Monday, October 31, 2005

100 years ago

Quaker Oats were advertised as the most convenient and nourishing of foods. Quaker Oats were the perfect body food, the perfect brain food, strengthening you in mind and muscle. Because of Quaker care and skill in selecting and milling, roasting and rolling the grain, every flake counted for health. Also available was the Quaker Oat Biscuit, with all the nutritive value and all the rich, satisfying flavour of Quaker Oats in a new and tempting form. They were a delicious treat, crisp and fresh and fragrant with the sweet odour of the oven, in a convenient airtight packet. If your grocer had not stocked them, you were instructed to write to Quaker Oats and they would see that you were supplied promptly.

50 years ago

C M Everard, of 64, Monkgate, York, had written to the Press on the subject of the smoke menace. He said: "Recently a film was shown on television entitled Guilty Chimneys - a very good film stressing the considerable menace to the nation's health from heavy smoke pollution in the atmosphere. One must agree with the sentiments put forward by this film, and applaud its attempt to rouse the public from its apparent indifference to this danger. It was with some amazement, however, that I saw this film had been produced by the Gas Council. Considering the fact that residents in Monkgate are subjected every day to clouds of filthy smoke emanating from the York gasworks - smoke which turns day into night, fills our homes full of thick sooty dust, dirties our carpets and furniture, and which, according to the Gas Council themselves, is a menace to the health of our children - it seems that this film was made primarily as a means of persuading householders to use more gas and coke, rather than from a sense of public duty. Surely those who take it upon themselves to appeal so piously to the public to help remove this menace, should first put their own house in order?"

25 years ago

Conservatives in York had started to cut red tape around the sale of council houses. Would-be buyers faced an eight-page form and a 12-page booklet telling them how to fill it in. But help with applications was available five days a week from Tory HQ staff in Priory Street. Council houses in York had been bought at the rate of 40 or 50 a year since sales were re-introduced in 1974. "I don't think York is a place where one can expect a deluge of people buying," said Councillor Philip Booth, chairman of York Housing Services Committee, "but there has been a steady demand and there always will be."

Updated: 12:32 Saturday, October 29, 2005