| Musical entertainment for people sleeping in “Mickey’s Shelter” in the Fruit & Wool Exchange. Mickey Davis (April 22, 1910 – April 1954), who, at 3 feet 3 inches (1 meter) tall, was known as “the Midget.” Davis was an East End optician who threw his energies into organizing and improving shelter life. He emerged as the unofficial leader who pushed for improvements to health and safety in 1 of the East End’s biggest air raid shelters at the Spitalfields Fruit and Wool Exchange at Brushfield Street. While the local authority, Stepney Borough Council, was concerned by the 2,500 people crammed into the shelter each night, with its lack of sanitation, risking disease and infection, and lack of facilities for food, lighting, and heating, it was left to Mickey to set up first aid and medical units and raise money to equip a dispensary. He even persuaded stretcher bearers and others to come in on their off-duty times to minister to the sick and injured. As a popular activist and orator, he became indispensable to the people, pushing the authorities into action. Long before medical posts became the official practice, well-to-do friends of Mickey provided his Spitalfields public shelter with drugs and equipment. A general practitioner friend made 2-hour round-trip journeys each day to the East End to spend his nights among people living in poverty. 8 years before the National Health Service (NHS) was set up, Mickey’s shelter in 1940 had a free medical service already up and running. He even devised a card index system of everyone who used the shelter, and introduced hygiene practices and protection against disease. He persuaded Marks and Spencer to donate money for a canteen and used the profits to provide free milk for children. When the wartime Government eventually appointed official shelter marshals, Mickey was replaced – but the 1st action the Spitalfields Shelter Committee undertook was to elect him to be Shelter Marshal. Davis’s planning in 1940 was a forerunner of the post-war Welfare State that emerged in 1948. He was a man known affectionately among East Enders as “the midget with the heart of a giant.” | |
| Image Filename | wwii0274.jpg |
| Image Size | 1.41 MB |
| Image Dimensions | 2936 x 2352 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | August 1, 1940 |
| Location | |
| City | London |
| State or Province | London |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NLR-PHOCO-A-49164(764) |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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