25 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, March 24, 1974

A LABOUR MP complained today that it was bad for the image of the party that the Prime Minister should have five residences. Mr Sidney Bidwell is to ask Mr Wilson what plans he has for the two official residences, 10 Downing Street and Chequers, because he also has private places in Lord North Street, London, the Scillies, and a small farm in Buckinghamshire. 'People ask me, "What does he need all that lot for". It is plainly too many, and bad for the image of our party.' Mr and Mrs Wilson have said that they do not plan to live in the flat at No. 10, but to stay in their Lord North Street home.

50 YEARS AGO

SATURDAY morning funerals are to be abolished in Bolton unless the Town Council rejects the Parks' Committee's recommendation that employees of the town's parks and cemeteries shall work a five-day week, with Saturday off, except for specialized and urgent work. It was not without some qualms, however, that the committee decided that those who died after midnight on Tuesday should be buried on Friday afternoon or Monday morning. Ald. J. Vickers thought the abolition of Saturday morning funerals was not for the public good. 'People die every day', he pointed out. Counc. Kitchen said a working man stood to lose a lot if he had to attend a funeral on a working day. Ald Booth (chairman) would have none of this. 'People bury according to convenience, not because of economic circumstances,' he said. 'They go to watch the Wanderers on Saturdays, and get buried some other day.'

125 YEARS AGO

ON Monday morning a number of miners, who had, it is supposed, been 'dog-racing', met a tramp on the highway at Armfield Plain, near Consett, and after beating him about the head they threw him into a well ten feet deep. Shortly afterwards a young woman from a neighbouring farmhouse went to the well for water, and heard the cries of the man, who was taken our of the well in an exhausted condition. The man was conveyed to Durham Infirmary, where wounds which he had received on the head, were treated. None of the miners has been apprehended.

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