From the Evening News, April 3, 1992

IRRESPONSIBLE owners are being called to heel as Bolton drops its softly, softly approach on dirty dogs.

Nearly two years after Bolton put up "no fouling" signs for footpaths, dog owners can still not be prosecuted for allowing their dogs to mess up parks and public places. Now, a special Dog Control Working Party is to be set up by Bolton Council to look at ways to adopt wide-reaching laws to clean up and make safe Bolton's parks.

25 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, April 3, 1977

THE Liberals will push for an amendment to the Finance Bill to axe the new petrol tax, introduced in last week's Budget. They hoped the move would take the 5p a gallon off petrol by the summer.

RAIDERS broke into a Westhoughton pub and calmly removed a safe through a bathroom window while dozens of customers crowded the bar downstairs. Licensee at the Grey Mare Hotel, in Bolton Road, Mr Alec Torrance, discovered the safe missing when he went to bed early yesterday.

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, April 3, 1952

IT is hoped that all Bolton householders will make a special search and take this opportunity of turning out all their scrap metal. Every piece of old iron and steel should be returned to the melting pot so that it may emerge in some new and useful form and be of further benefit to the community.

This was said by Mr F. Thomason, secretary of the North-western area of the Scrap Metal Drive Committee, at a meeting of the local committee in Bolton today. Bolton's scrap drive begins on Monday, April 21, and will end on Friday, May 2.

100 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, April 3, 1902

THE mining district of Edge Green, Ashton-in-Makerfield, was the scene of a shocking catastrophe last evening. A new shaft is being sunk by the Garswood Hall Colliery Company, about two miles from their principle pit, in order that workmen engaged in other mines might not have so far to travel to their work, and a depth of over 250 yards had been reached. At about eight o'clock the whole district was shaken by a terrific explosion, the effects of which were felt even so far away as Leigh, Westhoughton, Tyldesley, and Wigan, and crowds of people hastened to the pit shaft to find themselves face to face with a mass of wreckage.

A number of local doctors were quickly on the spot, and a band of willing workers set about the task or devising some means of rescuing the unfortunate men below. Matters were complicated by the almost total wreck of everything in the vicinity of the shaft, and from the first little hope was entertained of saving the lives of the entombed, whose pitiful cries for help could distinctly been heard. Eventually, some of the men were brought to the surface alive, but a number are still entombed, and it is feared that seven lives have been lost.