For a change she had gone into the Bull Ring in the city centre and she was unaware of anything untoward happening at Kynoch’s factory. When she arrived home, she found Lily and Aggie already there. They’d had to come home in their overalls, as the cloakroom, with their coats and bags in it, was one of the areas in the factory that was crushed. But by the time Polly had got home they’d washed and changed. Polly was appalled at the news. ‘My God!’ she cried. ‘You could have been killed.’ ‘We know that,’ Lily said. ‘If some of the other girls had been chosen to help with the unloading, then we would have been inside the building that got the full force of the blast. It’s finished me with munitions, for the next time we might not be so lucky.’ Eighteen people, mainly women, had died in the explosion. Others were injured and needed treatment in hospital. These were sad and sorrowful days. Mr Witchell was the father of six children and it upset Aggie greatly to see them all in church, dressed in black, their sorrowful eyes standing out in their white strained faces, and their mother coping with tremendous dignity in the face of such a terrible tragedy.
