The terrible devastation wreaked on Liverpool by the Luftwaffe in May 1941 was concentrated in a relatively short period. After May, bombing raids reduced significantly as the RAF gained supremacy in the skies. Raids did continue as the photograph taken near to the Royal Court in Roe Street shows. An eye-witness wrote many years later:
For some reason, just before Christmas, they (the writer’s family) all went along with my idea of spending the night in a place of safety. About midnight the shelter was hit and caught fire, and we were shepherded out by the Royal Court Theatre. Outside a fire engine had crashed into a bomb crater, and the whole area was lit with searchlights and chandeliers.
We were shown to different shelters in Elliot Street, Great Charlotte Street, Cases Street and, in my family’s case, to Lewis’s in Ranelagh Street. I later learnt that my sister had been playing the piano throughout the raid – Sonny Durband, Lewis’s resident pianist, had left his sheet music in the Music Department, which at that time was in the shop’s basement.
The last raid took place on 10 January 1942, destroying several houses on Upper Stanhope Street. By a quirk of fate one of the houses destroyed was number 102, which had been the home of Alois Hitler, Jr., half brother of Adolf Hitler and the birthplace of Hitler’s nephew, William Patrick Hitler.



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