From the Evening News, October 17, 1976

25 YEARS AGO

WORK on a controversial Kearsley tip has begun again this week. Already families around Bent Spur Road are protesting against a 30ft high mound of mud, clay and rubbish which they claim is flouting the council's new planning permission.

New fears for the safety of 200 children in the road were expressed today by a headmaster, who claims that more than 10 lorries an hour pass his school gates.

PATRICK Jenkin, Tory spokesman on the social services, today condemned the Government plan to impose a road crash tax of £3 a year. The idea is that drivers would pay the cash with their annual insurance premium, and the company would pass it on to the Exchequer. The purpose is to recover the £40 million a year road accidents are said to cost the health service.

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News,

October 17, 1951

ROUND about 1928-9, writes a Little Hulton correspondent Mrs B., I took part in a pageant at Raikes Lane. I remember cavaliers and the burning of a building, but I cannot recall what was being celebrated.

Quidnunc replies: You must be referring to Civic Week, September 21st to 28th, 1929, when a really big spectacular effort was made "to put the town on the civic and industrial map".

There was an imaginative programme, opening with civic services by the churches, followed by four concerts (choral and orchestral), flower show, sports, arts and craft exhibitions, a military tattoo and a Pageant of Bolton at Raikes Park.

The last named is the event you recall. It illustrated the town's history and the final scene showed the siege of Bolton by Cavalier forces and the eventual storming of the town with spectacular sacking and burning. About 1,000 people in costume took part.

125 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News,

October 17, 1876

THE Excise authorities in Manchester are responsible for one of the most extraordinary prosecutions of which we have any record. At the City Police-Court, yesterday week, a tripe seller in Oldham-road was summoned for keeping a refreshment house without a licence. It was proved on oath by a common informer that he had purchased tripe in the defendant's shop, and had "consumed" it on the premises, the defendant having added to the sale of the tripe the additional atrocity of sprinkling it with salt and vinegar.

This sale, it was contended, constituted the shop a "refreshment house" within the meaning of the Act, and therefore the magistrates were asked to impose a heavy penalty. The defendant's solicitor showed that the justices at Bolton had dismissed a similar case on the ground that the tripe shop was not a refreshment house; and the Manchester Stipendiary, after remarking that the case was "rather strong", adjourned the summons pending the decision of the Court of Appeal, before which the Bolton case is to be heard.

We make the officers of the Excise in Manchester a present of the following suggestion. If they will rigorously examine the streets in the factory districts at five or half-past any morning, they will discover a number of stalls at which coffee and tea and cakes are sold to the mill hands. It would be a splendid triumph if they could induce a magistrate to believe that these stalls, where undoubtedly "refreshments" are sold, are "refreshment houses within the meaning of the Act." A prosecution in such a case would be just as useful to the community as the conviction of an inoffensive tripe seller.