From the Evening News, August 21, 1976

25 YEARS AGO

WITH moorland around Bolton so tinder dry that it is like a "bomb waiting to explode", a crisis is facing local fire brigades which are stretched to the limit. "We appeal to the public to make every effort to beat out small grass fires themselves," said Assistant Divisional Officer Joseph Jones. Greater Manchester firemen dealt with about 1,000 calls yesterday.

Firemen from eight stations battled to save two cottages adjoining a barn in a blaze at a Harwood farm last night. Flames destroyed 5,000 bales of hay in the 200-years-old barn at Top o'th' Knotts Farm off Tottington Road.

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, August 22, 1951

COUNC. Cyril Smith has recently been trying to understand some of the paintings in Bolton Art Gallery. There is at present an exhibition of pictures by local artists in one of the room, and yesterday Counc. Smith said that the sub-committee which selected the pictures had been "hoodwinked".

"They are works which would have disgraced a kindergarten school," he complained. It was a disgrace, he said, that those works of art, or so-called art, should have been hung in the exhibition.

Indignant members of the Bolton Libraries Committee strove the voice their disapproval at Counc. Smith's objections, saying that the pictures had been judged fairly, although some artists in Bolton were "sore" because their pictures had not been selected.

But when the discussion had been going for some time, and Counc. Smith had mentioned the word "futuristic", the penny dropped; Counc. Smith had been in the wrong exhibition - one being put on by the Contemporary Art Society, and the local artists' exhibition was in the next gallery!

125 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, August 22, 1876

AT the County Sessions on Thursday, David Evans, Manchester, was charged with riding without ticket on the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. Mr Hall prosecuted. On the 29th ult., a special ticket collector, named Thomas Simmons, asked defendant for his ticket at Lostock Junction. He replied "Pass", but the collector desired to see it. The pass produced was for a workmen in the employ of the company named Gilder, who was in the same compartment, and could not produce his pass when asked for. - Fine 30s and costs, or in default on month's imprisonment.

SOME horrible disclosures were made at an inquest in Liverpool yesterday, on the body of an elderly woman. She and her husband were confirmed drunkards. Deceased had been so weak for a length of time as to be unable to go out, and existed on beer and bread bought by her husband. The room contained nothing but a small quantity of filthy straw, and both the room and the body of the deceased were literally alive with vermin, and reeking with filth, to such an extent that both coroner and jury were almost sickened by their visit. The husband had lived and slept in this foul apartment with the dead body of the wife, for three days. The Coroner administered a severe rebuke to him.