From the Evening News, 1993: THE RSPCA has launched an investigation after growing evidence that puppies and kittens are being illegally sold at car boot sales in Bolton.

Dealing in any kind of livestock at car boot sales is outlawed in Britain.

PART of Bolton's Swan Hotel on Churchgate looks set to close because of serious decay at the centuries-old listed building. The closure could affect the buildings 42 bedrooms.

25 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News,

February 13, 1978

THE unpaid work a young wife does in the home could be saving her husband as much as £115 a week. But the unromantic truth of the matter on the eve of St Valentine's Day is that most husbands attach no financial value to their wives' work at all. If there are no young children in the home, says the survey, and housekeeping and daily costs can be cut in half, the average national value of the wife's work comes down to £32.33 a week.

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News,

February 13, 1953

MOVING the second reading of his Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill in the Commons today, Wing Commander Bullus, the Conservative member of Wembley North, claimed there was widespread support for corporal punishment throughout the country.

"I don't believe whipping would end all the violent crime," he said, "but that it would assist in reducing the number of acts of violence."

He said he believed that the abolition of corporal punishment had proved a costly failure in terms of human suffering. It had been retained as a punishment for attacks on prison warders. Why should the elderly and law-abiding be denied this safeguard?

At the end of the debate, the Bill was rejected by 159 votes to 63.

100 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News,

February 13, 1903

HOW is it that women do not carry their years as well as men? For a few years she blooms like the most beautiful flowers, shedding a radiance of light wherever she goes. The eye is refreshed by the sight of her, and everything about her it touched by bewitching grace.

But her reign is as short as the flowers, and she is soon left faded and worn; her form bowed, her steps dragging, and her face wrinkled; she complains of her unhappy existence, and envies man his vigour.

However Dr Morse's Indian Root Pills may bring salvation. They are a positive cure for biliousness, indigestion, dyspepsia, constipation, foul breath, liver complaint, sallow complexion, sick headache, kidney troubles, and female ailments; also a perfect blood purifier, curing skin diseases, such as eczema, pimples and blotches.

Sold by chemists, price 1s 1d per bottle.