Thursday, May 6, 2004

100 years ago: At the York City Police Court, a man was summonsed under the Diseases of Animals Act of 1894 for un-lawfully removing pigs at the beginning of March, when he was alleged to have moved two pigs without a licence. He had bought them from the Cattle Market, and obtained a licence to remove the pigs, which were proved to be suffering from "rickets", to a slaughterhouse in King's Square. The defendant, however, did not take them to the place mentioned on the licence, but removed them to a slaughterhouse in North Street. The de-fendant was fined 40s and costs.

50 years ago: Columnist John Blunt asked readers to think over the suggestion made by the Lord Mayor's chaplain, namely that the city gets a new type of Lord Mayor. Because the Lord Mayor of York was by ancient right the senior civic head in the provinces, the chaplain thought a lot could be done to unify the county and the north as a whole by of-fering the city's highest honour to some eminent person who need not be a member of the City Council or even a citizen. Whilst there was merit in the idea, John Blunt worried that the Lord Mayor would become simply a figurehead, re-ducing the position to a purely ceremonial role.

10 years ago: The Laurence Sterne Trust launched a £1,000 appeal for a new headstone to mark the author's grave. It was the latest, and hopefully last, episode in a saga that had seen Sterne's remains and the headstone removed three times. In 1768 he died in London of pleurisy, and was buried in St George's graveyard, near Hyde Park. It is believed that shortly afterwards gravediggers stole his body, which ended up on a dissecting ta-ble in Cambridge, where a horrified acquaintance recognised it. The body was returned to its grave, where Freemasons added the headstone, complete with stirring poem. About 200 years later fans of the author had his remains exhumed and reburied in St Michael's churchyard, Coxwold, where he spent the last eight years of his life, and wrote much of his celebrated work Tristram Shandy. But the Yorkshire weather had eroded the headstone, which had been moved into the entrance of the 15th century church, in order to preserve it until funds for a new one could be raised.

Updated: 09:32 Thursday, May 06, 2004