Tube staff dump homeless woman with the rubbish

WELCOME to Christmas in London, 1998. A world away from the lights and shops of the West End a young homeless woman is dragged from a station and dumped with the rubbish.

These truly shocking pictures show staff at Finsbury Park station, north London, dragging an injured, homeless woman into the street with less ceremony than the bags of rubbish they tossed her besides.

Aged about 30, she had been lying semiconscious by the ticket machine near the main entrance. No one knows who she is, but she had clearly undergone recent hospital treatment and her one possession was an NHS crutch. When she collapsed besides the ticket machine on Monday night it looked as if there was no further a human being could fall. Then the last shreds of humanity were stripped away at the hands of station staff. Not at all abashed, a London Underground employee pursued the man who took these photographs 300 yards along the street and beat on the windows of a taxi he jumped in to escape him. LU spokesman Robin Pulford was horrified when the Evening Standard told him what had happened. He said: "I have never come across circumstances like this before. We will be carrying out a full and thorough investigation. "If a member of our staff is found to have acted in this way, there will be disciplinary procedures brought against him. That could include dismissal. "We certainly do not encourage staff to manhandle anyone in our stations, whether they're in front of a ticket machine or not. We take this incident very, very seriously. We do not treat people like that." A spokeswoman for the station owner, Railtrack, said: "We will be discussing this issue with West Anglian and Great Northern, the train operators, and carry out a full investigation." The pictures were taken by journalist James Robertson, 29, editor of the Diplomat magazine. He said: "Two burly attendants came along and one shoved her with his foot. She was persuaded to leave the station but staggered back in because it was such a cold night. "The two men looked fed up and came back with industrial gloves on and picked her up feet first. "They slung her between them and carried her like the corpse of a hunted animal and left her unceremoniously by a stinking pile of rubbish. She was carrying a crutch and looked to be in pain. This was clearly a vulnerable person and, sadly, she was not treated with much Christian charity. "They were making jokes about putting her on a trolley and began laughing about whether she was a man or a woman." They spotted Mr Robertson and demanded to know why he was taking photographs. Fearing for his safety, he ran from the station and was chased. Other homeless people outside said they knew the woman by sight. Last night she was not at Finsbury Park station, or in any of her other haunts nearby. The temporary shelter that never closed: Page 23

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