100 years ago

At the Manchester Assizes Lillian Forrester and Evelyn Manesta, the two Suffragettes who had been found guilty of doing malicious damage to 13 pictures in Manchester Art Gallery on the day that Mrs Pankhurst was sentenced to three years’ penal servitude, were brought before Mr Justice Bankes for sentence.

Forrester was sent to prison for three months in the second division and ordered to find two sureties of £50 each to keep the peace for 12 months, or further imprisonment for six months. Manesta was sent for a month to the second division, and also ordered to find sureties, or a further term of imprisonment for four months.

The defendants protested that they could not find sureties. The judge said he was obliged to do his duty. If the law allowed him, he would send them round the world in a sailing ship, which would be the best thing for them.

50 years ago

Jazzy music from the nearby Flamingo Park Zoo interrupted the Easter Sunday Communion service at Kirby Misperton Parish Church, said Coun J Harding at the meeting of Pickering Rural Council.

Coun Harding, the Kirby Misperton representative, was afraid the zoo might become like a funfair. The previous Sunday night, during much of the church service, there had been a band playing in the zoo, he said. “It is going to become like a seaside amusement arcade, there will be strong objections from the people of Kirby Misperton,” he added.

The council was discussing an application from Gordon Waddington, of Sandsend, for permission to install penny-in-the-slot machines at an amusement park being developed at the zoo. The chairman, Coun R de K Maynard, said he strongly objected to the machines on moral grounds of encouraging young people to gamble.

Coun J Scott said: “These machines are allowed by law and there is nothing we can do about it.” The council decided to raise no objection to the application.

25 years ago

Lord Ramsey of Canterbury, Archbishop of York from 1956 the 1961, and of Canterbury from 1961 to 1974, had died at the age of 83.

Lord Ramsey, who preferred to be known as Bishop Michael Ramsey, had been ill for a number of weeks with bronchial pneumonia. Tribute to “a man of profound faith” was paid by the Archbishop of York, Dr John Habgood.

“He looked and seemed sometimes like a remote man, but when he was faced with injustice, one could see the steel in his character, one could see the jut of his chin, the glint in his eye and he did speak out quite fearlessly about these things,” he said.