| AdminHistory | Kenneth Myer Sharer was born c.1926. Sharer was a local name - the birth of a Meyer Sharer was registered in 1925 in Mile End Registration District. He was a Volunteer in the First Aid Corps during the Second World War. On 3 March 1943, 173 people, including 62 children, were killed in a crush while attempting to enter the Bethnal Green Tube shelter after hearing air raid sirens.
His daughter writes:
'He was tasked with pulling dead bodies out of the stairway during the Bethnal Green Tube Disaster. He was 17 at the time and badly affected by his experience. He went to a rest home on the south coast and met the then Queen [Queen Elizabeth, married to King George VI].'
'He told me that he knew the disaster was caused by anti-aircraft guns...He did know that it started with a woman tripping and that a child suffocated. There were others who were not obviously injured, just dead. He said that at the time he was so busy pulling out bodies that it didn't dawn on him how awful it was.'
He later became a local councillor, chairman of Bedfordshire County Council and town mayor.
He died 21 March 2018 aged 91. At the time he lived at 22 Stoke Road, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire. |