100 years ago

Public attention was once again focused on the results of cancer investigations, and hopes, also, were once again raised that some certain means might have at last been brought to light for combating and eventually of utterly destroying one of the most fearsome diseases which had ever afflicted men and women.

The experiments which had been made with radium had been attended with a certain measure of success; but these would never be satisfactory, or even acceptable, until the power of radium itself had been defined, and its limitations discovered.

This was not only a matter of time – radium as an understood force was scarcely a dozen years old – but also of expense. Full of hope as the experiments had been, it yet remained to be proved that radium constituted the absolute cure.

50 years ago

If you looked closely, late at night, on the mound of Clifford’s Tower, in the middle of York, you might see wild rabbits.

For on the west bank of the Foss, in the area of the Castle Museum, there had been in existence for some time a small but thriving colony of these animals.

“I have seen them, in broad daylight, in the museum yard, on the lawn in front of the Assize Courts, and in the car park by Clifford’s Tower,” said a man who spent his working life within catapult range of the warren.

“They feed on the grass. We have become rather fond of them, and I hope the pest control people do not come and kill them off.” Should anyone have been thinking of rabbit pie they would soon find themselves on the wrong side of the law. If they used a gun there would be the question of a firearm certificate.

Anyway, the Highways Act forbade the discharge of guns within 50 feet of the centre of the highway. And for those who preferred to work silently, the Night Poaching Acts might come into play.

25 years ago

Tons of fish had been dumped off Scarborough because a boat caught more than its quota under new EEC rules.

Mr Bob Mainprize, skipper of the resort’s second biggest keel boat the Margaret Jane, said he had to return to sea with three and a half tons of fish.

If he had landed the catch he would have been liable to a hefty fine by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.

“It is ridiculous telling a fisherman to dump good quality fish. Instead it makes more sense to increase the statutory minimum size of the mesh by an inch to allow more immature fish to escape.”