25 YEARS AGO

FIVE thousand entry forms at £1 each will be on sale for a competition this week - first prize, a fish and chip shop. Promoter of the contest for her business in Nel Pan Lane, Leigh, is the owner, 37-years-old ex-nurse Mrs Gillian Hayton. She said: 'I have had the shop for two years and although it is a good business with good takings I want to get back to nursing. When we put up the shop for sale for £5,300 there were a few inquiries, but we didn't sell. So we decided on a competition.'

50 YEARS AGO

'MUSIC, music, music' is not the theme song of Bolton Parks Committee. Unless it is by their consent, no music can be heard in Bolton parks. The present by-law governing this, according to the chairman of the Parks Committee, Ald. Sykes (C), was apparently made before wireless sets were invented, and it is therefore illegal to listen to a portable radio in a public park.

R. LANGTON, of Bolton Wanderers, and a favourite at Burnden Park, has been named in the England team to play Scotland at Hampden Park on April 15th.

125 YEARS AGO

SPEAKING at an Exeter Hall meeting last year in favour of the Permissive Bill, the Hon. Charles K. Landis, the founder of Vineland, New Jersey, in the United States - a colony of 13,000 persopns, established 18 years aho on 50 square miles of virgin soil - said that in Vineland a yearly vote is taken on the question whether the inhabitants will allow liquor shops to be opened, or confine themselves (as it was put to carry the vote more easily) to drinking at home; and the vote was always in favour of excluding dram shops. A startling sequence to these remarks is now related in the New York Tribune. The Vineland Independent recently published an article in which it said: 'A prominent Vinelander sat down by the side of his loving wife on the sofa, and looked up into her eyes, and called her "a duck", and "a birdie", and "a rabbit". and all the other endearing names. Then he told her he wanted to learn the use of a revolver, so that in his absence, she could protect their home and silver ware, and defend the honour of Vineland. Next he went off and bought an elegant seven-shooter and a nice target. This done, he set up the target in one end of the parlour, and gave her a first lesson in shooting. Next he told her he wanted to practice every day. Then he went away for a week. When he returned he found the revolver on the other side of the looking-glass. The parlour door resembled a bad case of smallpox, and the furniture looked as though it had been indulging in a wrestle with a Burlington county hailstorm. Did he walk up to his wife and sicken her with the endearing names of all the birds and four-footed beasts? Not much. He ,arched out into the street in his shirt-sleeves, with one boot on, and that patched over the big toe. Then he went galloping up and down, telling every man he met, donfidentially, that his wife was crazy. Lastly, he went off and tried to get her into a private insane asylum. Yes, he did, the wretch'.

Mr Landis believed that this obscure statement referred to him; and at 10 o'clock on the anniversary of the 19th March he went to the office of the Independent. Mr Carruth, the editor, was out, but was sent for, and, on his appearance, Landis presented a pistol. Carruth then ran from the office into the workshop, followed by Landis, who shot him as he was trying to get out of the door leading downstairs. The ball entered the back of the head and lodged in the brain, and by the latest accounts the unfortunate man was given over by the surgeons. The case had created intense excitement in Vineland, Mr Landis being so well-known throughout the country.

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