Wednesday, April 14, 2004

100 years ago: A letter blaming bad pay for men's reluctance to start a family had caused some excitement. Columnist TT agreed that there was a lot of hard fact in it, "but happily they are the excep-tions". He added that a good deal of depended upon the girl - some women would work havoc with the Incas' treas-ure house, but there were others who fairly dazzled a "mere man" with what they could do with money. For the main, he argued that women were really at the bottom of the trouble "as indeed, they are at the bottom of most things". They hustled man in business, reducing his wages, and then with their lack of do-mestic training, spend his little bit of house money on tinned food and "bad marketing". TT advocated all girls going into service to learn how to run, not ruin, a home, after which they would find no lack of eligible husbands.

50 years ago: Old Malton was not to lose its thatched cottage in Westgate, as the search for an experienced thatcher to repair its roof had been successful. The only full-time thatcher in Yorkshire lived in Helmsley, and having seen a report in the Evening Press saying that without a thatcher the roof would become tiled, he had offered to re-thatch the roof, and would make a start as soon as he was free from other work. There were two other thatched cottages in other streets in Old Malton, and the thatcher would be engaged to re-thatch these too. The Cas-tle Museum authorities in York hoped to make a thorough record of the thatching operation, with photographs taken of the thatching at each stage so that the art would not be lost completely.

10 years ago: The grave of the founder of the Evening Press was to have a thor-ough clear-up. Thanks to a donation from the paper, the William Hargrove memorial in York Cemetery would be re-stored to its former glory with repairs to its stonework, and weeds and under-growth would also be cleared to keep the grave of one of York's premier Victorian businessmen in suitable splendour. The six-sided limestone pinnacle had become a feature of guided tours of the cemetery as an important Victorian monument, and would now be regularly cleared by cemetery staff paid for by the Evening Press

Updated: 08:15 Wednesday, April 14, 2004