Memory Corner October 24th 2019

Friday October 24th, 1794

The Jolly Jester

This day is published THE JOLLY JESTER – a rich fund of entertainment of the most laughable and pleasant kind; abounding with effusions of brilliant wit, sprightly sallies of repartee; mirth-inspiring jests, genuine strokes of comic humour… Calculated to promote mirth, good-fellowship, hilarity, conviviality and glee… By Marmaduke Momus, Esq., H.I.B.Q., President of the Imperial Society of Grinners, Price 3s.

 

 

Friday October 22nd, 1819

THE SEA SERPENT has been seen again in Massachusetts Bay, surrounded by several smaller animals, apparently of the same species.  One of the latter was killed – it was about twenty feet long, in make like a viper, back green, with yellow spots.  The great serpent is supposed to be 400 feet long.

 

Friday October 22nd, 1869

SHROPSHIRE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY – this society held its annual meeting on Tuesday at the Lion Hotel, when upwards of seven hundred specimens of apples and pears were exhibited.  Of these, Mr Oldroyd contributed no less than 106 specimens of pears and 112 of apples, many of them being the choicest varieties… The annual dinner took place in the evening.

PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAITS can now be printed with printer’s ink.  They are necessarily as permanent as a printed text and so easy of production that 12,000 may be produced from a single plate in a day.

 

Friday October 24th, 1919

Salop Infirmary in the 1840s

ROYAL SALOP INFIRMARY – last year 1,309 inpatients were treated; 907 operations were performed; 1,853 accidents were attended, and the outpatients’ attendances numbered 17,613.  Our expenditure has advanced 100 per cent, but our income has remained stationary!  It costs 6d per minute to maintain your county hospital, and every hour valuable lives are being saved.  How many lives will you help us save?  Send me a “Bradbury” [£1 note] or a postal order for the VICTORY SHILLING FUND, or get a collecting card from the Secretary. Harold P Sykes, Treasurer.

 

Friday October 26th, 1979

SHREWSBURY BUS USERS face another big increase in fares – the third in the past year – which will mean that ordinary tickets could go up by as much as 8p.  Midland Red’s company secretary, Mr Paul Merryweather, said: “This increase, if granted, will do little towards the elimination of the company’s ongoing deficit.  However, it has been decided to limit the increase because a more substantial fares increase at this time would without doubt incur a high level of passenger resistance… It is expected to lead to some loss of passengers, which is particularly unfortunate at a time when there are sound economic and environmental reasons for encouraging more people to use public transport instead of cars.”

 

Thursday October 27th, 1994

SHREWSBURY CASTLE, closed to the public for over two years since it was badly damaged by an IRA bomb, is due to re-open next Easter.  The refurbishment that has been going on continuously since August 1992 has now cost around a quarter of a million pounds.  The Castle’s Regimental Museum suffered the worst of the explosion, where many irreplaceable exhibits were either damaged or lost.  But the whole castle was affected by smoke and fire damage and had to be cleaned up from top to bottom.  Much of the timberwork was lost and has been replaced with English oak in accordance with the original designs.

AN OPEN DAY was held on Saturday at the new day surgery unit at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.

 

Thursday October 29th, 2009

POTTERY, glass and bones giving an insight into medieval Shrewsbury have been uncovered at the site of a proposed new multi-million-pound doctors’ surgery.  And items showing the development of the Barker Street site through the 15th, 17th and 18thcenturies, including a clay tobacco pipe stem, a medieval cooking pot, and examples of Midlands Purple and Staffordshire Yellow slipware have also been unearthed and will now be kept at Shrewsbury Museum.  Historians believe the area was occupied as far back as Saxon times and has been in use ever since, and the range of items which came out of the four trenches back up that theory.