SIR: Farnworth has more than its fair share of problem residents.

My wife and I have spent most of our lives here, in community work of various types. Betty's value to the town has been recognised by a medal from the Queen, a community service award from the Rotary Club, a honorary fellowship from the Institute of Higher Education, a testimonial from the Labour Party National leader and when the BEN made her 'a woman of the year' they called her Mrs Farnworth.

But history has made our town's people hard. We have been the dumping ground for many of the nation's unwanted people. Farnworth grew in the industrial revolution of coal and cotton - both now gone. Notoriously, workers for cotton were recruited from the nation's workhouses, the Irish famine and widows with girls who came here for mill work. Under the old Poor Law the workhouse covering a wide area was in Farnworth.

Round the corner on Plodder Lane was the Orphanage - the cottage homes (now Clare Court) taking unwanted children from far and wide. In 1948 it became one of only two reception areas for homeless families for the whole of the Lancashire County Council area. Since local government re-organisation it has become the dumping ground for all Bolton's homeless families and remains so today.

Inevitably, many of them settled here and still do. The children go on to local schools. Most of them settle and become useful, law-abiding citizens. Too many remain problem families.

That said, when Betty, now in a wheelchair, ventures out to the town centre, the support she receives from local shopkeepers and the general public is fantastic, especially when her chair breaks down. This support is not forthcoming to the same extent in Bolton or other town centres.

Farnworthians know how to support one another in a crisis. It is in the breeding.

G K Brown

Barncroft Road, Farnworth

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