100 YEARS AGO:

LARGE crowds gathered outside Worcester Guildhall on Saturday and hissed, hooted and booed loudly as three prisoners were led inside for a city police court hearing. In the dock were Mary Dorcas Wilesmith of Waverley House, Comer Gardens, Worcester, her son John Wilesmith and a bailiff, George Turner, all charged with cruelty to a 13 year-old girl named Florence Pastorfield.

The NSPCC solicitor told the court of “a history of slavery” suffered by the girl from the age of eight. She was compelled to work 18 hours a day from 6 am to midnight as a domestic servant and charwoman. Nineteen long scars were found on her body from cuts and injuries inflicted by beatings.

There was firm evidence of the three defendants at various times rubbing salt into the girl’s wounds and she lived in “abject terror.” The prisoners were all committed to Worcester Quarter Sessions to stand trial, also charged with cruelty to a boy named Henry Kilminster in their employ.

150 YEARS AGO:

ON Tuesday morning, the body of a newly born female child, quite naked, was found in the canal near the Sidbury bridge in this city.

John Goodwin, son of the landlady of the King’s Head Inn, Sidbury, told the inquest on Wednesday that in consequence of a woman coming to him, he went to the canalside where he saw the child’s body which he took to the King’s Head.

Erlin Clarke, surgeon of Foregate Street, who carried out a post mortem examination, said the body appeared to have been in the water two or three days. The head was very much crushed but this and other multiple injuries had been caused after death.

Enquiries are being made to try and trace the mother who had so horribly abandoned the baby which had been born alive, but, in the meantime, the jury at the inquest hearing at the King’s Head Inn returned a verdict of “found dead in the canal.”

200 YEARS AGO:

HOP Market Inn, Worcester.

John Neale (from the Bridge Inn, Worcester), having taken the above premises, embraces this opportunity of returning thanks to his friends and the public for the favours received at his late residence and at the same time solicits a continuance of the same at his new house, assuring them that nothing shall be omitted on his part to give satisfaction, which he hopes will gain him the support of a generous public. The inn is undergoing a thorough reparation and improvement by which it will be found a comfortable sleeping house for travellers with good stabling and other conveniences.

Genuine wines and spirits and cider and perry of the best quality are served, together with Burton and other fines ales and porter.

250 YEARS AGO:

THIS is to give notice that, for the benefit of salt carriers and others who have not the conveniency of sending to Droitwich to buy their salt at the best hand, there is now kept a warehouse in Foregate Street, Worcester, by Samuel Lucas, proprietor of salt works at Droitwich, where all persons may depend upon being constantly supplied with the several sorts, exceeding good, and upon very near as good terms as at the works, carriage only excepted.

Likewise, bay salt for the cure of hams, tongues, etc., may be had at the above places, being made by the above Samuel Lucas.

300 YEARS AGO:

THE Hare and Hounds, a good inn with stables and garden thereto, late in the possession of Nath. Morgan, in Sydbury [sic] in the city of Worcester; and two tenements with gardens belonging to them in Frog Lane in the said city, are to be sold. Enquire of John Thornburg, attorney in Worcester.