Wednesday, May 31, 2006

  • 100 years ago
    At the York Police Court a Walmgate man was summoned under the Musical Copyright Act, 1902, to show why a quantity of pirated music should not be destroyed. Mr A Preston, representing the Music Publishers' Association, said that in consequence of the serious complaints received in London from York of the continued sale of pirated music he was sent to make inquiries. He accordingly went to the defendant's house and purchased copies of Three for Jack, and the Swing Song, for which he paid 4d each. Having obtained an order to seize the music he entered the defendant's premises the following day in company with Detective Pallister. He then saw the defendant's son-in-law, whom he eventually persuaded to hand over the music. The defendant came in later and left by the back door on the pretext of fetching some more copies of music, and ran into Walmgate, where Mr Preston followed and closed with him. The defendant then called on some roughs to "get shut" of the music. Mr Preston said that the music trade was practically ruined by the pirated trade. The magistrate said that the law was in a silly state, for it only gave him power to order the destruction of the music and the payment of costs.
  • 50 years ago
    Family parties on the beach were a familiar sight at the seaside resorts, now that the fine weather had arrived. The children made the most of their time as they romped about in brief swimsuits, while the grown-ups relaxed in deckchairs or toiled in shirtsleeves after a flying beach ball. There was little doubt that mother at least had probably earned her sojourn in the deckchair, after being up early to collect the family bathing things and cut the stacks of sandwiches needed to sustain her brood throughout the day.
  • 25 years ago
    Unemployment increased again in May for the 12th month in a row. It went up by 33,191 to 2,558,405. The figures from the Department of Employment showed that almost 1,050,000 more people were out of work than a year before. The unemployment rate was now 10.6 per cent almost one in nine of the working population. But the Government could take some comfort from the underlying trend, which showed a clear slowing down in the rate at which unemployment was rising. Although this was the first time that unemployment had exceeded 2 million since the war, officials pointed out that May's rise was the smallest increase since June 1980. Apart from the recorded unemployment figures, the Government estimated that 963,100 people were benefiting from training and work saving schemes. It was estimated that these measures were keeping 310,000 people off the unemployment register.