VIDEO: MORE than eighty years after Warrington’s worst war-time atrocity, the 16 innocent victims of the Thames Board Mills bombing were once again remembered by local resident Derek Vernon.
Latchford resident Derek paid his respects with a minute’s silence in memory of the sixteen men, women and children, some aged just two and three, who were killed at Arpley Meadows at 5.03 pm on September 14, 1940.
He was joined by Warrington Worldwide Editor Gary Skentelbery, who previously helped organise a 75th anniversary memorial service. Derek again recalled the day that has always stayed fresh in his memory as his late Grandad, who fought at Dunkirk, talked about it regularly.
Derek met up with Gary exactly 83 years since the day women and young children were amongst the casualties when a German bomber, on its way back from a bombing raid at Manchester, targeted the factory’s annual fete.
Reports at the time say a stray German bomber was travelling along the Manchester Ship Canal and spotted a large crowd of people at the fete and decided to unload its last remaining bombs.
There was carnage as one bomb fell on the canteen burying 150 people in the wreckage, killing 16, and injuring a further 28, 15 of them seriously.
Later there were many conflicting eyewitness accounts from those who had seen the plane swoop over the town, but most agreed that the pilot was low enough to see exactly what he had bombed.
The Warrington Fire Officer’s log reported, however, that German radio reports that evening claimed that the “Aluminium Mills at Bank Quay had been bombed.”
Derek and Gary are now planning to investigate adding the names of the sixteen victims to the memorial in the middle of Warrington Centre Park near the Village Hotel.
Derek Vernon and Gary Skentelbery at the memorial
Those who lost their lives were:
Donald Ackerley,
Henry Williamson Cooper
Albert Wallace Cox,
Albert William Cox,
Rhoda Hannah Gittings Cox,
May Domville,
Amy Heath Edwards,
Ruth Jackson,
Beatrice Hannah Parker (Canteen Manageress)
Ann Lawson, aged two,
William Stanley Reynolds,
Lilian Maud Springham,
William George Springham,
Williams James Taylor
William John Taylor aged three,
Albert Webb, aged three.
