Saturday midday
said Arthur Graydon . ` I say , Dick Elliott , you cut ahead , and see if that crew out of Skinner 's Hole are anywhere about ! You other fellows , get some stones and keep 'em handy ! ' A dozen day-boys from Bardon Grammar School were going home one Saturday midday after morning school . All of them lived in a suburb which lay beyond the shipping quarter of the river-port of Bardon , and their way to and from school ran across a wide open space beside the river known as Quay Flat . Below Quay Flat , and packed closely along the edge of the river , was a huddle of small houses and cottages , where lived the poorer sort of riverside workers , a squalid , dirty region known as Skinner 's Hole . It was so called because it lay very low , and because hides from abroad were landed there , and dealt with by three or four large tanneries .