From the Evening News,1992 - VOLUNTEER ushers at a Bolton theatre have lost their jobs after a management shake-up.

Instead, in a letter telling them they had not been chosen to continue working at the Octagon theatre, the former ushers were offered complimentary tickets for each of the theatre's Silver Anniversary shows.

They lost out to other applicants when management decided to bring in a payment system and told existing staff to re-apply for their jobs. Previously the ushers had worked, sometimes three or four nights a week, for just bus fares.

25 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News,

September 25, 1977

THE biggest reclamation exercise ever undertaken in Great Britain, costing about £1,250,000, had its official send-off today on a 440-acred near-lunar landscape of pit heaps in the Leigh and Tyldesley area. Slag, 80ft high in places, will be levelled in an area south from the old railway line in Tyldesley almost to Manchester Road in Leigh. It has accumulated in over 100 years of mining from Nook, Gin Pit and St. George's Collieries, all now long closed.

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News,

September 25, 1952

TWO British warships, the destroyer Consort and the frigate Mounts Bay, fought a five minute gun duel today with Chinese Communist batteries on Lafsami Island, about 35 miles South-west of Hong Kong. There were no casualties.

NAT Lofthouse has a fine scoring record in representative games and he set the seal on it yesterday when he established a record in inter-league matches by scoring six successive goals against the Irish League at Wolverhampton.

100 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News,

September 25, 1902

A FRUITFUL topic of conversation at Farnworth has recently been the astonishing relief given to sufferers of nervous diseases by the Rev S. Hector Ferguson, for a short time pastor of the New Jerusalem Church, Kearsley.

For some time after coming to Kearsley, Mr Ferguson's pulpit allusions to magnetic healing were received with scepticism, and it is only within the past few months he has put his undoubted powers to practical use, performing some almost miraculous cures.

Our representative has seen some of Mr Ferguson's patients, in one case three in the same house. The father told us that after one treatment he was cured of a severe attack of pleurisy; that his son, aged 14, who had been for six weeks under the care of a doctor, and unable to put his foot to the ground, was restored after four treatments; and that his daughter, aged 11, who for three years had been partially blind, had her sight perfectly restored and had given up wearing glasses.