May 1

“Dear Joe, - Sorry to tell you Aunt Jane is dead Burnley, 1; Liverpool, 0.”

A letter couched in these terms had been received at Strangeways Prison, Manchester, addressed to a prisoner there.

It was the duty of the chaplain, the Rev RD Cruikshank, to receive letters from prisoners’ relatives and friends informing them of deaths in the family, and Mr Cruickshank told a meeting at the Manchester Town Hall on behalf of the CETS Police Court and Prison Gate Mission that the message referred to was the ingenious way in which someone had attempted to convey interesting news to a prisoner.

“As a matter of fact,” added Mr Cruickshank, “Joe had no Aunt Jane, and the Cup-tie result did not reach the prisoner.”

50 years ago

The day of universal and unquestioning acceptance of what used to be called Christian marriage, was over, said Mr Robert Silvey, head of the BBC audience research, at the annual conference of the National Marriage Guidance Council.

He said “and if, in most cases it has survived, and may be the better for being reassessed rationally, there is no denying that for many, not only is this re-appraisal agonizing but it has no comfortably guaranteed outcome.”

There were people who, because they were at sea about marriage, with no convictions to act as compass, were highly susceptible to influence. Although these might only be a fraction of the population, and one might doubt whether the influence of broadcasting was powerful enough compared with that of other social factors, it was right to ask where broadcasting stood in this matter.

There was a risk that some immature listeners, or some listeners whose values and attitudes were unstable, would assume that what was public was socially sanctioned. Many people worried about broadcast drama.

25 years ago

The air traffic control position would be difficult again this summer with demand regularly exceeding capacity, British Airways had warned pilots.

In a hint that a report of the previous year’s chaos at airports could be possible, the airline’s traffic services manager Mr Colin Hume had urged staff to do their best to minimise any delays.

Although British Airways, which operated mainly scheduled flights, was one of the least affected by delays the previous summer, it played a key role in organising take-offs and landing at airports.

The previous summer a combination of factors, including over-capacity in European air space, had led to thousands of delayed holidays with people spending days waiting at airports such as Gatwick and Manchester. There were fears this could be repeated again this summer.