Mother had gone to Hospital
Seven Bombs on S.E. Area
Wife Killed: Husband and son injured
Tragedy came to two houses in a South-East residential area on Tuesday morning when an enemy plane came from behind a dark cloud and dropped seven bombs.
Several dropped at a road junction and in a garden, making wide craters, and three on or near houses in three different roads.
A father and his daughter were killed and another daughter gravely injured. In another house a women was killed, but her husband injured and their son slightly hurt.
A relative of the man who was killed told a Kentish Times representative; “He and the two boys had spent the night in a shelter near their house, and his wife and the two girls went to a public shelter in another road. On Tuesday morning the mother had to be taken from the shelter to a hospital for her confinement. The two girls rushed home to tell their father, who, in the meantime, had left the shelter with his two boys and was preparing to get the breakfast ready. The two boys, hearing that their mother had gone to the hospital went outside for a walk.
“Then the bomb dropped on the house, killing the father and one of the girls, and inflicting severe injuries on the other girl, who was taken to the hospital. The two boy were safe.”
A relative of this family living in the same road had her head injured when the ceiling of the room where she had been sleeping fell on her. She was taken to the hospital.
Three people were rescued from one of the wrecked houses.
Wife Killed: Husband and son rescued
A woman was killed in another house that was struck
Two neighbours hurried to the house, the top and back of which had collapsed. The front room was standing covered with debris. A Home Guard and other men gave ready assistance. One of them scrambled through a window, shifted some wreckage, and handed out the boy, who was hurt on the forehead. The injured father was assisted through the window, and he was taken to the hospital. He kept asking for his wife, and said she was at the back of the house. A search was made and it was found that she had been killed.
A neighbour said to our representative; “The family had been in a shelter in a neighbour’s garden, but had gone indoors. Another daughter was staying away from home that night.”
The doors, windows and ceilings of many houses in the vicinity were damaged.
Published in the Bromley & District Times, 4th October 1940
