A YOUNG girl is found wandering the streets alone at night holding something heavy in her arms.

An adult approaches her and discovers that she is carrying the body of her dead sister.

That haunting tale was just one of many never forgotten stories remembered yesterday at a rededication of a memorial to the 183 children who died in one of Britain's worst ever tragedies.

The memorial to those who perished at the Sunderland Victoria Hall disaster in June, 1883, had been vandalised and almost forgotten for almost 70 years until it was restored.

Yesterday, the memorial was officially rededicated.

But, even though the memorial languished in obscurity, the memories of that terrible day - when children aged from four to 13 were crushed to death and piled six deep against a bolted door - have never been lost.

The children had stampeded down a narrow staircase to claim gifts being given away on stage during a show which was billed as "the greatest treat for children ever given" at the city's Victoria Hall.

Flooding down the winding stairway they found that their way was barred by a partly-bolted, inward opening door.

Yesterday, one woman with a personal link to that tragedy attended the simple service and rededication at which 183 Sunderland children, each carrying a single white carnation, remembered the victims.

Speaking in a wheelchair by the Grade II listed memorial, which has been moved near to its original site at Mowbray Park, a stone's throw from the disaster, Charlotte Stewart, 89, told her family's own story.

"My uncle, Thomas Edward Hughes, was five years old when he died in the disaster, and my father was given his name when he was born the year after," she said.

"My grandmother had to go to identify her son.

"She could only recognise him by his fair hair. I think she was totally devastated."

Earlier, the deputy Mayor of Sunderland, Councillor Peter Gibson, told the harrowing tales of a father who identified his three dead children and of an entire Sunday school class of 30 being among the 69 girls and 113 boys who perished in the tragedy.

The tragedy led to new laws requiring outward opening doors in places of public entertainment.

A campaign backed by the Sunderland Echo led to the memorial's restoration, which cost £3,000.

The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh will see the statue when they officially open Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens on Tuesday, May 7.