| Rescuers remove an injured woman from the V-2 strike on London’s Smithfield Market. D. R. Evans & Company, Limited, were wholesale grocers and provisioners in Ye Olde Ludgate House at 25-27 Farringdon Road. By unlucky chance, word had spread that a consignment of unrationed rabbits and fish would be in, so that the market was unusually crowded with queues of housewives and children and many wholesalers were at Smithfield Market to make purchases. A V-2 rocket had hit the north-western corner of the long, narrow market complex at the junction of Farringdon Road and Charterhouse Street at 1103 Hours on March 8, 1945. The Central Markets Building itself was a solidly-built, 3-story structure, with outer walls of brick and masonry and an inside structure of rusting ironwork. This was the worst sort of incident, when hundreds of people not from the neighborhood were buried under huge heavy mounds of debris. It would be hard to find them, to retrieve them and to identify them. The destruction was worse than usual. The rocket had penetrated several shops and the fish market and detonated well below the roadway, bringing the whole structure of heavy iron girders, bricks, stone and timber down into the goods yards of the London and NorthEastern Railway running below. The depth of the rocket’s penetration at least meant that the extent of damage in the surrounding area was narrower than usual. When Admiral Sir Edward Evans (October 28, 1880 – August 20, 1957), London Regional Commissioner for Civil Defense, arrived within the hour, he was told that it was impossible to estimate the number of casualties. But as rescuers anticipated heavy casualties, 15 ambulances stood by, while several doctors were administering to the injured and dying. Casualties were being sent to Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital at the far side of Smithfield Market, where by prior arrangement with the head porter 14 volunteers from The London Times who were conversant with first aid were helping to unload ambulances, carry stretchers and escort the wounded into the hospital. By 1 o’clock Saint Bartholomew’s had to close its doors. It had received 256 cases. 4 surgical teams operated with short breaks until noon next day. The worst injuries were penetrating wounds to the abdomen and compound fractures of the arms and legs. Others had suffered eye injuries. Succeeding casualties were sent to the Royal Free, Great Ormond Street, the Homeopathic Hospital and University College Hospital. Those who had been buried for any length of time were being watched for signs of crush syndrome. Many were treated as outpatients suffering from shock, cuts from glass and abrasions: these might be labelled minor injuries,” but having glass splinters removed from 1’s face, back or limbs was hideously painful and disfiguring and often necessitated time off from work to recuperate. At 6 o’clock the Regional Commissioners Sir Ernest Gowers (June 2, 1880 – April 16, 1966) and Admiral Evans, together with the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Frank Alexander (June 17, 1881 – July 18, 1959), came to view progress, just as the mobile searchlights were being put into place to aid the night-long rescue operation. The next day, the smell of decomposing fish – and probably human bodies – was so bad that the Ministry of Health at Holborn had to arrange for the debris to be sprayed, so that the rescue workers could continue. They did heroic work in the worst conditions, but understandably some never became inured to the horrors they witnessed. Bagging “pieces of flesh” was among the worst of it. At least 1 person remembers his father coming home and being physically sick after a rescue job. It had always been a cardinal rule that the dead must not be left exposed to the gaze of onlookers – apart from the obvious reason such a sight was considered bad for morale. In the earlier, conventional air raids, Civil Defense workers would have had time to remove the dead and bag parts of bodies before civilians emerged from the shelters. Now, under sudden rocket attack, that was more difficult, especially as onlookers would quickly converge on an incident. On no account must the dead be taken to hospital. Temporary mortuaries would be set up on an incident site, or at the very least an area would be put aside in which to store the bodies until the stretcher parties could take them away to the local authority mortuaries. The Reverend Markham recalled that he would always ask a couple of wardens to guard the dead “Otherwise their clothing would be rifled, there in the midst of the darkness and dust, and falling bombs.” Temporary mortuaries had no post-mortem facilities; they were simply storage areas. Bodies had to be numbered consecutively in the order in which they were brought in to the mortuary (the numbers being quoted on all subsequent documents and lists). At Smithfield a temporary mortuary was established in a market building on the south-east corner of the Farringdon Street and Charterhouse Street crossing: so many bodies were being brought out of the debris that it was still in use 2 days later. There were special procedures to observe. A body must be labelled ideally with details of name, address, sex, age, place of death, time and date of finding the body – these labels to be attached to the body by the rescue workers, stretcher bearers or mortuary vehicle attendants. 110 people were killed and 123 were seriously injured, with 366 total injuries. Most were women and children waiting for fish and rabbits. An office building replaced the destroyed part of Smithfield Market. A memorial on the site of the V-2 strike commemorates the deaths of the victims. A fire at Smithfield Market burned for 3 days in 1958 and was Britain’s worst peacetime fire until the Grenfell Tower disaster in 2017. Smithfield Market is set to close in 2028. | |
| Image Filename | wwii2084.jpg |
| Image Size | 1.59 MB |
| Image Dimensions | 4824 x 3616 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | March 8, 1945 |
| Location | |
| City | London |
| State or Province | London |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Archive | |
| Record Number | |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
Author of the World War II Multimedia Database