Tuesday, January 17, 2006

100 years ago

Mrs Alwyn Bussey created consternation by voting in the East Marylebone election. Tall and of imposing stature, she looked a typical defender of women's rights. "Whenever there has been an election of any kind they have come for me to vote, and I have gone. Why not? My name was on the register. Was it for me to quarrel with the authorities?" she said. "But this is the first Parliamentary election I have voted in. Yesterday the carriage drew up at the door, and it was great fun. I was driven to the Little Titchfield polling station. The presiding officer declined to issue a polling paper, but I stood my ground. I said, 'My name is on the register, and I am going to vote.' He seemed impressed, but said 'Wait a little,' and then there was such consultation! Then a young man came up to me with a red face - so red that I felt sorry for him - and said, 'You can vote,' and issued me a polling ticket, and I voted. How did my name come on the register? It is difficult to say. No doubt they took me for a man - in any case it is a mistake. But, then, isn't it funny?"

50 years ago

The house in The Shambles where once lived Blessed Margaret Clitherow - executed in York on Good Friday, 1586 - would be opened as a public oratory on Easter Monday. Margaret Clitherow, who was five years old on the accession of Elizabeth I, was the mother of three children - two boys and a girl. Both boys became priests and her daughter, Anne, became a nun - all overseas. Her husband, an ambitious Shambles butcher, acknowledged Elizabeth as supreme head of the church in England and was made bridge-master. Margaret, on a charge of harbouring priests, was committed to the Ouse Bridge Prison, which was under the very bridge her husband guarded.

25 years ago

Mork, a male pet mouse owned by 12-year-old Amanda Whiteley, had surprised everyone by mating with a wild female mouse. The pet mouse, which had lived alone in a cage at Gypsy Road, Bridlington, suddenly appeared with four young mice. Amanda's mother, Mrs Margaret Whiteley, said: "We could not think how this had happened until we saw a wild mouse going into the cage and feeding the four young mice. This wild mouse must have come into the house, seen the mouse on its own and gone into the cage. She must have been back when the mice were born, and had come back regularly to feed them." The mice were now about two weeks old and were fed regularly by the wild mouse that came into the house. They were discovered when Amanda was cleaning out the cage.

Updated: 10:00 Tuesday, January 17, 2006