April 30 (From York Press)

April 30

7:00am Monday 30th April 2012 in Way we were

100 years ago

In the Bridlington Police Court a coloured woman named Nellie Johnson, aged forty-one, was charged with having been drunk and disorderly in the street.

Inspector Leighton said the defendant had been using bad language, and was surrounded by a crowd of children. The defendant said the children were calling her “blackie” and she could not help her colour.

She supposed that in Bridlington they did not often see a black woman. Her husband had deserted his regiment, and also deserted her, and she was trying to find him.

She was on her way to Scarborough, where her father was buried. She was fined 5s and costs or 7 days and said she would go to prison.

50 years ago

Mr Leo D'Erlanger, Chairman of the Channel Tunnel Company, predicted at the Company's annual general meeting in London that electric trains ferrying cars through a Channel tunnel would, if necessary, operate a rush-hour service running every five minutes.

He thought “we were within sight” of a Government's decision on a Channel tunnel.

The Anglo-French Committee of Senior Civil Servants, which was examining the possibility of a permanent link between the countries, and what form it should take, was pressing on with the job. “We have reason to expect that a verdict should not be long delayed,” he said.

Of the suggestion of a Channel bridge, Mr D'Erlanger said: “The bridge does not remotely approach being a commercial proposition even on the figures put forward by its own sponsors.”

In the tunnel project, he said, loading and unloading of road vehicles on and off the specially designed electric trains could be done at a speed which would give an average terminal time of ten minutes per car at each end and often less.

The trains would run from terminal to terminal averaging 60 mph so that after including the allowance for loading and unloading the whole 44 miles would be traversed in under 70 minutes.

25 years ago

The massive Drax power station complex near Selby was being used as a test bed for new equipment designed to reduce the problem of acid rain.

Energy chiefs were spending £2 million to fit burners in one of the huge boilers to cut down the amount of nitrogen oxide released into the atmosphere.

If the experiment proved successful, the equipment could be installed at other coal-fired stations throughout Britain.

The Central Electricity Generating Board was acting in the wake of fresh criticism over the amount of pollution which escaped through power station chimneys.

Drax would also be fitted later with a £150 million desulphurisation plant as part of the clean-up programme.