150 years ago
September 9, 1865

THERE were two gruesome deaths to report. First of all, Trimdon Grange pitman John Dandy had got so drunk at Castle Eden that he fallen asleep on the tracks – or, as the paper described it, he’d “unconsciously reclined on the railway”. A train came along and he was “frightfully cut to pieces”.

Meanwhile, at Marton-le-Moor, to the east of Ripon, “Mr T Maynard’s workpeople were employed thrashing out some old wheat stacks with a peg thrashing machine driven by a steam engine”, reported the D&S Times.

“About seven o’clock, one of the women, Ann, wife of William Poulter, aged 51, stepped across the machine to speak to another party. The pegs caught her clothes, and one limb was drawn into the machine up to the groin. A man in attendance slipped off the strap promptly, or the poor woman would have been drawn bodily through. She expired in about five minutes. The limb and foot were frightfully mutilated.”

An inquest was rapidly held in the village’s Devonshire Arms, and Mr Walton, the Northallerton coroner, concluded that it was accidental death.

“It came out in evidence that not the slightest blame could be attached to anyone present when the accident occurred, except to the unfortunate deceased herself,” said the report. “There was not any occasion for her stepping across the machine in the manner she did.

“The occurrence threw quite a gloom over the village, and Mr Maynard abandoned his intention of holding a harvest-home feast, or “mel-supper”, which was fixed for Monday last.”

Elsewhere in the paper, there was a paragraph, brimming with frustration, that cannot have been bettered in the succeeding 150 years.

Under the headline “Stokesley Flower Show”, the D&S said: “Owing to the partiality shown by the narrow-minded officials at the gate in denying entrance to some of the newspaper reporters, while others were admitted, we decline to give any report of this show. We have been in the habit of giving Stokesley Horticultural Society preliminary notices without charge, and also of reporting its proceedings. If our services in that respect are not worth having without paying for admission to the grounds, it must not be considered churlish on our part if we henceforth pass this society over without notice.”

This year’s Stokesley Show is next Saturday. We sincerely hope that bridges have been built in the last century-and-a-half and that there are no embarrassing scenes on the gate.

100 years ago
September 4, 1915

THE paper provides a fascinating insight into real life during the First World War. For example, Darlington council heard that “25 quarters of beef and 25 carcasses of mutton had been consigned to Darlington by the Queensland government for the relief of suffering and distress caused by the war”. The Darlington Butchers’ Association had distributed the meat throughout the town.

Then there was a debate about women, led by Alderman Charles Starmer, the former mayor who was the managing director of The Northern Echo – then a deadly commercial rival to the D&S Times. Ald Starmer gave an update from the committee that oversaw the operation of the municipal electric tramcar system, and said that “during the month the shortage of men had become very acute and they had given permission to two women to learn driving in order that their services might be utilised if the necessity arose.

“It had aroused a good deal of feeling, particularly among motormen. The men did not like the idea of teaching women to drive, neither did they like the town taking the risk of having women drivers. Women were driving motor lorries and motor cars in other parts of the country and in his opinion it was a simple matter driving a tramcar.”

Not everyone agreed. Alderman Best said: “As a matter of public safety I claim that women are not constituted for driving tram cars. It is not a woman’s job by any means.”

The report continued, and referred to Darlington’s first female councillor, Clara Lucas, who had only just been elected onto the council: “At this observation there was a loud outburst of laughter, and it was quickly seen that Miss Lucas was indicating by expression more forcibly than any words what her opinion was of Mr Best’s remark.”

Later, Miss Lucas told how “she had seen women in very congested areas driving motor cars and she had never heard of a woman happening an accident”. The council allowed the training of female tramcar drivers to continue.

50 years ago
September 11, 1965

IN Country Diary, J Fairfax-Blakeborough – the Nicholas Rhea of his day – was reminiscing how harvesting had changed due to the “evolution of wheels and hustle”. In the old days, when the corn had been laid flat by wind and rain, only hand scything would do, but now there were “gadgets from self-binders to combines which can lift it”.

So ubiquitous was the technology, he said, that even the oldest hands were adopting it, and he recalled one senior Yorkshire farmer shocking his local dales vicar by declaring: “There’s nowt for it but me having a concubine on my spot.”

Mr Fairfax-Blakeborough said he was on a bus recently with a village shopkeeper who was taking her bacon knives to an ironmonger for sharpening. A fellow passenger, a dressmaker, said: “I wish I’d fetched two or three pair of sciddors we have which will cut nowt. We never have a sciddor-grinder come round now. They used to be one or two every year who kept our carving knives and sciddors up to t’mark and would mend pans as well. They seem to have all died off.”

Mr Fairfax-Blakeborough concluded: “What has become of the travelling tinkers and scissor grinders? I have not seen one pushing or using the one-wheeled workshop for a year or two. They were wonderfully mobile and time was when we had regular visits from one of them, even in the most isolated areas.”

If any readers remember the last time they saw a “sciddor-grinder”, we’d love to hear from them – indeed, when did you last have a pair of sciddors that had been used so much that they were blunt?