Thursday, April 1, 2004

100 years ago: A letter was printed warning "the women of York" to beware of a group of canvassers touring the city in the interest of "the free photograph trick". The tale told at each house appeared generally the same, in that they tried to solicit a photo of a member of the family and promise to enlarge it and present it, as an advertisement, absolutely free of charge, providing it was shown to one's friends.

However, a few days later they were presented with a number of cards, and a bill for 17s 6d, the supposed price of a frame, necessary to hold the picture, and before they received anything they were expected to make a deposit and pay a weekly subscription of 1s, till the 17s 6d was cleared off. The victim of this trick was simply astounded at this part of the proceeding, as no mention whatever was made of a frame in the first instance. The writer added: "If this letter prevents any poor woman falling into their hands it will have accomplished its end. I have used the word 'women', because it appears the trick is mostly done with women in the absence of their husbands at work."

50 years ago: An icy finger of horror trickled slowly down the spine of Mr Nobody when he received a press release headed "Cattle must be dressed now". The columnist thought that the time had come for the beasts to gain the upper hand over "us poor, bewildered humans". A few days earlier a colleague had been expounding his theory that the world would eventually be dominated by the animals, as the degraded humans, the Yahoos, were by horses in Gulliver's Travels.

His fears, however, were quickly allayed as he read further, to find it was advertising a film show in York by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries on how to deal with the Ox Warble Fly. The damage done to the hides of cattle in this country by this diminutive pest was estimated to be over £2,000,000 in the last year alone, and so Mr Nobody investigated further. A local tannery informed him that virtually every hide that was dealt with in this country was affected, and that even the best hides usually showed some damage, and were consequently less valuable.

10 years ago: E and B Productions announced that they were buying York's Grand Opera House after a successful first year there. The London-based commercial theatre chain took up a three-year-lease in December 1992, with an option to buy after 15 months.

With the deadline looming, it was announced that they had purchased it for an undisclosed but substantial sum: the £3.9 million asking price had dropped to £1 million by April 1991, and it was believed E and B were paying less than that. Touring shows, and one-off attractions like Dame Edna Everage, had increased turnover to give them a "pretty good" year, although they hadn't quite broken even it was still better than the director expected.

Updated: 08:59 Thursday, April 01, 2004