Monday, March 14, 2005

100 years ago: Earlier in the month a York clergyman was addressing a meeting in the city on the sale of Sunday papers and propounded the question of whether such sales were illegal. The clergyman and others who might have given attention to the matter would be interested, thought a columnist, in reading a paragraph from a York paper of 150 years before. It reported a prosecution for Sunday trading, for which a tradesman was convicted before the Lord Mayor and fined five shillings, "one-third part of which was given to the informer and the rest paid to the use of the poor of the parish where the offence was committed". This punishment was inflicted because the tradesman had "exercised his business on the Lord's Day". They were stricter and more zealous in the enforcement of the observance of the Sabbath a century and a half ago than they were at the time the columnist was writing. The same law was still in force as was used against the York tradesmen of 1752, but it had long been in abeyance.

50 years ago: No one had yet claimed the artificial leg which was found on Scarborough's North beach some time previously, and so it was handed over to the police. In attempt to find its owner, and to discover why it had ended up on the beach, the police had been in touch with the National Health Service, as the leg had a number on it and the date 1946, which they hoped to use to find the owner, with a view to possibly returning the limb.

25 years ago: A plan to charge for car parking in Ryedale was rejected at a district council meeting by just 22 votes to 21, a result that was only declared valid after a recount. It ended weeks of controversy over a decision in principle to charge for car and lorry parking in Ryedale parks at Malton, Pickering and Helmsley. The decision had the effect of increasing the Ryedale rate for the next 12 months by 0.2p, representing a £25,000 loss of estimated parking fees, and the Ryedale rate would go up from 11.1 per cent to 13.6 per cent. The current free parking was a major factor in the prosperity of the market towns, according to one councillor, and although the proposed fee was 10p to park for two hours, it was believed that this would still have a damaging effect on the local economy.

Updated: 08:43 Monday, March 14, 2005