300 YEARS AGO:
OUR assizes ended yesterday when Martha Parker received sentence of death for stealing above the value of £5 out of a shop and also for stealing a valuable silver tankard. ‘Tis said she will come off with transportation to the colonies.

Four criminals were burnt in the hand. Anne Stanbey is to stand in the pillory next Saturday for cheating several persons of divers goods by false pretences. William Harrison and Richard Hill for a riot and for pulling down a meeting house are to be whipped from the Cross to the May-Pole in Worcester and to remain six months in goal.

Philip Matthews is to be soundly and publicly whipped on Saturday next for seditious words.

250 YEARS AGO:
ON Sunday last, a male child, some three months old, was left at the house of Richard Wager in Madresfield, near Malvern. Whoever will discover the person or persons that left the said child there shall receive two guineas reward from the churchwardens of the parish.

200 YEARS AGO:
ON Thursday, Charles Owen and James White were apprehended at Droitwich for stealing out of the shop of Mr Watterson copper to the amount of 35s. They have been committed to our county gaol at Worcester to await trial. These men are also strongly suspected of having stolen a trunk from the front of a coach outside the Star and Garter Hotel in Foregate Street. After the robbery, it will be recollected that the trunk was thrown into a field near this city and emptied of its contents of £20. Mr Jones of the Star and Garter, taking a police officer with him, went to a house in Birmingham on the basis of information received and found a box containing the contents of the stolen trunk.

The police officer, from the known character of the two men and other circumstances, entertains no doubt that they committed the robbery.

They are also greatly suspected of having robbed a woollen draper’s shop in this city of some cloth during races week.

150 YEARS AGO:
ANNE Edwards, a girl of about 16, was brought before Worcester Police Court, charged with threatening to commit suicide. The mother of the prisoner, a respectable woman living in the Blockhouse, informed the bench that the girl was apprenticed to Mr Smith, the glove maker, and that the cause of her running away to destroy herself was because she had been reprimanded for misconduct.

The prisoner was discharged from custody after five days on remand and handed over to the care of her father and mother on promising not to give way to such foolish passion again.

􀁥 The annual treat given by AH Royds to the agricultural labourers and wives employed on the Crown East estate, Worcester took place on Saturday. About 60 of the men and women partook of a good dinner with a plentiful supply of ale.

About 40 schoolchildren, chiefly belonging to Miss Royds’ school, were also treated with tea and plum cake.

100 YEARS AGO:
FOR the past three Sundays, the parishioners of St Peter’s Church, Worcester, have conducted their worship in the churchyard because alterations were being made to the building.

The interior has been painted and a new staircase erected. The outdoor services have not been interfered with either by the inclemency of the weather at times, nor the unusual conditions under which they were held.

􀁥 Henry Edmund Andrews, aged 24, of Bransford Road, St John’s, pleaded guilty at the Worcester County Petty Sessions to shooting a donkey with a rifle. It was stated that the defendant, with four companions, was lying in a field at St John’s, shooting at a paper target.

He suddenly shouted: “Watch me shooting the donkey.” The bullet was found in such a position in the animal’s body that extraction was difficult and the donkey had undergone great pain. The chairman of the magistrates said it was obviously undesirable that people like the defendant should go about with a gun.

The incident was disgusting and the defendant was sent to prison for six weeks.