100 years ago

A remarkable speech had been delivered by the Archbishop of York when his Grace inaugurated a Rescue and Prevention Home at Malton.

The meeting, which was held in the Malton Parish Hall, was largely attended. The country towns and villages had to be considered, said his Grace, for behind the good, simple English home life to be found there, was that abiding cesspool of the passions and weaknesses of human nature.

He would remind his hearers of a district within reach of where they were seated where 15 per cent of the births a short time before were illegitimate, whereas the average for the whole country was only four per cent, and there was also another district within reach where more than one out of every five births were illegitimate. Those were ugly naked figures, which only indicated the vast amount of sordid and squalid tragedy that existed.

 

50 years ago

Where had all the flowers gone? The singers (notably Marlene Dietrich) had asked for many a year. There was quite a simple 1964 answer. They had gone on dresses, everyone: from gigantic hydrangea heads, to summer poppies, lush roses, bold sunflowers and great splashes of rhododendrons.

They had gone in a very definite manner, too – drafted on to panel prints in larger than life sizes, in colours as vivid as any you might find on a seed packet picture. You might only have two flowers to a dress (two long stemmed roses, for instance, climbing from a hemline to bust level on an otherwise solid colour linen dress), but you certainly got your money’s worth. Anything Chelsea had, the dress trade could do better.

 

25 years ago

Selby refuse men were refusing to cooperate in the introduction of the second phase of the wheelie-bin system – unless they secured a reasonable deal over job losses and pay.

At a mass meeting in the district council depot, the workforce gave union leaders the go-ahead to continue negotiations with the district council. But they made it clear that unless agreement was reached over the next few days they would oppose the wheelie trial being extended to a further 4,300 homes. Almost half the workforce of more than 70 men would be axed under the new system – which was due to save the authority around £400,000 a year.

Andy England, of the National Union of Public Employees, which represented around two thirds of the Selby binmen, said he feared it would not be possible to obtain the amount of redundancies by voluntary means.