Looking Back, with Eric Leaver

EXPRESS Dairies it wasn't - but Malcolm Jackson's milk delivery service outstayed the rest to become the last in East Lancashire relying on real, old-fashioned horsepower.

The horse, Molly, had the honour of being there at the finishing post. Now a ripe old 20, she is enjoying a well-earned retirement at Dill Hall Farm, Church, where the Jackson family have farmed and "kitted" milk to the local community for four generations.

And the float she pulled every day, except Sundays, until three years ago to keep up the horse and cart tradition long after all the region's other milkmen had gone over to motors, now serves as a children's den.

"Someone offered a couple of years ago to take the cart and restore it for a museum that was being set up, though it would still belong to us, but we never heard anything more of it," said farmer's wife Mrs Lesley Jackson.

Oddly enough, one of the Jackson carts did end up as a museum piece, though the family has no idea how.

"We have some friends whose parents live down south and they saw an old cart in a museum there with the lettering 'J. Jackson, Church,' on it. We haven't a clue how it got there but we think it must have been sold on after we got rid of it a long time ago," added Mrs Jackson.

But it wasn't so much progress that removed the last horse-drawn milk cart from East Lancashire's streets but Molly's maverick ways and the insurance industry's disapproval. Mrs Jackson said: "They used to sting us with a £1,000 excess. Molly knew where people had left carrots out for her with their empties along the route and she would sometimes go bombing off for them, knocking the bumpers off cars, especially where they were double-parked.

"I remember once finding she had dashed up the path of a house where a little old lady used to stick a carrot in the milk bottle and the float was up on the pavement."

Nowadays, East Lancashire's last horse-drawn milk float has been replaced is replaced by an electric one.

"We're still 'green'," Mrs Jackson said.

Benita commented: "It's sad that the milkman's horse and cart has vanished.

"The horses were all very intelligent and knew their rounds so well they could have gone round them blindfolded.

"They also knew when it was Friday - the day most people paid their milk bill. The farmer or milkman would take longer than usual at each house because he was collecting the money and you'd see the horse pawing the ground with impatience."

Panda-monium at the cop shop

READING here about the luckless lion that was buried on the site of Blackburn's old Queen's Hall, Mr John Morley was filled with nostalgic memories about the hushed-up case of a "panda" that got away. The year was 1943 - deep in the era of the wartime black-out that was responsible for many a mishap.

It fell to Mr Morley's father Thomas, a police sergeant and Blackburn coroner's officer, to solve the mystery of where the missing "creature" had gone.

The "panda" is question was an Austin 16 patrol car which vanished from the town's police station.

There was still an Austin of exactly the same stripe in the police yard but Sergeant Morley didn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that it wasn't the one belonging to the force - the difference being that theirs was clearly emblazoned with the word "Police".

So where was the missing cop car?

As all good sleuths do, the officer assembled the facts - one of which was that, a couple of hours before, Blackburn undertaker Mr Arthur Butler, a man in his 80s, had driven to the station to see him on post-mortem matters. John, of Hoghton Lane, Hoghton, says his father quietly advised that Mr Butler be asked to help the police with their inquiries.

A posse duly arrived in force at his business in Granville Road, roused him from the slumber he was enjoying in an easy chair and invited him to check his garage.

Inside was a gleaming black Austin 16 police car. The aged undertaker was permitted to return to his easy chair while the police in the ranks returned to normal duties, hoping that the high-ups would not hear of the incident.

After all, someone was sure to get a rocket if the brass-hats discovered a patrol car had been taken from under the force's nose - and this at a time when wartime security demanded all cars should be immobilised when parked.

Happily, says Mr Morley, the tale never surfaced. Until now, that is.

Make mine a jumbo steak!

HOW do you dispose of a dead elephant weighing five tons?

That was question asked here two weeks ago when a reader recalled the demise in Accrington in 1845 of the travelling circus jumbo after which the town's now-gone Elephant Street was named.

Thanks to Helmshore local historian John Simpson, Looking Back has the answer - in part, that is.

But, first, a warning to animal lovers and vegetarians to read no further...because they barbecued the beast as pub grub! Well, bits of it, that is. This gruesome grill was recalled 50 years on when more elephants arrived in Accrington, presumably with another circus, by the Ramsbottom Observer, whose report of June 14, 1895, Mr Simpson sends me. It says: "Very few of the crowd who saw the herd of elephants in Accrington the other day will remember the feast of elephant's flesh which occurred in the town about 50 years ago. One of the survivors of the feast thus narrated the story.

"One of Wombwell's elephants had died on the site of the street now known as Elephant Street. After the skin had been removed from the huge beast, some Accrington men at the Oak Tree Inn were struck with the brilliant idea of feasting on elephant's flesh.

They accordingly cut off steaks to the weight of about 10 pounds and had them cooked at the Oak Tree Inn, with every possible addition which the cook thought might make the dish appetising.

"The gourmands fell to the elephant-beef repast with gusto but they were soon tired out.

"They cut the steaks up very fine but in the end they declared it was like eating shoe laces. Several of those men are living in Accrington today. The marvel is that they survived a week."

Ugh!

Incidentally, Mr Simpson adds that according to the Haslingden historian, the late Major David Halstead, the elephant was called Chuney, rather than Chimey, as our report had it.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.