“TOMORROW is Christmas Day,” began The Northern Echo editor’s comment 100 years ago. “Many have been asking whether we ought to celebrate it. On the battlefields of Europe for nearly a thousand miles, millions of soldiers will be facing each other... Can we at home sit down to the festive board and crack the time-honoured jokes while possibly thousands will be lying dead or wounded upon the blood-soaked ground?”

As Christmas 1914 approached, the North-East was still quaking from the bombardment of Hartlepool, Scarborough and Whitby on December 16. People were still dying of their injuries, and, as far from the coast as Darlington and Bishop Auckland, thousands of mourners were lining the streets as the first military funerals of the war were held to bury the members of the Durham Light Infantry killed by the German warships’ shells.

But, on the other hand, preparations for Christmas went on practically as normal. Presents were bought – today’s Page in History, overleaf, is made up of local retailers’ adverts from The Northern Echo of December 21, 1914 – pantomimes were attended, and festive meals were prepared.

It must have felt strangely unreal...

FOUR days after the bombardment, The Northern Echo reported that the “ten-year-old hero of the Hartlepools” had died.

Stanley Witty had been struck by shrapnel during the bombardment in the fateful hour after 8am on Wednesday, December 16. In the chaotic aftermath, he was among the hundreds of people taken to hospital. He was told he was only superficially injured, and sent home. He told his elder brother he was in intense pain, but made him promise not to tell their mother, who was already deeply distressed by the day’s events.

Their father, a brass finisher called John, returned from work and hurried his shellshocked wife to a friend’s house for peace. Then he returned young Stanley to hospital.

The second diagnosis agreed with the first – superficial injuries – but then, seeing the boy was in so much pain, Dr George Hall intervened and sent him for a primitive X-ray.

The X-ray revealed that a piece of shrapnel had penetrated the poor lad’s skin and, taking a piece of his waistcoat with it, had passed through his stomach, lungs and liver, “and then taken a deflected course to the spine”.

The paper concluded: “There was no hope.”

So the ten-year-old hero of the Hartlepools died on December 18 in Stockton hospital.

The Echo’s report concluded: "The boy's father told the above story and expressed gratitude for all that was done for his son at the hospital”

AS well as the physical impression that the German warships left on people and buildings along the east coast, there was a deep mental impression. There was terror and there was panic – and there was also great curiosity.

Two days after the bombardment, Durham coroner J Hyslop Bell travelled from his home in Stockton to open the inquests into the victims. However, his arrival by train into the town was delayed by an hour because there were so many panic-stricken Hartlepudlians fleeing out of it.

"The Hartlepools were all excitement yesterday amid rumours of another possible bombardment, on this occasion by Zeppelin,” said the Echo.

It explained that on December 18, the Post Office had received an official message “to look out for hostile airships”. The message, posted on the wall, said: “To avoid panic the advice is to keep cool and not congregate in groups in streets. The rumour may be false but everyone be prepared...”

As an agitated Corporal Jones would have said: “Don’t panic!”

And so people dashed to the railway to make their getaway. Stockton and Middlesbrough were full of frightened refugees.

“Quite a number went to Darlington and among them were several pathetic looking groups,” said the Echo. “One woman and her little girl were carrying bundles of clothes tied up in tablecloths, whilst the husband was leading a dog, which was by far the most lively member of the party.”

In his opening remarks, Coroner Bell said: “About these infant panics, I hope we have heard the last of them. It is perfect nonsense to suppose that this island is going to melt away at the first sound of a trumpet from the other side of the water.

“I should like to think that the old town will keep its own pluck up all the way through.”

Convulsions of panic continued to ripple through the coastal communities for many months, although the only invasion turned out to be by sightseers.

“Thousands of people from Teesside and Tyneside visited the Hartlepools over the weekend,” reported the Echo on Monday, December 21. “The railway stations in both towns were densely packed, and the railway company had the utmost difficulty in dealing with the immense traffic.”

