100 years ago

Ninety per cent of the youthful criminals and delinquents placed in the charge of the New York Juvenile Association had been turned into exemplary citizens after having had their defective teeth properly treated.

This statement was made by Charles D Hills, chairman of the Republican National Committee, who attributed juvenile depravity mainly to bad teeth and the resultant defective mastication.

 

50 years ago

Was York two-faced? Was it trying to fool visitors by offering an attractive facade, with rather a dull outlook behind it? These questions were posed after a visit to York’s Guildhall, currently a tourist attraction that rated a place in the Top Ten.

Walking towards the Guildhall building you would notice that the lamps and brackets on each corner had been painted blue and certain decorative work picked out in gold. The result was really effective; an almost elegant touch. But on leaving the Guildhall a glance upward for another admiring look at the lamp on the western corner would find that although the bracket and lamp had been painted blue, there was no gold marking on that side.

On checking the other lamp, on the opposite corner, you would find that it too had no gold on the two sides facing away from the Mansion House. Was this a cheese-paring economy measure? We hoped our visitors did not get the wrong impression if they, too, took the trouble to look at the lamps from behind!

 

25 years ago

Barn owls, it was feared, could be extinct in North Yorkshire by the turn of the century, claimed the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. There were only 57 pairs left in the county and their population had dwindled by 90 per cent in the last fifty years, a figure significantly above the 70 per cent decline nationally.

Mr Chris Harbard, spokesman for the society, said unless action was taken the birds could soon be wiped out. “We are not 100 per cent sure of the exact causes but with the present level of decline, and if the same factors continue, then it won’t be long before we see the final ones,” he admitted. Mr Colin Shawyer, director of Hawk Trust, said the reasons for the bird’s decline were complex but he outlined four major causes: The loss of hunting habitat and nesting sites caused by changed farming methods and the destruction of half a million miles of hedgerow.

Increased traffic - 5000 birds died on the roads each year. The more severe winters since 1940 combined with the bird’s limited diet. The effect of eating rodents contaminated with modern poisons.