Baby girl born in Tube Station

You may have seen the news over the weekend that a baby girl was born at Kingsbury London Underground station in December, making her only the 2nd recorded Tube birth in 84 years.

Dawn out of EastEnders waters break on the Tube

Transport for London said that there had only been one other birth recorded on the London Underground. The first baby was born at Elephant and Castle station in South London in 1924. An urban myth at the time had her named as Thelma Ursula Beatrice Eleanor (her initials spell TUBE), but she was called Marie Cordery (or possibly Mary Ashfield Eleanor Hammond, after Lord Ashfield who was Chairman of the London Passenger Transport Board at the time).

On the 19th December 2008, Julia Kowalska's waters broke on the Jubilee line and she got off the train at Kingsbury station but went into labour on the platform.

A TfL spokesman said: "At 9pm the station supervisor received a message from the control room that a woman on a northbound Jubilee line train was complaining of stomach pains. A few minutes later the station supervisor went to the platform and found the pregnant woman having contractions and called an ambulance.

"The woman, accompanied by her sister, was wrapped in a foil blanket to keep warm and taken to the supervisor's office, where the ambulance crew delivered a healthy baby."

However, Jerry Springer says that he was born at East Finchley Tube station during an air raid in 1944. He's pretty famous, so how come he's not known as the second baby to be born at a Tube station? Or do people giving birth when the stations were used as air raid shelters not count?

It's unlikely that we'll find out much more about baby Kowalska as some reports have her mother down as homeless, whereas others say her mother lived with her sister. I was hoping she might have Kingsbury or Jubilee as a middle name.


It is amazing that more children aren't born on the Tube. I see some very heavily pregnant women travelling on the London Underground, and with all of the movement & overcrowding you'd think that would bring on more contractions.

EastEnder's character Dawn (in the first picture) had her waters break on the District Line, & she was stuck in a tunnel. I thought that would be the first fictional Tube birth. But they rushed her to hospital in the end.

So it seems unlikely that you'll have to use any midwifery skills on the Tube, as Tube births are apparently few and far between.

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Monday, January 05, 2009 Permalink COMMENT HERE
Tweet http://london-underground.blogspot.com/2009/01/baby-girl-born-in-tube-station.html