Wednesday, July 13, 2005

100 years ago

The old type of Crompton electric arc lamps were being replaced by the newer Gilbert enclosed electric lamps for lighting the streets in the city centre of York. The advantages of the replacements were obvious; they were much smaller and neater, gave a very much brighter and more constant light, burned longer without attention and were more economical. The old lamps burned in groups of nine or ten, whilst the new were in pairs and instead of burning in the air the carbon was in a chamber in which there was a partial vacuum. The old lamps would only burn for 16 hours without re-trimming, whereas the new lasted 140 hours. This avoided the necessity of the workmen to go so frequently through the streets with the high and cumbersome stepladder interfering with the traffic.

50 years ago

Some women wept and others prayed as Ruth Ellis, a 28-year-old mother of two children, was hanged at Holloway Prison for the murder of the man who had been her lover. A crowd, estimated at almost 1,000, waited outside the forbidding red brick walls of the prison. Scores of police were on duty. As the last moments to 9am ticked away, the chatter and stirring among the crowd slowly fell and died. Eighteen minutes after 9am, with a dozen uniformed constables, three senior police officers and three mounted policemen almost obscuring the gates, the notices of execution were posted. The silence was broken as the warder hung the notices, the crowd rushed forward, blocking the road, halting the traffic, and sweeping the police aside. Ruth Ellis was the 15th and last woman to be hanged for murder in Britain during the century.

25 years ago

New controls aimed at cleaning up food premises were included in a Bill to be presented to the Commons. The Bill's sponsor, Mr John Fraser, Opposition spokesman on consumer affairs, said that consumers faced "appalling hygiene risks" through loopholes in the law. "At present the law allows anyone to open a food shop or factory anywhere without any hygiene controls, and a person whose premises are closed under the Food and Drugs Act can simply open up anywhere else." Mr Fraser's measure, the Food Premises Bill, would make all food premises subject to registration with the local council and allow courts to disqualify the person convicted as well as the premises. "Some food shops have been shown to be dangerously dirty and unhygienic. A combination of registration and disqualification in the worst cases would make life safer for the consumer."

Updated: 09:00 Wednesday, July 13, 2005