100 years ago

The Central News has learned that the British authorities, acting in conjunction with the French military censorship, intended to discourage the sending to the front from friends at home picture postcards ridiculing or caricaturing the Kaiser or the German Crown Prince.

It had been discovered that where such productions had been found on prisoners or wounded soldiers they had, according to the German military code, rendered themselves liable to summary treatment, and in some cases they had been maltreated or even shot.

“Nothing, apparently, upsets a German more,” a representative of the Central News was informed, “than to discover that a captured enemy possesses pictures derogatory to the Kaiser or his family, and for that reason it were better not to ridicule the Kaiser - certainly not at the front.”


50 years ago

The good old days - or were they? An amusing evocation of an Edwardian childhood had been given to the York Women's Luncheon Club by the north-country novelist, Mr AA Thomson, in a talk, “When I was a lad.”

Typical of Mr Thompson's ability to picture the past was his description of the aroma of the open market of his childhood: “A curiously blended scent of cheese, sweets, sheet music and gently stewing tripe.”

Or bathing machines, which he said were “prefabricated Noah's Arks on wheels drawn down to the sea by horses,” and the nearby doctor setting off on his calls in a “brougham drawn by horses as polished and shiny as the doctor's tall hat.”

Becoming more serious, Mr Thomson declared it was not a better time than now, it was a worse time. “Many people were worse fed, worse housed and worse off in many different ways.”


25 years ago

Alarm bells were ringing over the future of Linton Lock on the River Ouse. Serious flooding during the winter could cause the structure to fail completely, causing chaos upstream to Boroughbridge and Ripon.

The warning came from the British Waterways Board, which said that if the lock did fail it would cost £400,000 to replace it.

Now the Board was asking local authorities for more cash to help pay for emergency repairs. But Hamilton District Council, one of three authorities which had been approached, was set to freeze its cash backing at £6500 for the time being.

Chief Executive Mr Colin Spencer said the authority ought to know the outcome of an appeal for financial support by the Linton Lock Commissioners, who were facing a bill of £105,000 towards urgent structural repairs. If the lock was fully repaired, the British Waterways Board would take over its future maintenance.