The Bishopsgate Goods Yard disaster — II

Another reason for the disappearance from memory of the Bishopsgate Goods Yard disaster may be the disturbingly anti-Semitic content of the contemporary press accounts. These almost uniformly identified ‘aliens’ – generally understood to mean Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe – as the cause, as well as the victims, of the stampede, as is bluntly stated in the above Daily Chronicle headline. The first accounts to be published mentioned almost in passing that ‘the majority of the persons – in fact, practically all of those who were rushing for safety – were of alien nationality’.1 However, the inquests into the deaths held soon afterwards provided the press with plenty of prejudice from coroners and police inspectors. For example, at an inquest held on 1 February 1918: The coroner (Dr. Wynn Westcott) said that the panic was almost entirely due to foreigners or persons of foreign extraction. ‘It seems that we have not only to take care against air raids, but against Londoners killing…