ON MARCH 3, 1943, anti-aircraft rockets were fired from Victoria Park, Bethnal Green, a little after eight o’clock in the evening.
It was a dark night and as civilians made their way to Bethnal Green Tube station, thinking that an air raid might be in progress, they reached the steps downwards, which were blacked out, and a young mother and child tripped and fell. Within seconds, many others fell around them and within a minute, hundreds had. 173 people died, including 62 children – crushed and asphyxiated within the tangled pile of bodies.
One of them was Dick Corbett, two-time British and Empire bantamweight champion in the early 1930s.
Corbett, whose real surname was Coleman, had a brother, Harry, who held the British featherweight title during 1928/9, and the two…
