Working in the blitz
General Accident's staff wearing gas masks
The biggest impact on those still manning the various company offices in London was that of the Blitz. Although a number of Aviva group companies evacuated most staff for the duration of the war some, like Commercial Union, Northern Assurance and Ocean Accident maintained their head offices in London throughout the war and even companies who left the capital retained skeleton staff in their buildings for the convenience of their London customers.
Fears of the danger of air attack surfaced as early as 1938 when the London branch engineering manager of General Accident informed Francis Norie-Miller that a number of his female staff would not come in to work in the event of war due to the threat of air raids, while DIB of Union Assurance lamented:
"There is something fantastic and repulsive in the thought that it should be necessary, in this year of grace, to equip a building in the heart of a civilised city with protection from attack by supposedly equally civilised people…"
Cartoon taken from Commercial Union's staff magazine
Reminiscences from staff recall the daily interruption of bombs, the regular clearing of debris from bombing raids of the night before and the problems of moving around the city, according to DIB writing again in the Commercial Union staff magazine of Autumn 1940:
"The question of travelling is a problem peculiar to London, with its great distances, and it has at times been a problem indeed. So far as Cornhill is concerned the record is probably held by a gentleman who arrived one day at 2.30pm and departed at 3pm."
Vivienne Hall, a typist at Northern Assurance, kept a diary throughout the war period which is now held at the Imperial War Museum. In her entry for 16 September 1940 she wrote:
Blackout cartoon taken from Northern staff magazine
"…the pavements and roads are thronged with people trying to get to work and there's absolutely no panic or grumbling anywhere. We picked up odd people on the way and two to four hours to get to work seems quite the usual time, but still we go to work, Mr Hitler! We got there and the all clear went; the siren again at 10.45, lunchtime and, after being told we could go home at 3.00, again at 2.10. This warning lasted until 6.00 so our early-leaving wasn't much help.
"A rush to get by bus, train and an unsuccessful attempt at the trolleybus at Hammersmith (this proved quite impossible so six of us got a taxi and arrived at Putney in a heap). No sooner had I got in than the warning went again so it was necessary to get some food and descend to the depths for the night."
Her diary entry for 8 August 1941 recalls another journey in to the office:
"Oh dear, why was I born? Forgot to mention I was nearly killed last night on going home – there was a horrible swishing sound and I looked behind me to see the wall of Bow church bulging outwards and breaking all over the roadway.
"Police, crowds and all manner of people rushed up but I thought the fewer people the better so I went home – quite a quaking feeling though for the moment – a few more paces and I should have been one of the unfortunate people underneath – it says today that three workmen and two civilians were killed."
Read Doris Page's description of working through the blitz
Pensioner Doris Page, who also worked at the Northern Assurance during the War later recalled:
"I got to know a great deal more of the City during this time. Depending on how far the buses could take you, the rest of your journey you had to walk, stepping over hose pipes and rubble and diverted around areas if not passable to get to your place of work".
Yet another Northern typist, Dorothy Haines, described her journey into work after the fire bomb raid on London on the 29-30 December 1940:
"On the Monday following the raid of Friday night the tube was blocked and we were turned out at Old Street tube station and had to walk to Moorgate. Mary's office 'Cable & Wireless' near Moorgate tube station had been completely 'gutted' and as staff arrived they were ordered to report for duty at a building on Victoria Embankment – so she continued her walk.
"Bunny and I continued our journey scrambling over debris and fire fighting equipment as the square mile of the City was still smouldering. We became very dirty from smoke and fumes and eventually reached the Northern Assurance, No 1 Moorgate, building intact and unscathed."
Read Dorothy Haines' experience of a fire bomb raid
A R Tingey of the Yorkshire Insurance London city staff recalled a day in his life as a member of the skeleton staff there in early 1940:
"Just before 9am I diligently pick my way across dozens of criss-crossing firemen's hoses, and unlock the front door (except, of course, on the occasions when it had already been conveniently blown open) I then sweep up the glass and plaster from the main office and make arrangements for the front window to be boarded over – this having been blown out (or, rather, in) during the night."
Read A R Tingey's full experience of being a member of the skeleton staff
Tim Cheal of North British & Mercantile also remained, as one of the skeleton staff at the 61 Cornhill branch, and recalled:
"After a severe bombing, kiosks appeared in the city where patient transport officials gave advice upon 'how to get home' from here' - I remember on one occasion approaching one of the officials and enquiring about transport to Tonbridge. The official looked at me and said 'you've had it chum'. That night I slept on a stretcher in the basement at head office".
Read Tim Cheal's experience of working at the head office during wartime
View from Commercial Union's office window
Mr Cheal was far from being the only staff member to sleep at the office, indeed early in the war plans were made at Commercial Union for staff to work in shifts if transport became too difficult with one group working from Monday to Wednesday and another from Wednesday to Friday:
"Meals will be provided in the first basement, work will be done in the second, and sleep will be wooed in the third. Thus travelling in the black-out, with all its delays, dangers and discomforts, will be reduced to a minimum."
Members of staff like those at Provident Mutual's, largely abandoned, office at 25/31 Moorgate were on fire watching rotas which included working all night and FEK later recalled that out of the first 91 nights of the blitz there were only four during which there was no air raid.
The basement at these offices had been turned into a large public shelter which the staff were also responsible for supervising and FEK wrote:
"Many stories could be told of pick-pockets, drunks, a death, and what missed being a birth by half-an-hour…On Saturday nights we used to have a sing-song… on Sunday a film show was put on."
Several members of General Accident staff became virtually permanent residents in the basement shelter at their offices at Aldwych in the first few years of the war due to being bombed out at home or finding the journey in an out of work too difficult. One of these men, WJ Robinson, later wrote in the staff magazine:
"One memorable night… something appeared to strike the building with a terrific crash.The sound of tumbling masonry was heard. We rushed to the safety doors quite anticipating that the whole of the building had collapsed, but our luck was in. A series of three near misses had plastered us with chunks of roadway, destroying a good many windows. Outside was havoc with two burnt out buses and adjacent buildings wrecked."
One of Robinson's fellow shelter residents, David Temple, was not so lucky as Robinson recorded:
"David Temple's decision to sleep one night at the YMCS coincided with an extremely severe raid during which he received fatal injuries. His passing was a great shock to all of us."
The General Accident staff were not the only ones to get bad news of colleagues they had seen only the day before; Vivienne Hall wrote in her diary on 29 November 1939:
"I managed to get safely and early to the office. It was of course damp and wet and the news that one of the men in the office had been knocked down and killed just outside the office the night before did not make us any brighter. There have been many hundreds of deaths and accidents in the blackout but until you actually know someone who has been unlucky you don't think so much about the tragedy each accident brings to so many people."
W A Clark of Provident Accident & White Cross was on ARP duty to extract the body of his colleague Helena Randlesome from the rubble of her home.
Meanwhile Tim Cheal of North British & Mercantile recalled in 1949:
"One morning I arrived at the office prepared for the usual cheery greetings and braced for any of the customary leg pulls, but heard that Lawrence, who had often arrived very early, had not turned up. I later learned with deep regret that he had been killed in an air-raid the night before."
Naturally many of the London branches were damaged, W J Robinson of General Accident recorded the eventual closure of the shelter at their Aldwych office:
"The building, in the centre of a much bombed district seemed to bear a charmed existence until once morning the office clocks stopped at 3:06am, when a high explosive bomb penetrated the roof and exploded on the third floor.
"Structurally the office withstood the shock amazingly well and although the shelter (by now open to the public) was crowded to capacity, no casualties were sustained. The shelter is now officially closed to all excepting fire watchers off duty and occasional members of the staff."
Bomb damage to Northern Assurance London head office
In July 1944 Vivienne Hall recorded damage done to her office at Northern Assurance:
"… on Wednesday morning I got to the Bank Station and as I walked up Princes Street I heard the danger overhead warnings from the Banks – I didn't know there was an alert on even, but quickened my pace and arrived at the Northern and was waiting for the lift when all Hell was let loose about me. A deafening roar and a sickening thud, followed by our huge eight foot windows crashing in, frame and all, plaster and glass careering down the lift shaft.
"I crouched under a counter and waited for the ceilings to come down but after a few seconds things stopped falling and we who were in the department slowly got up to survey the damage. A thick cloud of dust obscured our view for a bit but as this cleared we saw that the windows and doors and fittings were all over the place and the building opposite was a horrible sight. The bomb had struck there and the inner roof had collapsed. Almost immediately the Civil Defence Service and police started getting out the casualties, poor dirty bleeding people.
"I wondered if our top floors had gone and dashed to the First Aid Room to get to work there. By a miracle we had no bad casualties in the Northern – about 20 cases of cuts, not bad ones and a few cases of shock, that's all.
"Had it been after instead of just before 9.30 we should of course had many more people in the office ---- our men and a number of younger girls set to at once and with every available weapon cleared the glass and broken wood from the departments and stairways and even got up the carpets. All this despite the fact that alerts and danger overhead signals were going all the morning! The coolness and bravery of these people is wonderful really.
"Stayed at the office until 3.45 on First Aid duty and then as everyone had gone home we also went home – oh I was tired and I suppose it was a bit upsetting. When I began to think of those heavy windows and the lumps of glass and stuff that had fallen around me as I crouched under a most inadequate counter I realised what an amazing escape I had had."
Other group offices in London to be damaged included Hamilton House, the head office of Employers Liability Assurance, which was damaged by air raids four times, North British and Mercantile's Mincing Lane and Law Courts branches which were bombed out and Norwich Union's London Marine premises at 50-51 Lime Street which were totally destroyed in 1941.
