100 years ago

Mr W Welbourne, parish clerk at Hayton, who had served under four vicars, had lived in the same cottage for 57 years.

Mr Welbourne, who was 81 years of age, related a gruesome story which no doubt had been told and retold by many a winter hearth.

It referred to the days of the smallpox outbreak, and the terrible fear among the people lest they should contract the disease. A father and his son had died of it. The joiner who supplied the coffins left them near the back door - he dare not enter the house.

The last sad offices for the dead were performed by the relatives. When the funeral was to take place no bearers were to be had, and the coffins were conveyed in a farm cart to the churchyard.

The clergyman - perhaps wisely - declined to admit the coffins into the church. How they were taken from the cart to the grave it was difficult to explain, but Mr Welbourne knew that he was supplied by the parson with a bottle of “stuff” from the druggist’s, with which to sprinkle the churchyard path from the gate to the graveside.

He escaped the contagion, and there were no other deaths in the parish.


50 years ago

Sales of milk for liquid consumption in 1963-64 had risen by 18½m gallons to set an all-time record of 1,452m gallons, according to the Milk Marketing Board. But milk output fell by 71m gallons to just over 2,000m gallons, mainly because of the smaller dairy herd and a drop in the yield per cow - the first for five years.

A Board spokesman said: “Due to the strenuous efforts of the whole dairying industry, milk consumption is now over 100m gallons a year higher than that achieved five years ago.”

Of the 549m gallons of milk going for manufacture - a drop of 89m gallons on 1962-63 - 81½m gallons went for making fresh cream - a new record, and an increase of 11½m gallons on the previous year.

Milk for butter making fell by 92m gallons and milk for cheese dropped by 21m gallons.


25 years ago

Forget university or college. If you wanted a good education and didn’t mind standing behind iron bars instead of student union bars, Thorp Arch prison, near Wetherby, seemed the place to be. The Board of Visitors’ annual report paid tribute in glowing terms to the achievements of inmates and their teachers.

Of just over 150 inmates currently held, more than 100 had taken exams with outside bodies. And of these 87 had passed, 14 with distinction, said the report to the Home Secretary.

The examinations had covered GCE O-levels, Royal Society of Arts and City and Guilds subjects.