Tuesday, April 13, 2004

100 years ago: A letter was printed in response to a sermon drawing attention to the fact that men were ceasing to be fathers and rear a family. The writer blamed the lack of "sufficient remuneration" in their working lives. Men preferred a life of celibacy rather than placing a millstone round their neck, and well-educated women of the middle classes dreaded raising a family on a small wage such as 25s a week, or less. The writer said his own daily experience had taught him so much of the misery of married life on the present existing wages. The only solution to the problem was to have better wages and fairer treatment to workers so that they could marry without turning themselves into human machines for the sake of rearing families.

50 years ago: York's Castle Museum wanted 1,000 workers who would work hard for little pay and no future prospects. The appeal was for spiders, needed to weave cobwebs in the interior of the old barn, which was being reconstructed in the Museum to house the agricultural exhibits, and which needed a bit more "atmosphere." Good progress was being made with the building but in spite of the old timbers and stonework, it was felt that the "barn" would still look too clean. "Every barn has its cobwebs and we want ours to be as genuine as possible," said the curator. Some thought was given to the possibility of creating artificial cobwebs, but it was decided that it would be impractical and unauthentic in a museum which prides itself on its authenticity. Every cobweb in a real barn had a sprinkling of white powder on it, whether from flour or the stonework, and when completed, the cobwebs in the Museum's barn will be sprayed with white powder, possibly insecticide, to add more "age."

10 years ago: Ducks who diced with death every time they crossed the road could at last get official Government recognition. Villagers at Barmby Moor, near Pocklington, put up makeshift signs a year ago to warn motorists to slow down for their waddling friends. But Humberside County Council surveyors recently ruled that the signs were unsafe and would have to come down. Now, villagers hoped to be first in the queue for new duck crossing signs being issued by the Department of Transport, one of several new signs to be revealed by the department in six weeks' time.

Updated: 09:38 Tuesday, April 13, 2004