WHEN a queue forms, it's usually a sign that there's something at the end of it that people need or want.

It's hard to imagine then, that when, on a winter's day 68 years ago, this newspaper's forerunner found a line of more than 100 people lasting all day long in a Blackburn street, what they were after was far from sought-after.

Indeed, the Northern Daily Telegraph reported: "Most of them were wearing that sort of look of resignation that you see on the faces of people in a dentist's waiting room."

And, in fact, what the queue in town-centre Northgate was all about was extraction - of people's income tax, even though payments were not due until a few days later on January 1, 1933.

The tax queue was an event that happened every year before the introduction of Pay As You Earn in 1944 did away with the year-end bother. But what caused the queue outside the Collector of Taxes' new offices to warrant the NDT's attention on December 28, 1932, was the fact that it was much more conspicuous that year.

"This eagerness to pay up is not any new thing in Blackburn," it said.

"But this time, because the new offices are in one of the main streets, it was more noticeable than when they were in the secluded calm of Richmond Terrace."

And the report added: "The fact that a queue, consisting at the busiest times of more than 100 people, can be formed just after Christmas shows that Blackburn has not spent all its money on Christmas jollifications."

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