From this newspaper 50 years ago
A freak whirlwind whipped through Thirsk at tea-time on Tuesday. It lasted only a few minutes but left a huge trail of damage, with at least one man injured. Mr W Kitson, 64, a fitter, was walking across a yard at an engineering firm in Station Road, Thirsk, when he was sucked into the air, blown about 10 yards and thrown into the side of a building. Mr Kitson, of Kirkgate, Thirsk, who is due to retire in two months, was treated to Thirsk Hospital for cuts and bruises.

Pupils at Thirsk Grammar Modern School were first affected. Just before they finished for the day several large plastic domes were sucked off the school roof.

One was seen high in the sky floating away; another dug a hole in the school playing fields. The school greenhouse was damaged and trees were broken down. As it continued along Topcliffe Road towards the town centre, the wind sucked slates from dozens of roofs. Holes up to three feet wide were left in some. The slates and other debris were sucked upwards to a height of 60ft or more.

Mr Neville Bowron, a North Eastern Electricity Board draughtsman, was in his office when he saw the whirlwind. "It was a fantastic sight. Slates and corrugated sheets were sucked upwards to a considerable height. Cars in the car park were sucked into the air and dropped several yards away.

A cycle shed was plucked from its foundations and deposited on the racecourse."

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From this newspaper 100 years ago
Shop Assistants' Union. Organising campaign in Darlington. Under the auspices of the North Yorkshire and South Durham District Council of the National Amalgamated Union of Shop Assistants, Warehousemen, and Clerks, a campaign is being carried out covered by the council.

The movement is of a two fold character, to strengthen the branches of the union in the district, and to educate public opinion regarding the evils of shop life.

The union seeks to secure for shop-workers "the limitation of the hours of labour, a minimum wage, the abolition of the living-in system, the abolition of radius agreements, the ending of the secret reference system, etc."

To further the objects of the movement, a meeting was held on Tuesday evening in Hunter's Cafn, Darlington.

The principal speaker was Mr H G Baskett, of the organising staff. Mr Baskett said more and more it must be borne upon shopworkers that trades unionism marked the first step to their economic salvation. In the past a shop assistant might have looked forward with some degree of probability to becoming a shopkeeper himself but gradually a change had been coming over the distributive trade.

In place of the small man they had the system of multiple trading and the co-operative stores making it increasingly difficult for him to hold his own in face of increasing competition.

Whether such was a good or bad thing was beside the question. The point was that a permanent wage-earning class was in existence, badly paid and suffering from acute grievances. The decent employers of labour had nothing to fear from the union. It was only those firms who subjected their staffs to various forms of abuses and injustices who had reason to fear its growth. Shop assistants had been difficult to organise in the past, but there were not lacking signs that a change was taking place.

From this newspaper 150 years ago
Stokesley Petty Sessions. Before G Marwood on17th June. - Elizabeth Ann Head was charged by PC Rogers with begging alms at Stokesley; committed for one calendar month's hard labour. June 20, before G Marwood, Isaac Wilson and G Copley - Thomas Bainbridge, jet miner, Carlton, was charged by Sarah Wood, married woman, of Baisdale, with assaulting her on the 29th of May last, on Carlton Bank; fined 30s including costs. - James Head, labourer, of Stokesley, was charged by Thomas Rickalson, farmer, of Seamer, with trespassing in search of game, on the 18th of November, 1860. The defendant who absconded at the time, was apprehended by warrant on the 17th inst; committed to 21 days' hard labour.