The 'Dead House'

My father was the Superintendent of the public market in Lynn Street. Our front door opened onto the market itself, and our back door opened on the market yard.

The market opened promptly at 8.00am and I was up getting my breakfast before setting off for Newburn School. It was then that the row began. There were explosions which gradually became so terrific that the concussion and vibration was severe enough to shatter some of the glass panels in the roof of the market and bring them down on the stalls beneath.

The danger from falling glass was so great that my father locked the front gates and the tenants of the open stalls took shelter in the small shops bordering the market. I well remember some of them coming into our kitchen and sitting round the fire discussing this unusual affair. It seemed to be generally agreed that there was a battle going on at sea. There they sat airing their knowledge whilst I listened open-mouthed, fidgeting in my seat and wanting to be off to school.

There was a public mortuary at the bottom of the market yard, and although the police were supposed to be in full control of the place, its maintenance and cleanliness were the responsibility of the market superintendent and for that reason he had a spare key. Human nature being what it is, when bodies were found on the beach or in the docks or on the railway, they were not carried all the way up to the police station to be reported and then brought back to the mortuary; the finders usually got the key at the market, put the body in and then carried on up to the police station to report it.

At 9.00am that morning there was a hammering at our back door and the driver of the Corporation coop cart demanded the key of the ‘Dead House’. My father asked why he needed it and he said he had a body in the cart.

“What is it?” asked my father.
“A young lad,” replied the driver.
“What happened to him?”
“He’s been shot.”
“Good heavens!” exclaimed my father, “Who did it?”
“Why man! Don’t you know?” cried the astonished cart-man.
“The Germans have been shelling us for the past hour. Do you mean to say I’m the first with a load? Get the place open quick because there’ll soon be plenty more!”

Sure enough there were. Thirty-five bodies were brought into a place built to accommodate four, and the rest of the day was a nightmare that I was too young to remember. But I can remember the wails of distraught relatives who had wandered from place to place seeking loved ones who had gone out that morning as usual to work and had never returned, and whose fate was at last grimly verified in the ‘Dead House’ in the market yard.

I can still recall the eerie atmosphere as I had to sit in our familiar kitchen scarcely understanding why so many distressed strangers were coming in and out, having to peer in the gloom because all we had was the light of candles because all the gas was cut off because the gas holders had been hit. I too had my own small tragedy, for my mother took all my shirts to make decent the bodies of the children.