spy over several weeks, and I slowly produced a detailed account, at every stage taking on board her detailed comments and criticisms.
One aspect that produced a certain degree of disagreement, was the role of the two helpful people who went with her to the cafe. At first I think she felt, as I did, that they must have played a part, maybe e.g. in hypnotising her to believe they were in the cafe, and she added a comment that they actually looked somewhat alike. I also felt that the comment by the man on approaching them seemed a bit artificial.
She also noted a sudden change in the lady's demeanour as she walked down the steps to the cafe.
However, soon after Doll Feet began to argue that the two weren't involved in the incident. I modified my drafts accordingly, even though I still felt that the girl, at least, who had led them to the non-existent cafe, must have known something about it.
Another controversial element was the role of her boy friend, who apparently got involved in some kind of Satanic group, and who she suspected meant her harm.
As the end of the drafting process neared Doll Feet began to feel increasingly disturbed by the emotional unheaval that going over these very traumatic experiences repeatedly, and answering my unending questions, had produced. I answered her as best I could, explaining that we needed to cover all the possibilities, if only to pre-empt possible crirticisms. Then as I finalised the article she ceased responding altogether.
Once before she had gone offline, as it were, for nearly a year, so I decided to put the project aside for 12 months. As it happened, after this period elapsed, a case came up on Reddit that had two witnesses experiencing a similar sense of silence and lack of activity in Piccadilly circus, so I incorporated this in the draft and sent her a link to this -- but again there was no reply.
I have no idea of Doll Feet's real identity nor even her present location, so I have no way of re-establishing contact with her. I would have liked to have her approval of the final draft, but I'm afraid that there seems to be no way of making contact with her. I know she had health problems in the past and I fear that maybe she is seriously ill or worse. I told her that I planned to post the article on this forum, the last one she had posted to regarding the cafe case, so here it is:
 

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They didn’t want you people to shelter down there as they thought they would stay down there and not come up again. That’s the excuse I was told.

The reminiscences I heard about the Public using the Underground as a shelter came from commuters trying to get to work in the morning and finding the platforms unpassable. And the overpowering stench of urine.
 
I'm returning to the Piccadilly Circus case quickly, because early last year another researcher asked if I could prepare a summary of the Doll Feet experience. I was Ok with the idea but felt I had to ask for Doll Feet's approval. To my surprise she agreed, and said she was anxious to have not just the vanishing cafe affair but also some of her other strange experiences put on record, as together they seemed to show some degree of interconnectedness. So we exchanged around 200 messages on Digital Spy over several weeks, and I slowly produced a detailed account, at every stage taking on board her detailed comments and criticisms.
One aspect that produced a certain degree of disagreement, was the role of the two helpful people who went with her to the cafe. At first I think she felt, as I did, that they must have played a part, maybe e.g. in hypnotising her to believe they were in the cafe, and she added a comment that they actually looked somewhat alike. I also felt that the comment by the man on approaching them seemed a bit artificial.
She also noted a sudden change in the lady's demeanour as she walked down the steps to the cafe.
However, soon after Doll Feet began to argue that the two weren't involved in the incident. I modified my drafts accordingly, even though I still felt that the girl, at least, who had led them to the non-existent cafe, must have known something about it.
Another controversial element was the role of her boy friend, who apparently got involved in some kind of Satanic group, and who she suspected meant her harm.
As the end of the drafting process neared Doll Feet began to feel increasingly disturbed by the emotional unheaval that going over these very traumatic experiences repeatedly, and answering my unending questions, had produced. I answered her as best I could, explaining that we needed to cover all the possibilities, if only to pre-empt possible crirticisms. Then as I finalised the article she ceased responding altogether.
Once before she had gone offline, as it were, for nearly a year, so I decided to put the project aside for 12 months. As it happened, after this period elapsed, a case came up on Reddit that had two witnesses experiencing a similar sense of silence and lack of activity in Piccadilly circus, so I incorporated this in the draft and sent her a link to this -- but again there was no reply.
I have no idea of Doll Feet's real identity nor even her present location, so I have no way of re-establishing contact with her. I would have liked to have her approval of the final draft, but I'm afraid that there seems to be no way of making contact with her. I know she had health problems in the past and I fear that maybe she is seriously ill or worse. I told her that I planned to post the article on this forum, the last one she had posted to regarding the cafe case, so here it is:

Nicely written as always, Carl, thanks for taking the time to write this.

As I said on reading your work on the disappearing house at Rougham you should write a novel, your writing style draws the reader in to the story which is a skill all good authors require yet not many posess.
 
Nicely written as always, Carl, thanks for taking the time to write this.

As I said on reading your work on the disappearing house at Rougham you should write a novel, your writing style draws the reader in to the story which is a skill all good authors require yet not many posess.
Thanks for the very kind review! Fiction is not really my thing, but if I ever think of a good plot and circumstances allow...
 
Thanks for the very kind review! Fiction is not really my thing, but if I ever think of a good plot and circumstances allow...

Just finished reading it.
Allow me to compliment you too on a superbly-written and compelling account!
Sounds like Doll Feet has had quite a turbulent life and I do hope she's OK.
As for what really happened, I guess we'll never know now.
Whilst Piccadilly tube station didn't have an underground coffee bar, many other nearby stations did. Is it possible that she went to one of the other ones in the vicinity - Covent Garden, Leicester Square, Tottenham Ct Rd etc?
The "Heath Robinson" device does sound just like one of those amazingly over-elaborate coffee bean-to-cup machines which can be found on open display in many coffee shops:

coffee2.JPG
 
Just finished reading it.
Allow me to compliment you too on a superbly-written and compelling account!
Sounds like Doll Feet has had quite a turbulent life and I do hope she's OK.
As for what really happened, I guess we'll never know now.
Whilst Piccadilly tube station didn't have an underground coffee bar, many other nearby stations did. Is it possible that she went to one of the other ones in the vicinity - Covent Garden, Leicester Square, Tottenham Ct Rd etc?
The "Heath Robinson" device does sound just like one of those amazingly over-elaborate coffee bean-to-cup machines which can be found on open display in many coffee shops:

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It's a pity she's not around any more, but from her description it didn't look much like this. I increasingly think that that strange device and the sinister old lady are a key element. If the idea was to fool Doll Feet into believing it was a normal cafe, why include something so glaringly out of place? Could it be that the strange apparatus was a device to generate fake visions? This case keeps reminding me of the "These roads lead.." story.
No, absolutely no chance that they went to another station. She wouldn't have gone somewhere else because the whole point was to stay as close to the hotel as possible -- and if they had gone elsewhere, then she wouldn't have had the vision of her boyfriend in the street outside locking his car and been able to run up the steps to meet him. I still suspect the helpful lady, though -- how did she know about the cafe that wasn't there? Maybe the operators hypnotised her into seeing it there, of course. But then, the slight change in body language as she reached the foot of the steps and turned sharply right is rather suggestive.
No, we'll never know for certain, but I suppose that is the price we pay for our interest in things Fortean..
 
This is my response to Carl's document on Digital Spy;

https://forums.digitalspy.com/discu...thing-to-have-ever-happened-to-you-part-2/p47

Carl,

This paragraph from your document, along with your claim that I've subjected every word to close scrutiny when in fact this thread is the first time I've seen this paragraph, is an example of precisely the reason I had to just give up on the situation and stop contact;


"17
It seems that she and her friend were situated to the West of Regent Street, near the old Tower
Records store, not far from the area in Glasshouse Street where Doll Feet and P both experienced a
complete loss of traffic noise as they embraced. They also perceived themselves moving in slow
motion inside a kind of bubble. It so happens that Doll Feet told me that her account of the meeting
left out, on purpose, a key detail. She held this information back as a way of checking whether
anyone reporting anything similar was totally genuine. If they failed to mention it, she would have
doubts about their veracity"

