Extract from Wartime Teesside
 October, 1940. At 7.55pm on Sunday, 13 October 1940, a German aircraft dropped four high-explosive bombs on the Marsh Road area of Middlesbrough and caused severe damage to properties in Benjamin Street, Hatherley Street, Nixon Street, Hartington Street, Marsh Road, Argyle Street, Farrer Street, Jamieson Street and Cannon Street. In the seconds that it took for those explosions to blast their way through the community, fifteen houses were demolished, thirty-seven were rendered so unsafe that they subsequently had to be demolished, thirty-eight were reduced to a state so unsafe that they had to be evacuated, and a further 100 were badly damaged. In addition, a further 300 properties sustained damage of a lesser nature.
The material cost was high, but the human cost was higher: twenty dead (of whom four died after admission to hospital), thirty-two seriously injured and seventy-two with minor injuries. A number of people had remarkable escapes that evening, including an ARP worker and his family of four who had sought the protection offered by the cast iron shelter at the junction of Marsh Road and Farrer Street. When the second bomb landed close to their refuge, the ferocity of the blast blew out both ends of the shelter and catapulted the entire family out of one end. They escaped with scratches: other occupants were killed
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