100 years ago

At the York City Juvenile Court, William Dalby, 15, and Harry Dobson, 14, were summoned for stealing six penny packets of chocolate from the shop of Mrs Rose Clark Snarry, tobacconist and confectioner, of 12 Fishergate, on February 16th.

Mrs Snarry stated that on the morning of February 16th she had received a quantity of sweets from a wholesale dealer in Fossgate. She afterwards missed six of the packets of chocolate. Thomas Camplough, employed at the Glass Works, said he saw the defendants come out of the shop. Dalby had a red box under his coat. Both boys had run away towards Piccadilly. Detective-Sergeant Barker said he had seen both boys at their homes after receiving complaints of the theft.

Dobson admitted that he had taken the chocolate and shared it with Dalby. Both boys had been previously convicted for felony. The Lord Mayor said it would be in the interests of the boys to be sent to a reformatory school until they were 19 years of age, and that was the decision of the magistrates.

 

50 years ago

Was there a refrigerator in your household? In this country, only about 36 per cent of homes were equipped with refrigerators.

This figure compared with 98 per cent in the United States, 93 per cent in Canada, 90 per cent in Australia and 80 per cent in New Zealand. Sweden and West Germany also had more refrigerators than Britain, but in France, Italy and Denmark, there were fewer. The "fridge" had come into domestic use in Britain soon after the 1914-18 war, and had first been imported from America.

Production plants had been set up in Britain in the 1920s, and the appliances were just becoming an accepted item of kitchen help when the 1939-45 war intervened. However, in the current weather, some households had no need of a refrigerator. The whole house was down to zero temperature, except for a few feet immediately in front of the sitting room fire.

 

25 years ago

Parents caught up in the Cleveland child-abuse controversy would be holding a meeting with doctors who had backed Dr Marietta Higgs.

The 11 paediatricians had claimed in a letter published in The Guardian newspaper that possibly more than 90 per cent of the 121 cases diagnosed as abuse by Dr Higgs were correct. The Cleveland Parents Support Group had decided, at an emergency meeting, to meet the paediatricians. The group expressed concern about the future of paediatric care in Cleveland because some of them were patients of signatories of the letter.