On This Day, 21 December 1918

Birmingham Mail 

Saturday 21 December 1918

MIDLAND ZEPPELIN RAIDS

THE ATTEMPTS TO REACH BIRMINGHAM.

LOSS OF LIFE AND DAMAGE IN THE DISTRICT.

Birmingham, as a great munition-making centre was the objective of many German Zeppelin raids, most of them, futile, fortunately, although on occasion the outside districts to the north suffered badly. At the time the censorship prohibited any exact reference to these visitations, but the veil has now been lifted. Zeppelins reached the city or its outskirts several times, but each time they evidently not very sure of their whereabouts.

For a year or two after the war began the public generally was sceptical as to the ability of a Zeppelin to reach the Midlands under any circumstances. It was thought that they were not capable of making the double journey. The modern Zeppelin soon proved itself, however, to have potentialities for evil that made themselves apparent in big death-rolls in London and on the eastern coast ports. For a long time also our defences were not strikingly successful against the invaders, who became bolder by their comparative invulnerability, and began to extend their raids inland, with the great Midland iron and. steel works, the Black Country, and Birmingham as their targets.

WALSALL DISTRICTS UNHAPPY EXPERIENCE.

Birmingham was awakened rudely from its sense of security on the night of January 31, 1916. About eight o’clock those people who were out walking in the northern suburbs of the city heard the dull, heavy explosion of bombs. The significance of the sounds was not then apparent all, and most people went bed happily unconscious of the tragedies which had been enacted at Walsall, Wednesbury, Tipton, Dudley and other towns. Trains and trams were stopped and passengers had to walk long distances home, but the seriousness of what was happening was not realised except by a few, until several days later, as a consequence of the extraordinarily meagre Press Bureau reports issued. Walsall suffered worst, and the success of the Zeppelins here was due, to some extent at any rate, to insufficient lighting restrictions. The glare of the furnaces in the Black Country also proved a good guide, and altogether the Zeppelins had an easy mark. Walsall, like several other places, received two visits. The first was a few minutes after eight pm., and four bombs were dropped, with grave results. Among the victims was the Mayoress, Mrs. S. M. Slater, who was in a tramcar, was hit by flying fragments of a bomb, and died three weeks later. One bomb fell through the roof of the Congregational Church, near to the Cottage Hospital, set the place on fire, and left only the outside walls standing. Another bomb was perilously near to the railway station, but no damage was done to the line, and traffic was not interrupted except for the time the raid was on.

Extract

To see a copy of a Coroners’ Inquest into the death of another victim of the Walsall Zeppelin raid, a young woman named Maud Fellows, please visit: http://www.voicesofwarandpeace.org/portfolio/wolverhampton-city-archives/