From the Evening News, Nov 13, 1976

25 YEARS AGO

TO keep up with the "stay-at-home Joneses", a working man needed gross earnings of at least £77 a week, a Tory MP said today.

In a scathing attack on social security benefits, Mr David Howell (Guildford) said this was the "incredible" figure below which it would probably benefit a married man to sit at home with his wife and children rather than go out to work.

For a man with four children, the figure was nearer £85, he said, and "soaring" benefits and "crushing" tax were to blame.

He said that a man with a wife and two kids, four and six, earning £55 a week, has exactly the same net weekly spending power whether he goes to work or stays at home - £37.16 in either case.

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, November 14, 1951

ARE Boltonians ashamed of their friends seeing them booking cheaper cinema seats? The chairman of the Lancashire area of a cinema trade association stated recently that many Lancastrians were ashamed, and consequently stayed away from the cinema altogether. Higher prices, he said, had brought a 42 per cent drop in attendance since August.

In the opinion of several local cinema managers, Bolton folk are too thick-skinned to worry about what their friends think. The cheap seats are still well patronized. In the general falling-off in cinema-going, it is the top-priced seats which are really shunned. Which seems to suggest that Boltonians don't book the best seats to impress their friends.

NAT Lofthouse of Bolton scored both goals in the international match between England and Ireland today. The last Ireland victory against England was in the 1927/28 season.

125 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, November 14, 1876

THE neighbourhood of St Paul's School, Halliwell, was much excited on Monday morning last, by the discovery that the infant schoolmistress, Miss Lois Hayward, had suddenly disappeared, and under circumstances which led to the supposition that she had committed suicide.

The lady, who is about 30 years of age, lived with her father at 9, Albert-row, Halliwell. She has been connected with the school from her youth. The managers, it is said, greatly esteemed her, and retained her services at one time at some loss to themselves. This year she obtained her certificate, and has since desired to resign her situation, stating that her home and school duties were too great a strain upon her energy.

On Saturday, Miss Hayward behaved very strangely, and on Sunday absented herself from the Sunday School, but retired to rest as usual on Sunday night. At two o'clock on Monday morning she was heard to be moving about the house, but as she said that she was ill no importance was attached to the circumstance. Not appearing, however, to breakfast, it was ascertained that she had left the house. Her father having been told by her that she would drown herself, it was naturally supposed that she had thus rashly acted, and parties were engaged all Monday grappling the mill lodges of the neighbourhood, but with no result. Every enquiry has been made amongst her friends far and near, but nothing has yet been heard of her.