12:18pm Monday 1st February 2010
By Michael Grundy
100 YEARS AGO:
ON Thursday a party of suffragettes who visited Bromsgove had a rough experience. Four of them attempted speaking from a waggonette in the Market Square. The crowd allowed them to proceed for while but eventually the waggonette was dragged round the town by a crowd.
In Hanover Street there were cries of “throw them in the brook.” The waggonette was taken to the water’s edge but wiser counsels prevailed, and the ladies escaped without a ducking, although some of the crowd fell into the water. The audience refused to listen to the frantic appeals from the suffragettes to be taken to their hotel and took the waggonette through Sidemoor and other streets, a distance approaching three miles. With the aid of the police the ladies eventually found a harbour of refuge at a coffee house, whence they were taken by a motor omnibus to the railway station to catch the mail train. Although roughly handled at times, they escaped serious injury.
150 YEARS AGO:
AN open letter to the city council from Thomas Baxter, chairman of the Worcester Archaeological Society under the heading Re-naming of streets: “It is generally regretted by my society that many of the historic street names in Worcester have recently been altered without any sufficient reason. We therefore beg respectfully that the city council consider reinstating the ancient names now altered.
To name one – Salt Lane – perhaps the most ancient name of any in the city and associated with the very earliest trade in Worcestershire – salt production and transportation. This old name has been altered to Castle Street for no tangible reason whatever and at the sole request of some of the inhabitants of the said lane.
Our society need scarcely impress on the council the necessity for adhering to ancient landmarks. Great inconvenience will arise if the ridiculous quest for modern grandiloquence in this respect is not checked by those who have it in their power.”
250 YEARS AGO:
YESTERDAY, a man and two women were whipped at the cart’s tail through the principal streets of Worcester, the man for stealing a handkerchief, one of the women for stealing some things, the property of her master, Mr Brace, a baker of this city, and the other woman for encouraging the former to rob her master, and afterwards receiving the goods stolen. On the cart to which the women were tied, a label, in large characters, was pasted, specifying the crimes for which they were punished.
● Last Saturday, Edward Seymour, a corporal belonging to the Fifth Regiment of Dragoon- Guards quartered in Worcester, shot himself through the breast with a pistol in a field near Worcester where the body was found soon after. As he bore a general good character and was much esteemed in his station, it is conjectured from some prior circumstances that the cause of his committing this rash action was occasioned through discontent of mind on some affairs relative to his family. The coroner’s inquest brought in a verdict of lunacy.
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