We did not experience a loss of noise as we embraced, I clearly state that noise started again as we embraced. The implication in this paragraph is that I claimed we perceived ourselves moving in slow motion which has no basis in fact whatsoever. I did not say that I'd left out a key detail as a way of checking whether anyone reporting anything similar was totally genuine and that if they failed to mention it I'd have doubts about their veracity. This is a total fabrication on your part. What I actually said was that by persistently misquoting me from memory rather than checking what I actually said (or better still cutting and pasting to remove any possibility of misquoting me) you were totally obliterating oblique references that I'd carefully placed for the purpose of referring back to if I decided to elaborate at a later date so that nobody could claim I was adding details because they'd been right there the whole time. The example I gave you, to hammer the point home that misquoting me wasn't acceptable, was that I'd said TWO strange things had happened at the top of the stairs but only actually detailed one - the silence. Your response was to say you didn't think you could say that because it would frustrate the reader, completely missing my point which was NOT let's be enigmatic and frustrate the reader but STOP MISQUOTING ME! At no point did I even hint at what the second thing was and certainly never claimed it was to test anyone's veracity. This is yet another example of you misunderstanding, misremembering and filling in the blanks with wild speculation.


I agreed to a "summary" of my posts which I naively imagined would be you actually checking what I'd said rather than relying on memory, or cutting and pasting with a few comments in between from you. I didn't agree to a massive time consuming editing job on persistent misquotes and misunderstandings or a battle of wills with the facts v what you'd imagined I'd said, embroidered on and allowed to solidify to the extent you were virtually arguing with me! Nor did I agree to an "investigation" which you tried to changed it into part way through despite me telling you early on that nobody was in a position to perform an investigation because only I knew all the details and there was a lot omitted that would put things into a completely different light.

"I'm now starting to think that maybe they (the entities) were trying to stop them meeting..."

This again! As you say, hundreds of messages, the vast majority of them a battle to remove your insistence that the couple were mystical beings who'd tried to protect me from P and prevent me from meeting him, even insisting weeks and countless messages down the line "Well in my mind that couple still have some importance." As I pointed out, the fact that something, presumably whatever set the situation up, showed and told me P was there made absolute nonsense of any speculation that they were mystical beings who'd been sent to protect me from him. Hours and hours stretching into weeks and months absolutely wasted trying to get you to accept that the guy was more than likely just some sleazy would-be punter who had 2 options "How much?" which if he'd badly misread the situation, and he had, might earn him a slap in the face, or the safer option "You two are so beautiful." Nothing slick, film-like or contrived there! Add to that the fact that rather than approach P&I as the girl did he held back at the top of the stairs looking seriously worried when he saw my 6ft 4" boyfriend who might have objected to him taking me for coffee. He certainly wouldn't have been the only guy P punched for mistaking me for a prostitute in that area. All that time squandered on the most trivial aspect of the whole situation because of your absolute refusal to revise your opinion - time that could have been spent discussing the finer points of the paranormal aspects I'd detailed. As I said in my last message to you, I can only assume your total refusal to accept that there was nothing film-like, contrived or slick about a bog standard prostitute pick up line is because it's never been your experience to be a sexually attractive young girl in the vicinity of Soho.

"I've sent her a lot of messages on DS without reply, so she obviously doesn't want to talk about them now. Maybe something else has happened to her to warn her off the topic. I certainly do respect her decision, I'm just relieved that she's still around!"

You most certainly do NOT respect my decision. I tried to make it clear to you in my final message that your evident absence of any trace of empathy or sensitivity, forcing me to spend hours a day for weeks on end focusing on and reliving such a stressful situation because it didn't fit in with what you'd imagined, was intolerable and inappropriate. You confirmed that this was the case by coming back at me with (quoting from memory) "It never even occurred to me there was an emotional aspect to this" and then totally disregarded my point that enough was enough by stating that I must think, not you think, I must think that my boyfriend was a master magician! How on earth you came to that conclusion given that I made it clear in this thread that when he realized he was involved in something he didn't understand he had a screaming, thrashing nervous breakdown and had to go to live with his parents I don't know! No way was I going to spend more exasperating weeks batting that one backwards and forwards.

By your own admission I'm the 3rd person (that I know of) who's "abruptly" stopped communication with you and I can only assume that they also recognised that you weren't the right person to "summarise" their experiences with the necessary degree of accuracy. The appropriate response to that is to have the good grace to let it go. By ploughing on regardless and publicly claiming you have the approved version you've effectively jeopardised your own credibility and put me in the horrible position of having no choice but to publicly address this and distance myself from you so that mine isn't tainted by association.
 
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