DROITWICH Spa's town crier Samuel Crowther, who also happened to be England's oldest bellman, had died. He was born in 1815 before Waterloo and had lived through the reign of five sovereigns. Samuel had rung his bell in the Spa for the last time in June. He and his wife Sarah, who celebrated their diamond wedding in 1879, had 11 children, 20 grandchildren and 53 great grandchildren. As a boy he was employed by farmers as a bird scarer and later worked for a tailor manufacturing the black cloths used to cover corpses on the 'dead carts' during the dreadful cholera epidemic of 1832.

BAKER Fred Stride, aged 22, from Bromsgrove, would have ample time to regret breaking into a bakehouse belonging to William Wilson in Bromsgrove. The judge at Worcester Quarter Sessions took a dim view of him having stolen six eggs and three pounds of cake and sentenced him to 12 months' hard labour. Stride had only been out of prison since March.

THE beautifully crafted plummet, trowel and casket used by the King at the recent laying of the foundation stone of the new General Post Office building in London was the work of craftsman employed by the Bromsgrove Guild.

AN old woman, Judith Langford of the Vines, Droitwich Spa, fell in the road and broke a hip. Quick thinking Mr Laugher, who happened to be passing and witnessed the incident, broke up a box he found nearby and used the wood to make splints before summoning a cab to take her to the workhouse infirmary.