Way we were

100 years ago

The latest publication of "The Hospital" made some pertinent observations regarding the heatwave, which York was experiencing. "Thousands of people wear the same dark and heavy clothes, eat the same superabundant meals, and hurry from place to place in the same eager fashion and at the same hours of the day, whether the thermometer stands at 80 degrees or 60 degrees. Their chief concession to the high temperature is to open their windows when they should be closed, and to encourage abundant perspiration by copious draughts of fluid, which is too often alcoholic in character. They ride outside omnibuses, or even on more rapidly moving tramcars, and so at one and the same time chill the surface of their bodies and expose the backs of their necks to the full glare of the midday sun. Having done all these things, they complain of the heat, and not only compassionate themselves for having to endure it, but marvel when they read of a few scattered cases of sunstroke."

50 years ago

We were urged us to take a good look at the American tourists, especially the middle-aged women. That was if you could pick them out, as they would be wearing styles as frivolous and youthful as any worn by the teenagers in their party. The fashion reporter had come to the conclusion that the Americans won by a head over their English cousins of the same age. It was the middle-aged American woman's attitude to hats that she liked. Not for her the "standard shape" - something that pulled well down over the head with "a little brim, please," a bow on the left, or a feather on the right, felt in winter or straw in summer. One of the worst faults was the way in which, as they got older, English women would insist on pulling a piece of hair out on their foreheads and another fluff on either side of the head after they'd put on a hat.

25 years ago

At the sixth coalfield public forum held in Selby it was revealed that the Selby coalfield would provide about 400 new jobs a year when full production targets were reached in eight years time, and 50 of those jobs would go to school leavers. The board's area manpower officer, said that, to start with, the board would need a nucleus of skilled men from outside the area. But once in full production he estimated that to keep the number of people employed in the coalfield at 3,972 an additional 400 people would need to be recruited each year to make up for people leaving the industry. Young people from the Selby area had already begun their four-year apprenticeship schemes.

Updated: 16:33 Thursday, July 14, 2005