Acclaimed author pens new crime drama inspired by Sunderland's Victoria Hall disaster in which 183 children perished

Critically acclaimed author Bridget Walsh, an expert in Victorian history, was so moved after finding out about the Victoria Hall disaster which claimed the lives of 183 children, that she used it as the inspiration behind her new novel, ‘The Innocents’.

The tragedy took place on June 16 at what was the Victoria Hall auditorium, opposite Mowbray Park.

On this fateful day, around 2,000 of the city’s children had gathered inside the hall after being given free tickets to see a show of travelling entertainers.

At the end of the show, the performers began to give out toys to those children seated on the ground floor. Not wanting to miss out, over a thousand children sat in the gallery began to rush down the stairs to get their share.

Taking up the story, Bridget, who has a PhD in Victorian domestic murder, said: “As they ran down the stairs, the door at the bottom had been bolted shut. It shouldn’t have been and no one really knows why it was locked.

“There was a gap of around 20 inches and as the children struggled to get through there was a massive crush which resulted in 183 of them dying.

“The oldest was 14 and the youngest was three. Some families lost all their children and there are accounts of the bodies being laid out in the rain on the street outside.”

Bridget, who has already penned a succession successful crime detective novels, was so moved by the research she carried out into the tragedy that she felt compelled to focus her new book around the aftermath and the traumatic impact it may have had on those involved.

Bridget, who is from London but now lives in Norwich, said: “This was such a massive tragedy, yet if you speak to people, unless they are from Sunderland or are an expert in historical theatres, they have never even heard about what happened.

“Considering the scale of this tragedy, I was shocked at how few people knew about it.”

While the subsequent events of what happened in Bridget’s book are fictional, the basis for the opening of the story are based on accounts from what happened in the Victoria Hall disaster, told through the eyes of its caretaker, Fredrick Graham, one of two real life characters to feature in her novel.

She said: “Fredrick noticed what had happened with the door and is believed to have saved the lives of about 600 people. The disaster could have been even worse if it wasn’t for his actions.”

“There was also a little girl called Niez Coe. She was on crutches and managed to wedge herself into a corner at the bottom of the stairs and used her crutches to protect herself from the crush and saved her life.

“I use Fredrick’s account of what happened in the disaster as a springboard into the rest of the story. While I changed the name of the little girl, the impact the event had on her leads to her becoming a prominent figure in the book.”

It’s the potential psychological damage and trials and tribulations of the tragedy which then led Bridget into the basis of the fictional events which took place in the years after the disaster.

She said: “There was an investigation into the disaster but it was deemed to be an ‘unfortunate accident’. There must have been people responsible for what happened but no one was found guilty and justice wasn’t seen to be done.

“This got me thinking about how people who survived or were connected to the disaster would feel.”

This premise forms the basis of how the fictional story evolves as years after the event, a series of suspicious murders have one thing in common; those who died were all connected in some way to the tragedy which unfolded in the crush.

So what led to the title, ‘The Innocents’?

Bridget explained: “Firstly it represents the innocent lives of the 183 children who died, but it also highlights the fact that no one was found guilty or went on to serve time in prison.

“The disaster did lead to new health and safety standards being introduced, but it was too late for these children.

“These were working class children and it does make you wonder if the outcome may have been different if it involved the wealthier classes at that time.”

While Victoria Hall was destroyed in 1941 during a German bombing of the city, Bridget is planning on travelling to Sunderland to see for herself the site of the tragedy and the memorial to the children who perished.

The novel is due to be published by Gallic Books on Wednesday April 11 and will be available to purchase on Amazon and from major outlets including Waterstones.