25 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, June 14, 1972

THE completion of the Darwen Tower restoration scheme is to be celebrated on Sunday with a special opening ceremony. The 'Pennine Pepperpot', which was opened in 1898 to commemorate Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee, has been cleaned up and restored thanks to a public appeal which raised more than £3,200.

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, June 14, 1947

THE weekend news of the Government release of 75,000 to 100,000 surplus parachutes, to be sold coupon-free, housewives may soon have the opportunity of recalling their make-do-and-mend days. If the parachutes are nylon, there may be soon an army of nylon-clad people on the streets; indeed, one local boy already has a nylon shirt, thanks to the versatility of an enterprising mother. With the present shortage of men's shirts, what's wrong with the nylon variety? They'd be good if we could get them.

125 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, June 14, 1872

A VERY amusing incident occurred on Wednesday afternoon, at New Bury, Farnworth, which not only illustrated the sayings - 'Walking into the lion's mouth' and 'Where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise' - but also displayed on the part of a New Bury resident one of the most blissful states of simplicity with regard to the disease - the cattle plague - which has run up the price of the working man's beef to such proportions as to make a roast, a broil, or a boil, a costly luxury.

On the day named the Sanitary Committee of the Farnworth Local Board were proceeding on their way to make an inspection of various nuisances alleged to exist in that part of the town. A certain fish hawker was also going his rounds at the same time when, bad luck following him, as it is said to do all wrong doers, he, unaware of the august authority in whose vicinity he was, crossed their path.

The bad luck lay not in this transgression, but in the fish themselves, which laying on their cart, and if not 'talking fish', still had the power of making the fact known by their smell that they had been a long time from sea. The gentleman whose nasal organs had been greatly offended drew alongside the cart, and without much ceremony confiscated the whole of the fish in the cart by packing them in baskets that were at hand to be conveyed to the residence of one of Her Majesty's Justices of the Peace. Two boys were called to carry away the baskets, and were doing so in great triumph when a man, presumed to be a father of one of the lads, commenced running after them, shouting at the top of his voice, 'Heigh, Come thee back. Come back, aw tell thee. Theaw murn't carry that stinking stuff. Theaw little warp yed, it'll gie thee th' cattle plague. Does to want to catch th'cattle plague, theaw little foo?' The incident may, perhaps, be continued in the police court.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.