100 years ago

SPEAKING at a dinner held by the Sheffield organists and choirmasters the new Bishop of Sheffield, Dr L H Burrows, said in the village church he attended as a youngster the schoolmaster and the choirmaster were one and the same person.

Asked how his choir was getting on this man once said, “Ever since I came to this village, 45 years ago, the principle has been that if a man does well as an alto we promote him to tenor, and if he does well as a tenor we promote him to bass.”

There was no doubt that the choirmaster thought that this method was very successful. He not only conducted the choir, but also umpired at the village cricket matches, and he knew less about cricket than about music.


50 years ago

A WOMAN had told the annual conference of the National Association of Head Teachers that mothers were tossing their babies over the garden wall to a baby minder while they went out to work.

Miss D J Neale, a member of the Association’s council, said there was a growing natural hunger in Britain for people to keep up the payments for never having it so good.

She said: “Baby continues to be tossed over the garden wall, not always to the same baby minder, until he is old enough to hear the alarm clock and get himself off to school.”


25 years ago

MPs had called for the scrapping of the May Day Bank Holiday - as a Government Minister agreed people wanted to celebrate a “British occasion”.

York MP Conal Gregory, pointed out at question time that there were no bank holidays from August to Christmas, but a “plethora” in the Spring.

He said the Government should scrap May Day and have a day when the British could “do our duty by Nelson” by turning Trafalgar Day, which falls on October 21, into another national bank holiday.