Wednesday, June 22, 2005

100 years ago

Hunting men everywhere in the north would hear with interest and pleasure that the outlook for sport was much brighter than had been the case for some seasons. Litters seemed more plentiful, and mange appeared to have been almost, if not entirely, stamped out. In the previous season foxes were both scarce and diseased, only five and a half brace were killed, against the usual average of thirty-four or thirty-five brace; the season of 1903-4 had seen only eleven brace killed. No foxes had been imported into the country for the current season. As the committee of the Cleveland Hunt had recently doubled the amount paid to gamekeepers for finds in the covers under their charge, and now paid more to the "gentlemen in velvet" than most other packs in the north, it was hoped and expected the current season's cubs would be found clean, strong, and healthy when cub-hunting commenced.

50 years ago

An article extolling the virtues of refrigeration in modern times emphasised the benefits for more safety in storing food. The housewife who lacked a refrigerator in her home was apt to think of it primarily as a piece of equipment in which she could store the milk without any danger of it going sour in warm weather. She could also buy her weekend joint a day or two before she required it and keep it in this "cold cupboard" until time for cooking. Even if these were the only uses to which the domestic refrigerator could be put it still remained an ambition high on the list of any woman who ran a home, to buy one as soon as she could. Only when she had acquired this addition to her kitchen furnishings did further possibilities appear.

25 years ago

The hunt was on for Britain's 150 million "missing" tanners, which would cease to be legal tender the following week. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was appealing to the public to "raid your jam jars and piggy banks" in an attempt to trace the coins and raise £3,750,000. "In just a week's time they'll become a numismatic nuisance or worthless metal," said an NSPCC official. "But if people rooted them out and gave them to us, think of the number of deprived or ill treated children they would help." The missing sixpences had even Treasury officials baffled. A spokesman said: "They may still be in Christmas puddings."

Updated: 09:35 Wednesday, June 22, 2005