LAST week, we featured two rather gruesome pictures featuring the emergency services retrieving a body from the River Skerne in the centre of Darlington in 1965. Policemen and firemen waded in the river near Russell Street to collect the body in a coffin.
This coffin, or one very much like it, appears on several accident pictures from the 1960s, and we wondered whether it was somehow carried around on a fire engine in case of emergency.
Brigade historian Brett Clayton says: "The coffin was a fibreglass one with a lid and it was held by the police! I remember it when attending serious collisions on the A1(M), and it was the police's responsibility to remove the body to the mortuary.
"The fire brigade used its equipment and ladders and waders to recover the body, and there was always a tale that those police officers delegated to deal with the body and the coffin received a bonus payment for the unpleasant task - unlike members of the brigade!
"The coffins have now been replaced by zipped body bags."
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