A STRANGE case was reported from Stoke Works following the death of Charles Powles at the ripe old age of 87. A semi recluse, he lived in a cottage owned by the village barber. A Catshill woman kept house for him. Rarely seen outdoors, when he was invariably clad in a hurden apron and shawl. He had been buried in Northfield in a huge oak coffin with a hearse and mourning coach pulled by four black horses with all the trappings. Now, it was said, his estate had been frozen and his body was to be exhumed.

A GREAT sensation was caused in Bromsgrove as news spread that 78-year-old Martin Spooner, a member of the town's Court Leet, had been the subject of a violent burglary at his home in Lydiate Ash. He awoke at midnight to find two men by his bedside and during an hour long struggle they beat him and tried to strangle him with strips of counterpane, which they tore up to bind him to the bedstead before ransacking his home. Freeing himself, Spooner walked to Lickey End where the constable there summoned colleagues to form a search party on their cycles.