Suicide Pits

There is also the matter of the types of trains used, and the way they were built. Generally, until the D stock, Surface stock trains had bigger wheels, and less equipment hanging down as low as the tube stock. Thus there would be less chance of someone on the track being caught by equipment on a Surface stock train than a Tube stock.

It depends on how you want to measure their effectiveness.

Every year quite a number of people manage to kill themselves by jumping into the pit at the same time as a train is entering the platform.

edit: As far as I know, no one has killed themselves by jumping into one of these pits when a train was not entering the platform.

An alternative that was once suggested was that they are not suicide pits but pits to gain access to the underside of a train in the event of a technical problem.

IIRC they weren't built until the 1920s/30s.

Read all about it! Tube suicide pits installed by the Saxons! Older than the Tower of London.


EDIT: Yes, yes, I know. Don't mock the afflicted.....

It is a little-known fact that the surveyors for the tube railways looked for these underground pits, and used them to decide the sites for stations.

edit: As far as I know, no one has killed themselves by jumping into one of these pits when a train was not entering the platform.
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I can give one ONE instance of a death in a suicide pit without a train's presence. Somewhere on the Bakerloo north of Baker Street.

A young man decided to end it all by killing himself under a train and to make sure he succeeded he jumped down into the pit standing upright. After a half a minute or so he must have changed his mind for he attempted to get out again.

He grabbed the rails to help himself out. Unfortunately the rails he grabbed were the negative and positive........

What I had in mind, but didn't write, was someone jumping in as the means of ending it all. In the same way that people throw themselves off of high buildings, bridges etc.


On a blackish humourous note, I heard a story about a chap who wanted to end it all so threw himself off the Clifton Suspension Bridge whilst the tide was out.

He landed in the mud and survived the fall. At some point he had changed his mind about ending it all.

Unfortunately, before they could get him out, the tide came in.

I've not heard that one. The most common story about suicides from the Clifton Suspension Bridge is that a young lady in the Victorian period jumped off, but the large, billowing skirts she was wearing acted as a parachute. From the site PP linked to:

Is it true that a Victorian lady survived a fall from the Bridge?
In 1885 following an argument with a boyfriend Sarah Ann Henley from Bristol threw herself from the Bridge. Beneath her billowing dress she was wearing crinoline petticoats which slowed and cushioned her fall - and she had a huge helping of good fortune ! She was injured but was pulled from the mud, eventually recovered, and died in 1948 at the grand old age of 84.