ANOTHER knock-on effect that Christmas of the bombardment was an increase in anti-immigrant feeling and violence.

“The feeling among the people is naturally somewhat bitter against residents of German and Austrian birth and origin, and on Saturday night, the windows of one shop in West Hartlepool were broken,” reported the Echo on December 21.

In Sunderland, German porkshops belonging to Gustav Strunk and Albert Hanselman were attacked in "proceedings amounting to a riot", while in Easington Colliery there was an “exciting scene” outside a German porkshop.

“A considerable crowd collected, and for a time the street on which the shop is situated was almost blocked, the owner’s wife and her three children escaped by a back door,” said the Echo.

Most of these incidents were on Saturday night and coincided with closing time at the pubs. In Sunderland, Pte John Rush, 33, of the Yorkshire Regiment was sentenced to a month in jail for drunkenness and porkshop window-breaking – it was his 61st offence.

In Darlington, a youth called Thomas Moore was fined 2s 6d for drunkenly smashing the windows of the well-known pork butcher, George Zissler, in Northgate.

He was convicted after telling a mate: "Go round the corner and see the window I've broken at Zissler's, the German's

That same weekend, at Roker, Sunderland, “a German naval man” was caught “in the act of flashing signals” out to sea and arrested.

And at the zinc works at North Gare, near Seaton Carew, 42 Austrian and German workers were rounded up and marched off to Durham prison. They were then sent to an internment camp near York.

THE Christmas 1914 pantomime at Darlington Hippodrome was Jack and the Beanstalk. It starred “your old favourite” Harry Nelson, the Five Osrams, the Three Pages, the Seven Kosiques and the Brazilian Dwarfs – “Madame and Mons Gondim, 43in high”.

“It is as bright a little pantomime as one could wish to see,” said the Echo. “Miss Lena Page as Jack is a bright and dashing hero, while Miss Edna Page is as engaging a Princess Prettipet as anyone could desire.”

The advert in the Echo said: “Dinna forget Christmas Day at 6.45pm and 9pm.”

But it was still impossible to escape the war.

“Kaiser Bill is to be the chief butt of the pantomimes this season, and the many sallies of wit at his expense, are loudly applauded,” said the Echo.

TWO gun batteries were built on the Headland at Hartlepool in 1860 on either side of the lighthouse (it had been built in 1846 and may have been the first lighthouse in the world to be lit by gas). Unfortunately, during the bombardment, the lighthouse was found to be in the way of the guns, so it was dismantled. The current lighthouse was rebuilt in 1926, no longer obstructing the gunners’ sightlines.

In 1956, the batteries were decommissioned. The Heugh Battery was eventually preserved as a museum, but the Lighthouse Battery was removed.

“In the early part of my career as a civil engineer, I was given the responsibility of demolishing the Lighthouse Battery,” says Peter Willers of Darlington. “It proved immune to being blown up, so it was decided to demolish the superstructure only and bury the remainder. I can assure any would-be Time Team enthusiasts that the majority of the gun emplacement remains intact.”

Peter also has a snippet of information about the famous 1915 painting of the bombardment by James Clark. It shows a couple of soldiers falling as the Lighthouse comes under fire and a fisherman in his waterproofs ushers a young child out of harms way.

“The main figure was modelled by a man known locally as Paddy Hood,” says Peter. “The problem is that on the day of the bombardment, he was not there. He was at sea – fishing.”

TODAY’S front cover features a couple of First World War Christmas cards sent to William Thomas Dobson from Easington Colliery who was serving with the Durham Light Infantry on the Western Front. A miner, his underground skills were used to tunnel beneath German trenches and blow them up.

Somewhere on the Somme, he was wounded. "He said that they wanted to amputate his leg but decided against it," says his grandson Paul Dobson in Bishop Auckland.

Instead, he was sent to a hospital in Sunderland, and managed to keep hold of his full compliment of limbs.

"Ironically, " says Paul, "he lost his right hand in an accident in the pit in 1928, but he would walk miles with his dog until just before he died in 1975, age 86."