Deaths and Fatal Injuries at - North Shields on May 3rd1941

• Person's Killed or Fatally Injured in Wilkinson's Shelter, King Street
• Person's Killed at 3 George Street

When the air-raid sirens sounded at 11.12 p.m. on 3rd May 1941, 195 people took refuge in the public air-raid shelter in the basement of Wilkinson's Lemonade Factory on the west side of King Street, North Shields, near the junction with George Street. Perhaps more people than usual took shelter that night because, even before the sirens sounded, there were enemy aircraft overhead.

About thirty minutes later four high-explosive bombs hit the town and one scored a direct hit on Wilkinson's factory. It seems likely that the bomb penetrated the roof and exploded on the factory floor. The thick concrete floor would have protected the occupants of the basement from anything less; but in the event it shattered and collapsed into the basement taking heavy machinery machine with it as it fell. Incredibly 99 escaped or were rescued alive, but the death toll was appalling - 96 had died in the basement and a further seven died in hospital from their injuries. 42 of the 103 dead were children under 16.

Of the other three bombs which hit the town, one struck 3 George Street killing two occupants, and the others fell harmlessly - one landing at High Water Mark on The Flatts and the other on a railway embankment near Stephenson Street.

In terms of bombs dropped, this attack on the Borough was almost trivial - the Borough suffered many much heavier assaults. In terms of damage done, it was serious, but it was far from the worst to hit the town. But when we think in terms of human life and human suffering, the raid was unrivalled throughout the war. Taking the region as a whole, there would be nights when the death toll was higher, but what makes this raid so significant regionally and even nationally is that all but two of the dead were at the same location and had been killed by the same bomb - indeed that single high-explosive bomb which hit the Lemonade Factory was probably one of the costliest weapons ever dropped on this country.

Person's Killed or Fatally Injured in Wilkinson's Shelter, King Street

(Addresses are in North Shields unless otherwise stated.)

Person's Killed at 3 George Street

Pages from the Civilian War Dead Roll of Honour can be purchased from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission