THE photograph I used last week of a mass funeral at Edgerton Cemetery was, as I suspected, that of victims of the Booths clothing factory fire that happened in 1941.

Forty-nine people lost their lives in the blaze, most of them women and the youngest a girl of 14.

Lorraine Lowe found the picture among a collection of old photographs in the former house of the late Brenda Crossley who was the widow of Edward Crossley, managing director of A E Crossleys in Elland.

Her father was Frederick Arthur Dyson, a grave digger who lived at Cemetery Lodge, Blacker Road, Birkby.

She hoped to trace a relative so she could pass on the family photographs.

Robert Carter confirms the event by sending an Examiner cutting he found in a scrapbook compiled by the late Miss Eljina Haigh, of Kirkburton, which carries a similar picture.

The cutting says 43 of the victims were buried together and 24 buses carried the 700 relatives to the cemetery after a service in Huddersfield Parish Church. Thousands of mourners lined the route and flags were flown at half mast.

The reporter said: “Not since the Holmfirth Flood in February, 1852, when 81 lives were lost, has the district known so terrible a calamity.”