25 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, September 8, 1975

WINGATES Temperance Band President Mr Sydney Ratcliffe will have to go shopping this week - for more than two dozen shirts, not one of them for himself. Some weeks ago he promised each member of the band a new shirt if they won this year's British Open Brass Band Championship at Belle Vue, and on Saturday they duly obliged.

GOLD civic chains of office from towns in the Bolton area should be sold to make money for the benefit of old people, a councillor has suggested. Counc. Ken Brown says the chains are 'expensive baubles of the past.'

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, September 9, 1950

AFTER their meeting last night, Bolton Wanderers' board of directors issued the following statement: 'The Board have given very careful consideration to the requests by Nat Lofthouse and Harry McShane to be placed on the open-to-transfer list. The decided they cannot accede to the request of Lofthouse, but are prepared to place McShane on the list on a player-exchange basis only.'

SIR,- Proposals for an open-air theatre in Bolton have apparently been dropped because of cost, weather conditions, etc. Why not make the one in Queen's Park a semi-covered or covered theatre (with glass)? It is ideally situated and the cost would be considerably less. - Yours, etc., Spectator.

125 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, September 9, 1875

THIS afternoon an inquest was held at the Black Horse Hotel, Kearsley, before J.B. Edge, Esq., coroner, touching the death of David Wardle, of the Royal Oak beerhouse, Longcauseway, Kearsley.

Eliza Wardle said the deceased was her husband, and he was 41 years of age last June. He was a butcher and beerseller. She last saw him alive on Sunday morning about 10.10 in the kitchen. She saw him cross the kitchen floor in the direction of the bar.

In about ten minutes after, one of her daughters, who was upstairs, called out 'Mother, my father has hung himself'.

Her husband had been very low-spirited and quiet for the past three or four weeks, following a court case where he had supplied beef and beer for a funeral, not been paid, and the party sued had said that the stuff had never been ordered nor supplied. Her husband lost a day at the court, and had to pay expenses. He had often talked about it, and had said the judge had not done right.

The jury returned a verdict of 'Death by hanging whilst temporarily insane'.