100 years ago

THE Manchester authorities had watched ceaselessly the suspect aliens in the city, and large quantities of wireless apparatus had been seized by the police from time to time.

After the first order for the dismantling of installations it was heard that information was still being conveyed from the city to quarters where it could be utilised by the enemy; further inquiries revealed hitherto unknown installations. It was supposed that Germans on the outskirts of the city were transmitting the messages.

Enterprising spies, it was alleged, on high authority had been using portable wireless apparatus. Night after night motor cars had left some of our large towns, and armed with these portable machines and collapsible poles, the motorists dispatched messages which had reached relays within a short radius and then been passed on to some elevated position from which long-distance messages could be dispatched. As a result, it was possible that the use of motor cars after dusk might be restricted.

 

50 years ago

A SURVEY of shopping habits had produced the first shop-before-breakfast plan in the south. Doors would open at 7am at a small Hove shopping centre to meet a demand for an earlier start to the day.

Five hundred shoppers, including pensioners and women who went out to work, had been interviewed in the survey which had been conducted by the managing director of the shopping centre. The survey showed that Friday was the favourite shopping day; that 35s a week was the average spent on groceries by a family with two children; and that many women felt more could be done by stores to make it easier to shop with small children.

Women preferred stores in which they could walk around with ease, instead of being jostled by other shoppers, and customers paid little attention to window displays, with the exception of those in fashion stores.

 

25 years ago

It was all systems go for the Sherburn-in-Elmet super-loo, if cash could be found to fund it. The new convenience would replace a lavatory block branded as ‘totally unsanitary’ by environmental health officers.

Villagers who used the super-loo would have the luxury of background music and scented air. The stylish Healthmatic Comprehensive Comfort Station was the most advanced automatic self-cleaning unit on the European market. Selby District Council would have to find £43,000 in the following year’s budget for the leasing costs, including demolition of the dilapidated building in Low Street.

Councillors had been told the superloo was more hygienic and vandal-proof than conventional lavatories. It provided automatic cleansing, washing and drying facilities. The unit was heated, and designed for use by the disabled.