From the Bolton Evening News, August 30, 1976

25 YEARS AGO

THE Evening News was not published because of an ongoing national dispute with the National Graphical Association.

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News ,

August 30, 1951

BOLTON Transport Department cannot carry all the passengers who wish to travel on the buses at the present time, and the department can afford the six per cent drop which is expected to follow the imposition of new bus fares, Ald Bradley, Chairman of the Transport Committee, said today. There is now a minimum twopenny fare.

Ald Bradley said that the department was short of 150 men, and the department could not give the service to which the public is entitled. "I appeal to the people of Bolton to try to avoid travelling at peak times. I am sorry to say it, but we cannot possibly carry the people who want to travel."

SOME couples who buy furniture these days have to store it for several months before they have a house in which to put it. This can cause some odd happenings.

One Bolton couple bought a dining room suite, with the chairs upholstered in a folk-weave material, early this year. A few weeks ago they moved into a new house, and got their furniture out of storage. Imagine their surprise when they would that the curtains they had just bought for the sitting room were made with exactly the same material as the upholstery of the dining room chairs. During the months in which they had not seen it, they had forgotten what the suite was like.

125 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News,

August 30, 1876

EVEN after the Jews had escaped from the Egyptian brickfields they seemed anxious to return - not, of course, from love of the slavery that they had got rid of, but owing to a gluttonous hankering after the Egyptian fleshpots. Similarly English brickmakers, although willing enough to shirk their own work, are anxiously endeavouring to evade the provisions of the beneficent law which prevents them from rioting in the fruits of the undue exertions of their immature offspring, the extent of which may be gauged when we know that to convey some 15,000lbs. weight of clay from the pit to the yard is a child's daily task.

The physical evils of the employment are not the worst, and it was to remove the children from the polluting atmosphere of the brickyard, as much as to guard them from the consequences of excessive toil at an early age, that child labour was prohibited in that branch of industry. The parents, however, who for the gratification of their own evil propensities, thus sold their children into slavery, as well as the men who bought them, endeavour by every means to evade the Act; and the expedients made use of form a curious chapter in the recent report of one of the inspectors.

His dropping upon a brickwork apparently created a sensation, like the disturbing of a populous ants' nest - the purpose being the same, hiding away the young brood - and nothing could be more comical than the incident of bringing to light a number of young children by frightening them with the sudden discharge of a lucifer match.

An inspector of brickworks holds no sinecure; the men who work in them are, as a class, perhaps, the lowest of all our artisans, and it will probably before long before the spread downwards of more civilised ideas reaches them. Meanwhile, the State has always the resource of acting upon them through the pocket; and when, as the inspector in question, complains, masters and managers take part in the obstructive courses, the principle of fine heavily and fine often will come usefully into play.