From the Evening News, December 4, 1976

25 YEARS AGO

A WOMAN who complained that her local doctor had called her a "big, fat, pig" was among 500 people who turned to the Bolton Community Health Council for help. In another complaint outlined in the council's annual report. a woman claimed that her new dentures made her "look like a horse" and stopped her lips closing! The council contacted the dentist concerned, and he agreed to make a new set free.

SPORT was badly hit today as the big freeze spread to every corner of Britain. The Bolton Wanderers' match at Hereford was one of more than 20 English League games called off, and all today's race meetings were cancelled.

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, December 4, 1951

IN Bolton town centre this morning, a policeman chased and caught a fox - with his bare hands. The hunt began when a bus driver and conductor saw the brown fox and chased it round Victoria-sq. That was about 7.30.

While this was happening, PC John Smith was on duty at the Central Police Offices in the Crescent. A woman came in and told him, "Some men are chasing a fox on the Town Hall-sq." Without so much as a "tally ho", PC Smith joined the chase. He ran the fox to earth at the top of the steps leading into the Public Health Department in the Crescent.

"I shot out my hands and grabbed it by the back," he said. "Like a flash, it turned its head and bit me in the hand. I then took hold of the back of its neck and took it to the police office." Then he went to Bolton Royal Infirmary for treatment to the hand.

125 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, December 5, 1876

YESTERDAY, at the Town Hall, Mr J. Taylor, Deputy Borough Coroner, held an inquest on the body of Thomas Wild, collier, 41 years of age, and employed at the Peel Hall Colliery, Little Hulton, belonging to Mr J. Roscoe.

Abigal Wild, wife of the deceased, last saw her husband alive about five-o'clock on Tuesday morning. The same morning she saw him at the Bolton Infirmary and he was dead.

John Topping, collier, said he was employed at the same colliery as the deceased. On Tuesday morning, at about a quarter past five, he saw deceased near the pit mouth preparing to go down.

Shortly after he saw Henry Jones, a person employed at the same place, on the tramway leading down the "Day-eye", an incline about 500 yards down to the working, with a wagon loaded with props.

The wagons broke away from Jones and he tried to stop it. Witness and Jones followed the wagon, and found that 200 yards down the incline, the deceased was lying in the road.

The wagon was two yards further on, and off the tramway. Deceased was taken to the Infirmary.

The jury considered the evidence in private, and ultimately returned a verdict of accidental death.