Saturday, June 3, 2006

  • 100 years ago
    London men, encouraged by the tailors, shirt-makers, and hosiers, were showing a strong desire to forsake the customary greys and blacks of fashionable attire for bright colours. Some of the waistcoats, ties, shirts, and hats at Epsom and Kempton Park, would have horrified even a stockbroker a few years before. There were purples, greens, yellows, reds, and blues in profusion. The latest revolution in hats was the felt in various shades of cream, dark green, or brown, shaped like the ordinary boater straw. They looked curious at present, but they were extremely light and comfortable. There was no limit to the orgy of colours in pyjamas and underwear. A West End hosier displayed in his windows some startling pyjama suits of crimson silk flecked with minute white spots, and a row of waspish-looking socks of a bright yellow shade striped with black. The underwear was a delicate mauve striped with violet.
  • 50 years ago
    The first case to be heard in York under the Food Hygiene Regulations, 1955, resulted in a £5 fine from York magistrates. The defendant pleaded guilty to failing to wear a clean and washable overall, while engaged in carrying meat. The prosecution said that a sanitary inspector employed by York City Council, was outside a butcher's premises near Bootham Bar, when he saw the defendant carrying a loin of pork in his outstretched arms from a van parked outside the shop. The defendant had worn a reefer jacket and a woollen pullover, was hatless and had no overall. The front of his clothing was visibly caked with animal fats and the front of his pullover was roughened by contact with meat. The inspector alleged that the defendant told him: "I know I should have an overall, but I forgot it."
  • 25 years ago
    More than 900 cycles were stolen in York every year and 600 of them were never found. The scale of the thefts was highlighted when police announced that in the last few days alone, 24 cycles, worth more than £800, had been stolen in York. "It's an average of three a day, usually," said Chief Inspector Derrick Slee. Only about 15 per cent of machines were recovered in the normal way and another 15 per cent as a result of crime. But most of the cycles were never seen again by their owners. Where they went was a mystery. But one theory put forward in the past had been that many of the machines found their way to the Continent and even to Africa. What was puzzling the police was that most of the cycles stolen were not expensive models but machines usually described as 'nondescript' and worth about £10 to £40.