The tragic tale of the St Anne's Drownings - July 1930
Late 2022, I was sat in the Lytham Archives on Bannister Street browsing through 1930 editions of the Lytham St Annes Express when the above headline jumped off the page. A headline that if seen today would rightly make national and perhaps international news. July 9 th , 2023, marks the 93 rd anniversary of one of St Annes’ worst tragedies. It may also have been one of the worst beach drownings in the history of the United Kingdom. Up until recently, I was completely unaware of this tragedy. I suspect that I am not the only one. Since that time, I’ve conducted further research from the newspapers of the day and the internet. This has only increased my interest in the circumstances that surrounded the drownings. On numerous occasions I’ve found myself lying awake in the quiet hours thinking about that particular Wednesday in July 1930. It’s an incredibly sad story but one that needs to be told. The majority of this article is take...