No Treating Orders and the immorality of theatres

HEATHER COWLEY, ten, of Potto Hill Farm, Swainby, became the youngest person to complete the 40 mile Lyke Wake Walk between Osmotherley and Ravenscar across the North York Moors. She had started at 7pm, stopped at 11pm to sleep on the moors, re-started at 5am in thick fog to reach Ravenscar at 5pm.

She had been accompanied by her father Bill Cowley, a former civil servant in India who had become a farmer, who had founded the walk ten years earlier.

"I was cutting peat one day on the moors and it struck me there was nothing but 40 miles of desolation between Osmotherley and the coast," he told the D&S Times. "I thought it would make a marvellous walk and so I threw out a challenge and offered a trophy to anyone who could do it in a day.”

With 12 other founders, he took up his own challenge on October 1, 1955. “It took us 23 hours and we slept in deep heather,” he said.

The paper’s correspondent said: “The craze (can anyone wishing to walk 40 miles of desolation be anything but slightly crazy) has certainly caught on.” In the first ten years, 7,000 people had completed the walk, and a club – “or tribal society” – of successful walkers met twice a year for a wake to celebrate their achievements.

Young Heather told the paper: “I suppose it was my brothers’ taunts that made me want to do it. They said it wasn't the kind of thing a slip of a girl could accomplish.”

Nowadays, the walk even has its own website: lykewake.org

100 years ago, November 6, 1915

A CRYPTICALLY-WORDED advert for a beefy drink said: “You can stand him a Bovril.” It must refer to the No Treating Order, which had come into effect the month before, to tackle the enemy within.

In January 1915, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, said Britain was "fighting Germans, Austrians and drink, and as far as I can see the greatest of these foes is drink". He campaigned for people to pledge not to drink alcohol during the war, and in April 1915, King George V announced that he and the whole royal household would not touch a drop until the war was over.

This led to the introduction of the No Treating Order in October 1915, which prevented a person buying another person a drink on pain of a maximum six months imprisonment.

One of the first breaches of the order was in Guisborough where, exactly 100 years ago, the D&S reported that a local miner had been charged with buying a beer for a soldier in the King’s Head Hotel.

“The defence was that the soldier paid for the beer himself and only asked the defendant to pass it to him, as he could not get to the counter from the position he was in,” said the paper.

Magistrates called for whoever was in charge of the bar on the night in question to be brought before them to substantiate the evidence. They were surprised when an 11-year-old boy appeared – his father, the landlord, was away fighting and his mother had been taken ill suddenly (and conveniently) that night and so the lad manned the pumps.

The Guisborough magistrates expressed dismay that such a young lad should be in a pub, letalone running it, and dismissed the No Treating case against the unnamed local miner.

In other parts of the country, more zealous magistrates took the No Treating Order more seriously, and even fined husbands for buying their wives glasses of wine.

150 years ago, November 4, 1865

MR R DOUGLASS re-applied to Darlington Police Court for a licence to play in the new theatre in the town – this would have been the Theatre Royal which had opened seven months earlier in Northgate, where the cinema is today.

Mr Douglass’ first application had been thrown out at an earlier hearing on the spurious grounds that a door opened inwards rather than outwards and the sliding front doors were on dangerous wheels.

To support his new application, Mr Douglass had reversed the door and had employed a man to oversee the sliding front door. Everyone appeared to be happy (a part from grammarians as throughout the report the noun is spelt “license”).

The paper said: “The chairman (RH Allan of Blackwell Grange) did not see any reason why the license should not be granted. All the large towns possessed such places of amusement. There was Stockton, Newcastle and Durham had theatres, but Darlington formed a grand exception.

“Mr JW Pease MP refused to sign the license on the ground that such places encouraged immorality.”

The South Durham MP, who was building the lavish Hutton Hall near Guisborough from which to exploit his leadmines in the Cleveland Hills, was from a strict Quaker family that hated theatres.

Mr Allan, the chairman, was a pro-theatre Anglican. He “said that theatres often kept men from going to the public house. The public must have recreation of some kind”.

But Mr Pease would not budge, so a replacement magistrate was called upon. The report said: “On Mr Pease again refusing, Mr Edward Backhouse was sent for, but on his arrival he refused to sign the license as he thought such places did not conduce to the good of the town.”

Banker Backhouse was also a Quaker, and the blocking of the licence caused Mr Allan to explode in frustration: “You are giving Darlington such a character.”

The report concluded: “They then retired to consult but the chairman announced that they could not agree, so the license would have again to be deferred.”

THERE has been some correspondence about old vehicle registration plates following a slip-up here a fortnight ago.

Vehicle registration was introduced in 1903, and each county was allocated a letter, starting with A for London. As there were more counties than letters, those counties with smaller populations were allocated two letters – Durham got a J and the North Riding of Yorkshire was given AJ.

As the number of new cars being registered grew, so the counties were allocated new letters: the North Riding also got PY and VN, and Durham was given PT and UP with Darlington, as a borough, being given HN in 1921.

These identifiers stayed with the counties right up to the local government reorganisation of 1974 when the North Riding’s three combinations and Darlington’s HN went to the DVLA’s centre in Middlesbrough. They disappeared completely in 2001.