Photo: Wimbledon Fire Station
Fire gutted the Woolworth's store on Wimbledon's Broadway on April 30, 1981, killing London firefighter Anthony "Tony" Marshall, 26, and injuring two others.
The blaze started in a storage area and spread rapidly. Aerial ladders were pressed into service to drown the flames.
After the fire was under control, a falling edifice trapped the men as they damped down residual flames, according to the Wimbledon Society.
Fire Fighter magazine blamed Marshall's death on a lack of breathing apparatus.
Marshall's wife, Cheryl, quoted by the South London News in 2022, said: “Tony was full of life, extremely popular and very much a family man. ... He was very kind and caring and it was this nature, and the fact that two of his best friends were firemen, that drew him to the job."
Adding to the heartache, "only three days earlier, the best man at Anthony’s wedding had been badly burned in a fire he was fighting," according to the Fire Brigades Union.
That London firefighter, Barry Trussell, who was also 26, succumbed to his injuries on May 21, 1981. He was trapped by a flash explosion in a storeroom at St. Georges Hospital on Blackshaw Road in Tooting on April 27, 1981, and died at the burn unit at Queen Mary’s Hospital.
Safety at Woolworth's
During the 20th Century, firefighters considered many Woolworth establishments hazards, brimming with flammable goods and materials.
On May 8, 1979, fire at a Woolworth's in Manchester, killed 10 people and injuring many others. There were no sprinklers. Barred windows on the upper floors meant "a vital means of rescue was frustrated," the Fire Brigades Union said. The labor organization also called the Manchester store "a death trap."
In 1973, fire destroyed a store in Colchester, Essex, while on May 6, 1971, fire leveled a Woolworth warehouse in Castleton, Rochdale.
A pair of Woolworth store fires in the U.S. claimed firefighters lives - three men at Aurora, Illinois on Jan. 11, 1934 and seven in Charleston, West Virginia, on March 4, 1949.
Also in the U.S., Anderson, Indiana, was the site of a non-fatal Woolworth's fire on Dec. 30, 1980 as were Tucson, Arizona, on Nov. 24, 1967, Dayton, Ohio, on March 2, 1947 and Flat River, Missouri on Nov. 29, 1946, a Google search shows.
