THIS was the scene in West Lane, Keighley, in April, 1908, following a tragic fire at the printing works of Messrs Wadsworth and Co, which occupied the upper storey and attic of a building they shared with cabinet-makers and joiners Alfred Lord and Co.

The fire had started in a basement storeroom and quickly spread to a wooden staircase providing “the only means of ingress and exit”. On raising the alarm, John Wadsworth, head of the firm, had urged his employees, many of them girls, to join him in a dash down the burning stairs, but many had refused and congregated instead in the crane doorway seen slightly towards the left.

Wadsworth got a ladder, but some jumped out and compositor James Walbank was fatally injured when he fell off the ladder.

The fire brigade was soon at the scene, but the building was an inferno. A body was found among the debris, but “as some of the men had not turned up to work, and those who escaped had mostly gone to their homes or to receive medical attention, considerable difficulty was experienced in identifying the charred remains” – which turned out to be those of compositor Thomas E Lightowler.

Another two men and six women were injured, out of a workforce of 22.

The inquest returned an accidental verdict, recommending that Keighley Corporation should “adopt the bye-laws under the Factory and Workshops Act, 1901, dealing with factories where less than 40 persons are employed”.

The photograph has been supplied by Mr Kevin Seaton, of Shann Lane, Keighley.