Looking Back, with Eric Leaver

PART OF the pleasure of trips down Memory Lane is the surprising sidetracks on the way - such as the one that this week diverts us from a disappearing toffee factory to the days when soccer crowds took some licking..

It all starts with archive-burrowing reader June Huntingdon digging out the old advertisement for Tom Hodgson's "steam confectionery works" which is all but vanishing as an Accrington landmark after being founded in 1870.

The Cotton Street works used to turn out two-and-a-half tons of toffee a week before it closed in the 1970s after 100 years of satisfying the sweet-toothed customers of more than 2,000 confectionery shops in Lancashire. They produced more than 70 types of sweets, including pear drops, aniseed balls, treacle and butter toffee.

In its day "Toffy" Hodgson's must have produced 13,000 tons of delights that were consumed in two-ounce and quarter-pound lots. But there was also a not-so-sweet era when there were hardly any to be had - during the days of rationing.

It was on July 26, 1942, that wartime sugar shortages first put the bite on sweet sales.

The government granted everyone a measly weekly allowance of just two ounces and it was not until February 4, 1953, that the restrictions were lifted at last - a date which leads us a little closer to old-time football fever.

In the austere interval of rationing - which lasted for almost 14 years altogether until the last restricted commodity, meat, went on free sale on July 4, 1954 - sweet suckers had a blissful 16-week binge that ended with the government deciding they had guzzled too much. It was on Super Sunday, April 24, 1949, that sweets rationing first ended. And, like the rest of the country, East Lancashire went chocaholic and bananas on bonbons.

Few shops opened on Sundays in those days but the confectionery outlets that did that day were soon shut too - they had been cleaned out.

In Burnley, there were queues at the toffee shops and several reintroduced rationing themselves, with one restricting customers to two bars of chocolate each. In Rawtenstall, another shopkeeper imposed a six-ounce ration but still sold out.

On the Monday, when many more sweet shops were open, the rush was even greater. The Northern Daily Telegraph reported that, in Burnley, people were spending as much as 15 shillings (75p) a time - worth almost a day's wage in those days.

And in Accrington, after an hectic day behind the counter, one trader accurately predicted: "If it carries on like this, they will probably start rationing again."

Carry on it did - to the extent that, by mid-summer, demand led to a widespread shortage of stocks and queues forming at shops. So the government acted by reintroducing rationing on August 14. It was almost three-and-a-half years before the restrictions on sweets were lifted for good. But when the day finally came in 1953, there was nothing like the 1949 rush - largely because customers were satisfied with the six-ounce weekly ration that had been in force since the end of December, 1951, when the reimposed 1949 limit was eased. Indeed, on the day sweets rationing ended, one East Lancashire retailer reported that many people had not bothered to take up their six-ounce allocation anyway, so it was not surprising that they were largely ignoring the new freedom to buy even more.

But at a sweet shop on Blackburn's Boulevard that day, a reporter did find a small queue - and that the rationing habit was hard to shake off. For customers were still offering the now-useless coupons and, behind the counter, the assistant was still dutifully clipping them from their ration books.

However, in Burnley one wag thought the coupons might still have a value in exchange for a commodity that was truly scarce - tickets for the upcoming FA Cup fifth round tie at Turf Moor between Burnley and Arsenal. In one of the town's sweet shops, he advertised a whole 1,000 sweets coupons in exchange for two tickets for the game.

Indeed, so sought-after were the tickets that, when they went on sale at the stadium a few days later, 37,000 people rushed for them - 30,000 of them in the main queue for the 2s 6d (12p) tickets for the ground and the rest for tickets for the enclosure. Those at the front had waited 12 hours in temperatures 12 degrees below freezing. So huge was the demand that the main queue snaked, several yards wide, for one and a half miles - all way from the ground, along Belvedere Road, up Ormerod Road, along Ridge Avenue and down Brunshaw Road, so that the tail was just 200 yards from where the ticket booths at Turf Moor were doing a roaring trade. At one point, with tens of thousands still queuing, a rumour swept the crowds that only 1,000 tickets were left - leading to a dangerous surge that the police had to control, extricating several youngsters who were at risk of being trampled underfoot.

But it was not only at Burnley that Cup fever was raging. Coach owners in Blackburn reported that a black market had sprung up there among fans seeking to travel to the Turf Moor match, with the 10s 6d (52p) stand tickets changing hands for £2 and ground tickets being sold for 10s (50p), four times their face value.

On the big day, 52,122 people packed Burnley's ground and the Clarets lost by two goals to nil.

But the home fans could buy all the toffees they wanted to sweeten their sorrow.

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