For families and friends waiting at the Boys’ Club and the Church Hall, the organisational issues came very much secondary to a bigger concern: the difficulty in getting accurate and timely information about their loved ones.
At both locations, information came through slowly and was often piecemeal. Various accounts have highlighted that for some, family members at home proved more valuable sources of information than the police or those who appeared to be in charge at the Boys’ Club.
Francis Molloy attended the match with his nephew and two of his nephew’s friends: Ian Glover who died in the disaster and Ian’s brother Joseph. Mr Molloy was seated in the North Stand; his nephew was in the West Stand and Ian and Joseph Glover were on the West Terrace. Unable to find them, at around 5.45pm, he went to what he described as a temporary incident office at the far end of the North Stand, where he asked police officers for information.
He said that the officers told him to take a special bus, and he made his way to Hammerton Road Police Station, where he provided details of the three, and then went to the Boys’ Club. He said that everybody there was helpful, but he had no information so didn’t phone home. He recalled that at about 7.30pm, a number of people started arriving from Liverpool and he became aware of the full extent of what had happened.
A member of the clergy took him to an office and allowed him to use the phone. He spoke to his sister, who told him that his nephew and Joseph Glover were in hospital, but that Ian had died.
Alan Billings was an Anglican priest and SCC councillor. He initially attended Hammerton Road Police Station at about 5.20pm in response to a local TV news appeal for social workers to make their way there, and soon after went to the Boys’ Club. On 17 April 1989, an article in his name was published in the Sheffield Star, a local newspaper in the city. In it, he described accompanying the parents of a 21-year-old man while they waited for information at the Boys’ Club. The parents had spoken to friends of their son and were aware that he had been hurt but did not know where he was.
After about three hours, their other son, who was at home in Liverpool, told them he had heard from a hospital in Sheffield that their missing son was there. Mr Billings accompanied the family to the Northern General. However, on their arrival, hospital staff were unable to locate their missing son. They telephoned home again and discovered that a friend of their son had driven him home.
Christine Milnes was a social worker based at Weston Park Hospital in Sheffield. In a statement made in 2016, she described how she made “several trips to the Northern General Hospital and the Royal Hallamshire hospital with people trying to locate their friends and relatives. After taking people to the hospitals, I returned to the boys club to try to help others looking for missing friends and relatives”.
The very fact that families were having to travel to hospitals to look for loved ones demonstrates the lack of information that was available at the reception centres—something that frustrated police officers on duty too. Superintendent Derek Sleath (Supt Sleath), who had gone to Hammerton Road Police Station as soon as he heard of the disaster, commented that most of the communication between sites “was done by me walking or driving round.”
Though the information flow overall was slow, some recalled one incident at the Boys’ Club when a police officer read out a list of names of people who had been found safe and well. However, this list included the name Adam Spearritt, who it was later confirmed had died in the disaster.
Adam was 14. He and his father Edward had both been reported missing by friends who had gone to the match with them. When the friends were told Adam was safe and well, they telephoned his mother to let her know. The volunteer church worker who had been assigned to support them also recalled this happening. Further, the uncle of another young man who died in the disaster has also stated he heard a police officer announcing that Adam was alive and well.
Other witnesses also recalled a list of names being read out but did not remember any specific details; a further group said they had no recollection of a police officer reading out a list of names.
All of the police officers present have said they did not read out any lists of names. Supt Sleath specifically stated that they decided not to read out any lists of names of casualties but instead used the volunteers and support workers to inform families individually. Insp Hogan-Howe recalled that they did eventually obtain a list of people who had gone to hospital, but that he didn’t remember him or anyone else reading it out.
Raymond Cooper was Chief Assistant in the SCC Family Services department. He took a lead role in organising the support at the Boys’ Club, and lots of witnesses recall some interaction with him.
In a 1989 statement, he said that sometime during the evening, the police gave him a “list of fatalities” and a list of people who had been arrested in and around the ground. He agreed with the police that they would use these to approach families and friends individually and sensitively.
Conversely, in a 2014 statement to Operation Resolve, he said he only recalled the list of people arrested and had no memory of a list of those who died, adding that they couldn’t have been identified at that stage. He was adamant there was no other list, such as of those who had been found safe and well.
The only individual who has said that they read out a list at the Boys’ Club is social worker manager Kevin Ashby. In a statement to Operation Resolve in 2016, he said that “Within minutes of entering the Boys Club I was presented with a megaphone and a list of names with no clear instruction of what to do with them. I can’t recall who presented me with the megaphone and the list of names. In relation to the list of names, I did not recognise the names and assumed it was a list of Liverpool fans names.”
Someone then gave him a name; he saw it was on the list and called it out. He said he was subsequently informed that rather than doing this, he should have matched that name with a social worker.
Overall, the evidence about the reading of a list of names is inconsistent, in terms of what lists were circulating and how they would have been handled. Nonetheless, some of those who were at the Boys’ Club have a vivid memory of a list being read out and in particular that Adam Spearritt was declared as being safe and well. Understandably, the later discovery that this information was incorrect was devastating.
