With the First World War very much on peoples minds I have put on the web the sections from a couple of my publications covering the airraid in Ramsgate when the Sunday school children were killed.The main part is from my publication Cockburn’s Diary, Ernest Cockburn was in a reserved occupation at Westgate Gasworks during the war, he lived in Ramsgate where he was a special constable.
He kept a diary during the war years which I was lucky enough to be able to borrow, his handwriting was fairly hard to decipher and much cross-referencing had to be done with directories of the period and our other books about Thanet during the war.
This meant that for a couple of months my wife and I were pretty much living in that period in our minds.
The other publication The North Foreland Lookout Post in the Great War 1905-1918 by Edwin Scoby Oak-Rhind is also a dated log looking at many of the same local events from a different perspective, so it helpful to have one to hand when reading the other.
Click here for the accounts of the raid in which the Sunday school children were killed
Click here for more of Cockburn’s Diary
Despite the lookouts warnings during the months before and several previous occasions when the air raid siren was sounded far too late, because the lookout was not connected by a direct line to the siren operator, the people died needlessly.
This was due to poor cooperation between the various military and civil authorities. There are parallels here with Pleasurama having no emergency escapes to the cliff top or building a very large industrial estate on the drinking water aquifer.
This was due to poor cooperation between the various military and civil authorities. There are parallels here with Pleasurama having no emergency escapes to the cliff top or building a very large industrial estate on the drinking water aquifer.
