Tuesday, January 4, 2005

100 years ago: The annual Christmas dinner to the aged and poor of York was fixed for later this week. The dinner would consist of roast beef, roast mutton, roast pork, and vegetables, plum puddings, Christmas cake, and tea, and would be served to about 1,200 poor people. The whole of the tickets had been distributed, the relieving officer giving them to all who were in receipt of outdoor relief, amounting to about 750 people, the remainder then being distributed by district visitors to others. The demand for tickets had been abnormal, and the committee had to refuse a great number who applied. In the evening there would be entertainment, which comprised of lady vocalists, humorists, minstrels and physical drill troupe of the Boys Industrial School, cinematograph, etc. The Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress, the Sheriff and his wife, the president of the Christmas Dinner Fund and several aldermen and their wives had indicated that they would also be present.

50 years ago: A wine cup made in York in 1597 would be one of the valuable items on view at Christie's, London, this month, at an exhibition of silver treasures from English and Welsh churches. It was the first time there had been such an exhibition of these items, and the first time there was an exhibition of ecclesiastical plate of secular origin, and it may be some years before so many can be gathered together again. Some pieces were used week by week, but others were normally kept in safes of remote country churches or the vaults of banks, only to be used at great festivals. Proceeds from the exhibition were to be handed over to the Historical Church Preservation Trust.

25 years ago: Householders in York were being "maddened" at night by a mystery humming noise. It was so intense in the early hours of the morning in some parts of the city that people couldn't sleep for it. There had been suggestions that it came from outer space, or that a tube of air was resonating in the sky, or that natural gas was starting up a resonance in house pipes, all theories that were dismissed. The noise was not only being investigated in York, but also by a London polytechnic, as similar occurrences had been reported across the country over the last few months.

Updated: 08:55 Tuesday, January 04, 2005