At 9.40 p.m., the fire brigade based under the Covered Market received ‘telephonic communication’ that the North of England School Furnishing Company in East Mount Road was ablaze. A bell in the clock tower was rung to summon the firemen, but it also alerted the townspeople so that when the firemen reached the blaze at 10 p.m., 3,000 spectators were present – many of them sheltering from the heat beneath the workshop’s west wall. ‘Just after half-past ten o’clock, a flash of light was observed … and then followed a report like that of a piece of ordnance,’ said The Northern Echo. ‘Almost simultaneously, the gable end of the wall blew out and TONS OF BRICKS FELL ON THE PEOPLE BELOW.’
Two men were pulled from the rubble, dead. ‘Their heads and faces were totally unrecognisable, and their trunks had been beaten into a horrible misshapen mess,’ said the paper. ‘Then came young boys with heads covered with blood and dangling limbs.’ George Carter, 41, was rushed to hospital to have his leg amputated; he survived, and was one of the fifteen seriously injured.
Lionel Stainsby, 18, was rushed for emergency trepanning – having his skull sawn open – but he became one of five fatalities. At their inquests at the Railway Tavern, the coroner ordered that a runner, not the town bell, should in future be used to summon firemen.
(‘Memories’, The Northern Echo, 2002)