JULY 12-19

12:00pm Monday 14th July 2008

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100 Years Ago:

AT the height of the terrific thunderstorm on Wednesday night, a house at Newtown, Broadwas, near Worcester, was struck by lightning and Mrs Randall, wife of a Martley district roadman, was killed.

She was sitting in the kitchen, some distance from the fireplace, when the chimney was struck and the current passed down the chimney stack, struck a tea caddy on the mantlepiece and then struck Mrs Randall who cried out “Oh! Frank!” before collapsing to the floor. Her only injury was a mark on her neck.

* John Potem was charged at the Worcester County Police Court with being a wandering lunatic. PC Hirons arrested him at Ankerdine where he was wearing clothes marked with the name of an asylum. Enquiries were made and it was found he had escaped last Sunday from Burghill, Hereford. The magistrates ordered that he be handed over to the master of that asylum.

150 Years Ago:

THE house in Foregate Street, lately occupied by Mr Rea, solicitor, is nearly demolished, and the buildings at the back of the Society of Arts Room are now razed to the ground. By next week a considerable opening will have been made, and the foundation stone of the new railway bridge across Foregate Street will very shortly be laid.

At Upper Wick, Leigh, Newland and other places between this city and Malvern levellings are being made and rails and material for the formation of the new railway line are being conveyed daily. l George Ford, a boy of 16, was charged at the Worcester County Petty Sessions with stealing a rat trap, the property of Mr Berkeley of Cotheridge. He was said to be of good character but the magistrates felt they had no alternative but to send him to gaol for one week.

* At the city police court, Elizabeth Barnett, an able bodied pauper in the Worcester Union Workhouse, was committed to three weeks hard labour for refusing to work, whereby she became chargeable to the parish.

200 Years Ago:

WE are happy to find that a Society for the Prevention of Vice has been instituted for Worcester and is already supported by the mayor and justices, the county magistrates, the clergy and many respectable inhabitants of the city and parts adjacent.

The society’s express aim is to combat and eliminate the following vices in Worcester: abandoned women who infest the streets and, in company with men who have no sense of shame, display extreme depravity in their whole behaviour; grown-up boys and disorderly persons who assemble on Pitchcroft, at Diglis and the Sansome Fields and several parts of the city and pursue their sports with such noise as to give great offence, particularly in their uttering of oaths. Likewise, criminals who carry out burglaries and felonies, persons who return from taverns and commit trespass and damage and numbers of persons who walk the streets in a rude and disorderly manner, especially on Sunday evenings, to the great offence and annoyance of their well-disposed neighbours. Also, shops which buy and sell during the hours of divine service on Sundays and those persons who disturb the peace of the city by their nightly revelling.

250 Years Ago:

During Friday’s severe storm, a valuable horse at Ombersley was struck dead by lightning as was likewise another horse near Astley. The same evening, in the neighbourhood of Broadway, after a terrible storm of thunder, lightning and rain, a violent hurricane arose which swept several fields of cut down corn, carrying it to a great distance and dispersing it to a great height. At the same time, the wind drove a man and horse into a ditch.

* Yesterday, a great number of persons assembled on our horse course at Worcester to see the noted Mr Bates ride three horses at one time, moving from one to the other while they were running.