100 years ago

Whooping cough was the subject of many ‘charm-cures’. In Northamptonshire, a few hairs from a sick child’s head were rolled in a piece of meat and given to a dog in the belief that the disease became thereby transferred to the animal.

In Cornwall, the child was fed with the bread and butter of a family whose head bore the names of John and Joan, or, as an alternative, was passed three times under the belly of a piebald horse. Gypsies swore by roast dormouse as a cure of whooping cough, while in Lancashire it was believed that no child would contract that disease who had ridden on a bear.

50 years ago

Following a recent appeal for genuine metal trade signs for the new street, the curator of the Castle Museum, York, Robert Patterson, had heard from a lorry driver who remembered seeing rat holes in a warehouse stopped up with enamelled signs.

A visit to the warehouse produced period advertisements for Molassine dog and puppy cakes (“different from all others”) and Spratt’s chicken meal. Outside a Guisborough shoe repairer’s shop, about to be demolished, Mr Patterson found an attractive sign bearing a reef knot design and advertising Holdfast Boots. Other signs collected recently by the museum included one for Coverdale’s Artificial Teeth and one for Judges York Brand Scourer and Cleaner (the forerunner of Beaver Stone, which was still made in a riverside factory in York).

One of the most striking additions to the new street was a huge, one-and-a-half hundredweight padlock trade sign. Until about 15 years before, when it was taken down for safety, it had hung over Lambert’s former hardware shop in Parliament Street, York.

25 years ago

Britain’s popular ski-jumper Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards would possibly be the first jumper ever grounded in the Olympics for the 90-metre event, scheduled shortly, said an official.

International Ski Federation technical delegate Torbjorn Yggeseth said the competition jury would be unlikely to let Edwards participate for his own safety, unless wind conditions were perfect for the contest. Chief of competition Rob McCormack added: “We may be saving him from two broken arms and two broken legs.”

Edwards finished a distant last in the 70-metre jump recently, but his determination to compete and his jocular antics had earned him a huge following in Calgary. Yggeseth, who said no jumper had ever before been prevented from taking part in the Olympics, added that the jury would decide shortly before the scheduled competition.