Today is the 100th anniversary of the Medomsley Bank charabanc crash, at the time the worst coach disaster in the country. Duncan Leatherdale recounts the County Durham tragedy.
"NEVER in the history of Consett, hardly ever in the history of the country, has a more appalling catastrophe of the kind taken place than that which happened on Medomsley Bank on Saturday afternoon.”
That’s how a journalist described the charabanc accident that took place in County Durham 100 years ago today.
Thirty-three people were in high spirits as they set out that fateful day. Within minutes, ten would be dead and 19 seriously injured.
The Consett Co-operative Contest Choir was on its way to perform at the Prudhoe Flower Show, on Tyneside, on Saturday, August 26, 1911, aboard an open-topped bus.
A 32-page commemorative supplement published after the tragedy by the Consett Chronicle sets the scene, saying how the group set off “with joy in their hearts”.
They left Consett at about 1.50pm, the choral singers looking “cheerful, happy and expectant, all dull cares cast aside and a healthy bloom appeared on almost every smiling face”.
The group broke into song as they made their way out of the town, but their joy was short-lived as the coach picked up pace going down Medomsley Bank and, at 30mph, started to get out of control. The driver frantically applied the brake, but as they passed Woodhead Cottage, the bus hit a mound of earth, swung round and collided with a tree.
Witnesses described hearing “men and women shriek” and younger members becoming hysterical, “their screams almost deafened by the mighty roar of the engines”.
The reporter who wrote the supplement, which was loaned to The Northern Echo by Malcolm Ward, from Stanhope, and his daughter, Claire, said his pen almost failed him as he described the bodies of those who “but an hour ago had been full of life and expectation”
crushed beneath the carriage.
Nine members of the choir were killed instantly, while the tenth, John Pearson, from Green Street, Consett, died later, after being taken to the Newcastle Infirmary.
The reporter said all but six of the survivors were suffering “untold mental and physical difficulties”.
A passing schoolteacher raised the alarm and, 20 minutes later, doctors and nurses had arrived to tend to the injured. An ambulance and laundry van were used to carry the dead to a makeshift mortuary in a nearby house.
The journalist described the scene after the passengers were removed. He said: “To say it was a wreck is certainly not exaggerating.
“One of the wheels was literally smashed to pieces, whilst the seats and roof were in some instances split into matchwood. Portions of the brakes and one of the petrol tanks were also found in bushes more than a hundred yards distant.”
Most of those killed came from Consett and included Florence Edith Egglestone, of Hyeshope Terrace, Henrietta Stokoe, of Sherburn Terrace, and sisters Hilda Annie and Lydia Ethel Whittaker, of Palmerston Street.
Their brother, Robert Whittaker, a teacher, escaped with slight injuries to his wrist.
Also among the dead were Sarah Ann Dunn, of Park Road, John Thomas Carr, of Edith Street, and Thomas William Urwin Barron, of Belle Vue Terrace, all Consett, and Amelia Annie Maude Davison, of Hope Street, Blackhill, and Ralph Pearson, of Holly Avenue, Medomsley.
The parents of John Carr, a teacher at Pelton, near Chester-le-Street, described his death as an “irreparable calamity, not only to his afflicted mother and the rest of the household, but to the community”.
The reporter said: “Mr Carr led a blameless, industrious and useful life and, as he was a still young man, there was unpredictable scope for the development of his talents.”
The charabanc driver, Matthew Marshall Wilson, from South Moor, Stanley, escaped with just a scratch on his hand, while the conductor, George Lumley, from Langley Park, was hurt as he tried to jump to safety.
Realising the charabanc was unstoppable, Mr Lumley made a “leap for life”, landing on his face and loosening several teeth. Dazed and shocked, he walked the quarter of a mile the charabanc had travelled before it crashed and helped to remove the dead and injured.
At the inquest, Coroner Graham said the Consett area was used to coping with multiple deaths due to the collieries. But he said: “In no colliery explosion in their district had they had such a large number of deaths and injuries in proportion to the number of persons.”
The press came under fire for its coverage of the tragedy by the coroner, who criticised journalists for interviewing witnesses in great detail prior to their appearance at the inquest.
At the inquest, described as “one of the most important inquiries ever held in Consett”, the jury returned a verdict of accidental death on the victims.
It ruled Mr Williams had driven safely and done everything he could to stop the bus. But the inquest recommended that charabancs be tested for safety at least once a month.
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