“The scene was terrible,” Mrs Harper told The Northern Echo 100 years ago this week. “Men and women were lying about, some almost in the water, where they had been thrown when the motor-coach had overturned. The cries of the people who were pinned beneath it were heartrending.”
Mrs Harper was the only witness to the Dibble’s Bridge disaster of June 10, 1925, in which seven people were killed when a coach’s brakes gave way on a one-in-six bank, causing it to career out of control and then crash over the bridge at the bottom.
“One old gentleman was lying with a big stone crushing his head,” said Mrs Harper, who lived nearby. “I pulled it off, and he thanked me, saying: ‘Give me a drink.’
“I gave him a drink of water, and after he had sipped, he said: ‘Let me lie down to die.’
“I could not speak. The whole scene, the piteous cries, the blood which splashed the limestone rock, and the feeling of utter helplessness, robbed me of speech.
“I laid the old gentleman down, and he died.”
He was one of seven people from York, who had been enjoying a day out in the Dales, who were killed that day; 14 were injured.
Extraordinarily, very little was made at the inquest of the fact that the driver, William Elsigood, had stopped the coach at the top of the bank and asked passenger Mr JH Hartley to “scotch the wheel” – place a stone under a rear wheel. With the bus thus braked, Mr Elsigood crawled underneath “with the object of adjusting one of the brakes”.
Job done, he climbed aboard, Mr Elsigood removed the scotch and jumped onto the running board as the coach began its descent. As it picked up pace, Mr Elsigood jumped off. He ran after the runaway vehicle and when he reached the crash scene discovered that his wife, Annie, was dead.
READ THE FULL STORY OF THE HORROR OF 1975 HERE
Just as in 1925, the verdict of the 1975 inquest was that everyone had died accidental deaths.
