AUGUST 4-11

9:30am Monday 4th August 2008

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100 YEARS AGO:

MINNIE Ann Chance, a widow of Clows Top, near Bewdley, was charged before the Hundred House bench at Great Witley with assaulting her boy, John Thomas Chance in a manner likely to cause him unnecessary suffering.

Mr Capel Loft, prosecuting on behalf of the Children’s Society, said the child died within 12 hours of the assault but it was not alleged that the assault occasioned death.

An inquest jury had returned a verdict of natural causes. However, the defendant had thrashed the boy with the handle of a razor strop while he was naked in the bedroom.

Many large bruises were found about his body. The post-mortem showed that the child had been suffering from peritonitis, but the mother should have seen that the boy was suffering from internal trouble and not subjected him to such cruel treatment. She said she had lost her temper because the boy had been playing in the dirt. The magistrates sentenced her to gaol for one month.

150 YEARS AGO:

ON Tuesday afternoon, an accident of a serious nature happened to a boy named Robert Atkinson, living in the Blockhouse and employed at Mr Webb’s House Hair Manufactory in Copenhagen Street. The unfortunate lad was engaged in feeding a hair machine when his right hand and wrist got entangled in the rollers and was mangled in a dreadful manner. He was immediately conveyed to the Infirmary where the injured hand had to be amputated just above the wrist.

● A fowl belonging to Mr Dorrell of the firm of Russell & Dorrell, drapers of High Street, Worcester, laid an egg a few days ago which in size and weight is extraordinary.

Its weight is 4oz 2drms., and its length eight-and-onequarter inches and its girth six-and-one-quarter inches.

● John Collins, fly proprietor, was summonsed at Worcester Police Court for furiously driving his fly in Lowesmoor.

The defendant said he was conveying a gentleman to Shrub Hill station and had to drive fast to catch a train, which he only just succeeded in doing. The road was clear at the time. As this was the first charge against the defendant, he was let off on payment of costs of 5s.6d.

200 YEARS AGO:

S Polito, the celebrated collector of living curiosities, humbly begs leave to apprise the ladies and gentlemen of Worcester and its environs that he is to stage his beautiful exhibition and most superb menagerie of living birds and beasts on the racecourse all next week.

On display will be a stupendous male ostrich, the largest ever seen in the world at 300lbs and 11ft high, a noble male lion from Senegal, a beautiful lioness, a royal striped Bengal tiger and tigress, a panther, a handsome leopard and pelicans, emu, black swans and a Brazilian vulture.

Admission one shilling to such a marvellous exhibition which has not been offered in this city for many years.

● The ground on which a new county gaol and house of correction will be built in Worcester is not finally fixed upon, but the spot at present talked of is a field near the Bath road turnpike.

250 YEARS AGO:

ON Monday evening, a melancholy accident happened in this city to a woman who sold black puddings. After having drunk pretty freely of the liquor given to the populace in celebration of royal anniversaries, she returned home, went upstairs and undressed for bed, but finding no chamber pot in the room, attempted going downstairs in her shift to fetch one.

However, she somehow fell and the candle she brought with her set fire to her shift and she was burnt to death on the stairs. Some of the neighbours, observing an uncommon light in the house, burst open the door and found the poor wretch in a most shocking condition and the stairs on fire.

● On Saturday last, as a person was digging in a garden in St John’s near this city, two complete sets of human bones, supposed to be those of a woman and a very young child, were discovered about two feet deep in the earth. Investigations have begun.