One of the Chronicle’s reporters is related to two of the children killed in the Civic Hall Disaster. Ashley Ball writes about how, even many decades on, he could sense the huge impact it had on his family.
MY great-grandma never got to meet her brother and sister but I could always sense that she had inherited the agony of loss from her parents and other siblings.
Ethel Stott was born five years after her brother Hardy and sister Mary Elizabeth were killed on that awful January afternoon in 1908.
She was one of 13 children and was fortunate enough to live to 96.
The family lost three other children very young to illness and it was almost as if she was granted all the lost Stott children’s years.
The disaster was a horrific tragedy for the town; it made news around the world and it could easily have been avoided with some basic health and safety protocols or a ticketing system.
All the families impacted were hit inconceivably hard as their children went off for a rare fun afternoon, in a world where poverty and hardship was commonplace, and never came home. But for the Stotts it was a double blow.
The story in my family goes that the youngsters, aged eight and four, were only allowed to head to the Public Hall from their home on Heelis Street if they held hands all the time.
And they reportedly kept that promise being found lifeless but still holding hands. They’re together still in Barnsley Cemetery.
The fact that these agonising anecdotes were passed down says a lot as it came from the generation of stiff upper lips and family secrets.
It was always painful for her to recall the story but I sensed she felt it was important that she did.
She also told much more joyful stories of the past and, as she got older, they were amusingly on an almost constant loop.
Who knows what the Stott siblings or any of the other children could have achieved in their lives which were tragically cut short that day.
I’m sure some of the older little boy survivors went on to face the horrors of the trenches in France and Belgium or the ever present dangers of working down the mine.
I am grateful that we now live in a slightly safer world and that Dave Cherry took it upon himself to tell the story in the humble way he does best.
The children and families deserve to have their tragic story told and names remembered.
Rest in peace: Beatrice Cartwright, aged seven, Winnie Cousins, aged six, William Parkin Goodall, aged seven, John Charles Graham, aged seven, John Charles Hibbert, aged five, Annie Johnson, aged four, Mary Jane Lee, aged four, Alice Marshall, aged four, Charlotte Norton, aged five, Edward Pickles, aged seven, Florence Smith, aged seven, Hardy Stott, aged four, Mary Elizabeth Stott, aged eight, Ellen Swift, aged five, Albert Edward Ward, aged five and Harry Williams, aged seven.
To read about the disaster click here.
