Below...a message from site visitor, Peter Taylor...
"my grandfather [Thomas Chapman] was an auxillary fireman during the war and he attended the Wilkinson incident. He told my mother [Nora Chapman]two stories of that night, one amusing and one rather preturbing.
These were subsequently told to me. The amusing one was that on arrival at the scene they saw what they thought was a small black dog walking up the side of the pavement in the gutter but on further inspection it was in fact a small child covered from head to toe in soot crawling on all fours with just its eyes clear.
The second story is a bit more serious. My grandfather used to be a miner [he used to work at Preston Colliery North Shields] so a number of other members of the auxillary fire service, ARP, home guard etc. When arriving at Wilkinsons the men who were or had been miners wanted to tunnel into the ruins to try and find any survivors but were overuled by the officers who had walls or any other structures pulled down and moved away then to search for survivors. My grandfather always maintained if the miners had been allowed to start tunnelling immediatly a lot more lives could have been saved."