Bethnal Green

Bethnal Green is a Central Line station in east London, but its defining moment predates its regular opening in 1946. On 3 March 1943, while the tunnels were serving as an air-raid shelter, the sound of a nearby anti-aircraft salvo triggered a surge in the crowd pressing down the narrow entrance stairway. 173 people — 62 of them children — were crushed to death without a single bomb falling on the area. Wartime censorship suppressed the story almost entirely; full public acknowledgment came only decades later. A memorial plaque now marks the entrance stairs, and a dedicated memorial was unveiled in 2017 nearby. Every passenger who uses the station today descends the same stairway where Britain's worst civilian disaster of the Second World War unfolded.