100 YEARS AGO:

CITY councillors have agreed the form of Worcester’s two-day celebrations for King George V’s coronation in June.

There will be a thanksgiving service at the Cathedral attended by the corporation in state, a royal salute and military review on Pitchcroft, athletic sports, balloon ascents, a school children’s procession and an illuminated cycle and torchlit procession, all again on Pitchcroft, an illuminated boat procession on the Severn, a dinner for the aged poor, and the illumination of public and other buildings.

150 YEARS AGO:

A FATAL accident occurred in the tunnel near Shrub Hill station on Thursday night when a youth named Thomas Broadhurst was so dreadfully injured that death put an end to his sufferings shortly afterwards. It appeared that two goods trains were forming in the tunnel and Broadhurst was engaged in writing down the numbers of the trucks. The trains stood on different lines and Broadhurst stepped, as is thought, from the end of one train and passed unobserved in front of the moving engine that belonged to the other and was knocked down and run over. The injuries he received were dreadful – fractures to his right and left arms, the right thigh and his feet, and his back was crushed across the loins. The unfortunate lad was of steady habits and had been a teetotaler for some time.

200 YEARS AGO:

ON Monday evening last as George Best of Evesham and Mr McAlester of Pershore were riding towards Tewkesbury, they were stopped at the bottom of Sedgberrow Hill by three footpads, each armed with a pistol, who robbed them of £27 in notes, besides silver and a portmanteau containing clothes, and some papers of considerable consequence relative to the intended horse towing path alongside the Severn from Worcester to Arlingham.

The footpads were seen on the same day at a public house in the neighbourhood and were observed to speak the Nottinghamshire dialect.

250 YEARS AGO:

ON Thursday morning as Mr Oakey senior, a butcher near Upton-upon-Severn, was going to his sheepfold, he was followed by one Thomas Hawkins of the same parish on pretence of bargaining for some sheep, but as Oakey was putting up a hurdle, Hawkins struck him on the back of the head with a great stick, on which Oakey ran to a sheepcot where the villain followed him, struck him down and then attempted to murder him by cutting his throat, which he mangled terribly.

Luckily, however, Oakey’s cries were heard before the wretch had quite completed his design. Three men came up and saw the villain kneeling on the old man, but Hawkins instantly jumped up, pushed one of them down and ran away into a coppice. However, on Sunday morning the villain was traced to the house of a relation in another parish and was there found in a chimney, but as soon as the men had taken him by the legs to drag him out, he drew his knife and cut his own throat from ear to ear, and it is thought cannot live, though the surgeon has sewed up the wound. Mr Oakey is likely to recover.

300 YEARS AGO:

STOLEN out of the grounds near Barbon-Bridge by Worcester, a dark bay horse, between 14 and 15 hands, blind in the right eye, lame in the near foot before, a black list down his rump which was usually hid by his crupper, about 12 yearsold.

Whoever gives notice to William Howse in Worcester, so that he may be had again, shall receive 10 shillings reward and reasonable charges.