100 years ago

A GIRL had walked 30 yards along Cheapside, London, at midday wearing a trouser skirt. She afterwards had the most exciting, thrilling hour of her life. Within a few seconds hundreds of people gathered round her.

She fought her way through the crush, ran into a building, and only escaped the mob by changing into another skirt, climbing a fire escape and getting into Cheapside through a tea-shop.

The girl was a Miss Fuller, a buyer of dresses and costumes, and she was travelling from Streatham to call on some firms, wearing a most pronounced trouser skirt.

In her few seconds’ walk from her taxi-cab towards No.149 Cheapside her appearance seemed to paralyse the crowd. People ran towards her from all directions, and the police were powerless to do anything.

“Help me, help me!” she cried, struggling into the doorway of No.149, followed by dozens of office-boys, who said it was “a woman in sailor’s trousers”. The liftman hastily put the girl into the lift and whizzed her up to the fifth floor for her escape.


50 years ago

IN the 18th Century, race horses’ names had been just as whimsical as they still were...Nutmeg, Hollow Back, Slouch, Silver Heels, Surly Tom.

All these appeared in a list of horses running in York in 1736 which could be seen in the latest exhibition in the entrance hall of York Public Library.

Original documents from the city archives, referring to horse racing in York, had been placed side by side with modern publications about the sport. The first recorded horse race in York was in 1530.

Oswald Wyllesthorpe won a prize of a silver bell, which he promised to return to the Mayor the following year when his horse was to compete for it against any challenger.

A House Book of 1633 stated that Charles I, during his visit to York, “was pleased to see a horse race on Acomb Moor.”

In 1718, an account book recorded that instructions were given to the Collectors of each ward to make “a speedy collection for the maintenance of horse races on Clifton Ings.”


25 years ago

BAD weather was hampering efforts to clean up North America’s worst oil spill.

Alaska’s governor, Steve Cowper, had declared a state of emergency in Prince William Sound, one of America’s richest and most beautiful waterways.

He said he would ask President Bush to declare the area a federal disaster so that funds could be freed for an immediate clean-up.

Winds gusting up to 45 miles an hour and waves of seven feet prevented attempts to contain the 11 million gallons of crude oil that gushed from the supertanker Exxon Valdez when it ran aground.