27-05-2025
Death in the Yorkshire Dales: How 32 housewives and driver died when coach plunged off 'Devil's Bridge' after its brakes failed in Britain's worst ever road disaster 50 years ago
It was a housewives' day trip that turned into the stuff of nightmares.
Fifty years ago today, a packed coach crashed in the Yorkshire Dales after its brakes failed, killing 32 passengers and the driver.
The tragedy at Dibbles Bridge, which left a further 13 people injured, was, and remains, Britain's worst road disaster.
Today, a memorial service for those killed is being held in the North Yorkshire town of Thornaby, where the 46 occupants had travelled from.
The coach passengers were all friends and neighbours who had paid £2.50 for the day trip. They had packed lunches with them and had planned to enjoy high tea.
The coach's driver, Roger Marriott, 35, was powerless to stop his vehicle as it gathered speed down a 1,500-yard hill and then plunged 20feet off what was known locally as 'Devil's Bridge'.
For it was at that spot 50 years earlier that almost the exact same accident had occurred, killing seven and injuring 14.
Today's service will be led by the Bishop of Whitby, the Right Reverend Barry Hill.
The coach was a 1967 Bedford VAM5, run by Yorkshire firm Riley's Luxury Coaches.
It was carrying women on a day trip to Grassington in the Yorkshire Dales. The trip's organiser, Dorothy White, the mayoress of Thornaby, was among the victims.
The 33 victims of the crash at Dibbles Bridge
Gwendoline Dodsworth; Gladys Callaghan; Sylvia Worn; Eva Thomas; Edna Herron; Isabel Pratt; Kathleen Maud; Mabel Chisholm; Irene Groskop; Grace Harrison; Jean Smart; Roger Marriott (driver); Jennie Lowe; Jennie Butler; Rosaline Brown; Harriet Riley; Doris Howsden; Henrietta Pedley; Elsie Middleton; Elizabeth Hill; Freda Wilkinson; Ida Fisher; Dorothy White (former Thornaby mayor and trip organiser); Lilian Barclay; Henrietta Kirk; Margaret Mennell; Ada Chisholm; Hannah Forth; Eileen Ross; Hilda Gibbon; Betty Aitchison; Margaret Baldwin; Edith Woodhouse
The disaster began at around 4pm on May 27.
As the coach started to descend the hill on the road from Pateley Bridge, the driver realised his brakes were defective.
His attempts to apply them caused them to heat up and then fail completely. An inquest would later put the brake failure down to poor maintenance.
Having picked up enormous speed, the coach was unable to turn around a sharp bend near the bridge.
It crashed through a parapet and plunged around 20feet into the garden of a cottage below.
Landing upside down, the force of the impact crushed the roof inwards to within three feet of the chassis.
One woman was thrown clear, whilst passengers who had not been killed instantly were left trapped.
Firemen had to cut parts of the coach away to get to the dead and those were still alive.
The injured were rushed to Airedale Hospital in nearby Keighley.
Off-duty nurses and doctors were called in to work to help treat the deluge of patients.
Thirty-two people died at the scene. The 14th initial survivor, 78-year-old Ada Christon, passed away later.
Driver Mr Marriott survived the initial impact but succumbed to his injuries while trapped in the wreckage. His wife was among the injured.
As he lay trapped, he told a woman who had rushed to help: 'My brakes failed... there was nothing there.'
Elsie Townsend, who was visiting the Yorkshire Dales with her husband and children, told the Daily Mail: 'I ran to the front and saw a man trapped from his waist down and he was entangled with the engine.
'His right arm was trapped under the wreckage and his face was covered with oil, blood and shattered glass.'
'I asked if there were any children in it and he said no. I asked if he was the driver and he said yes.
'He was absolutely covered in oil. I had some tissues in my pocket and I wiped the blood, oil and glass from his face, eyes and ears.'
She added: 'I sat next to him holding his hand and he started gasping for breath. I said: "Roger, you're not going to sleep are you?"
'He said: "No." And I said: "I'm holding your hand."
'It went all cold and suddenly the colour drained from his face. I called an ambulance driver but he took a look and said there was nothing he could do.
'The driver had died.'
Margaret Robinson, then 35, survived with her mother. Both had head injures.
Ms Robinson said: 'The coach kept going faster and faster down this very steep hill and I felt something was going to happen.
'There was a curve in the road and the driver seemed to be pulling on the wheel.
'The next thing I knew it tipped over. It seemed to go right out of control.
'We were lying on our backs with all the seats on our legs and lots of people strewn around.'
Another of the injured,Mary Booth, said she could not recall the crash. She only remembered waking up on the grass next to the coach.
She told the Mail how she held the hand of another survivor, Lillian McLeod as she lay nearby.
The then 60-year-old said: 'She was calling my name and moaning. I stretched out and held her hand. I don't know whether it helped.'
The youngest passenger was 17-year-old Madeline Pratt, who suffered head injuries but survived.
She had been due to sit her A-level exams the following month and had joined her mother on the trip to have a break from revising.
Her mother was killed in the crash.
Back in Thornaby, 77-year-old George Watts, a friend of those on the coach, said at the time: 'It makes you feel so, so useless. These ladies did so much good, helped so many people.
'All of a sudden they are gone.'
In 2022, a memorial to those killed was installed in Thornaby. The four-tonne tribute was made from stone sourced from a nearby North Yorkshire quarry.
In the crash in 1925, a coach carrying a party of 40 York council officers plunged 20feet into Hebden Beck and overturned after the driver reported his brakes had burnt out.
The driver, who survived, later said: 'I knew we were out of control and tried to make the best of it - but she gained speed quickly.'
