25 YEARS AGO

THE average amount spent by householders in the United Kingdom on goods and services in 1969 was £26 7s 6d a week, according to a new report.

The survey shows that the total average income was £32 9s 4d a week. In the North-west the average weekly income was £30 4s, and expenditure £24 10s. Of this, housing accounted to £2 17s, food £6 9s, tobacco £1 8s, and transport and vehicles £3. 50 YEARS AGO

BOLTON Town Council defeated by 11 votes a Labour effort to introduce evening meetings of the Council. Commending the resolution, Ald Mrs Wright claimed that it was not a party matter. "There are now members of the Council who work for their living". (Laughter). "Some of them will lose wages by attending day-time meetings, employers who release them will be inconvenienced, and production will suffer." 125 YEARS AGO

FOR some time past considerable consternation has been engendered in the minds of the more nervous dwellers in Blackburn-road and its thoroughfare offshoots as well as that portion of Astley Bridge which leans on the confines of this borough, by the circulation of a traveller's tale, the burden of which is that a nude man, who is credited with being insane, has been several times seen perambulating the highways and byways in the locality, and even resconsing himself - probably through a fondness for a change of scene - in the yards of houses which are only accessible in consequence of the height to which their brick and mortar boundaries are piled, to gnomes and similar nocturnal beings.

As a consequence, excitement has reached a pitch hardly credible. However, an evening or two since, a man, passing along the road, fancied he saw the great disturber in a hollow close to Astley Bridge. He ran to an adjacent croft, and, summoning the assistance of at least a dozen men, made a combined descent on the entrenched position of the quarry, and succeeded in earthing the game in an outhouse.

We hope the readers of this paragraph will maintain their composure, but they will hardly be able to keep it going long when they read the sequel. Judge of the surprise of the informer and his henchmen when it was discovered that the unwitting originator of the hubbub was a harmless woman who had been indiscreet enough to venture out in the air in her night attire.

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