100 years ago

Fifty years before, the York Invalid Kitchen had been established, and what made the jubilee of the foundation particularly interesting was that the actual foundress of the charity was still living, and continued to take an active and abiding interest in its affairs.

The lady was Mrs Keyworth, of Clifton, in her 91st year, who in former years greatly interested herself in work among the poor of the city, and was the means of relieving much distress at a time when there were fewer ameliorative agencies at work. Mrs Keyworth was the widow of a well-known medical man practising in the city, and she had had many opportunities of becoming acquainted with the hardships and the poverty from which many persons suffered.

In the year 1860 she was much struck by a remark made by the dispensary doctor, who said he had not the heart to give medicine to the poor because he had nothing with which to supplement it. It was then that she formulated the idea of the Invalid Kitchen and for eighteen years acted as its secretary before being succeeded by her replacements.

 

50 years ago

Planning for the Beatles’ ten-day US visit had approached the magnitude of a state visit. The Mersey Sound had broken all records in the Tin Pan Alley in the previous month, I Want to Hold Your Hand having sold more than two million copies.

The Beatles would give two concerts at Carnegie Hall on February 12, and all tickets in the 2,800-seat house had sold out within eight hours. The Beatles planned to do two Ed Sullivan TV shows and also their first US concert at the Coliseum, Washington.

Beatle wigs and haircuts were reported to be doing as well – or better – at US High Schools as Davy Crockett hats and hula hoops had once done.

 

25 years ago

A life-saving scheme to provide transplant organs for critically ill patients had reached its target of 100,000 donors in North Yorkshire.

York-based organisers of the Lifelink project said that waiting lists for kidney transplants could be eradicated if more donors came forward. Mr Len Elliott, district manager of Cobalt UK, which acted as training managers for the scheme, said: “If half of the people who have died in the past two years had given both their kidneys there would no longer be any waiting list.”

The computer-based system already had 1.5 million people registered in North Yorkshire to donate their hearts, lungs, liver, kidneys, pancreas, skin and cornea when they died. Four hundred people a week were still coming forward to add their names to the computer list, which had the backing of the regional health authority.