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News of the Week

"News of the Week" - taken from The Wigan Observer And District Advertiser, 1860. Material kindly loaned by Paul Byrne.

News not relating to Wigan was covered by the local press at the time, but usually by means of a single line or small paragraph. Here are some odd ones.

Friday, February 3, 1860.

A heartless father at Paisley has been sentenced to sixty days' imprisonment for turning two boys (aged eleven and eight years) into the street before daylight, entirely naked.


On Friday afternoon, the students attending the Edinburgh University commenced snowballing in the quadrangle, and carried on their sport without respect of persons, the professors themselves not being allowed to escape.


A lady visitor at Brighton rushed into a tradesman's house to search herself for something that was crawling about her, and there was found in the trellis-work of her crinoline a kitten, which had got there at the last house she had visited.


Friday, February 10, 1860.

At Pickering, in Yorkshire, a coroner's jury has returned a verdict of wilful murder against a woman named Sarah Spence, a native of Thornton, for the destruction of the life of her illegitimate child by throwing it into a cess-pool.


Near Ludlow, a few days since, a boy traversing some open ground walked upon the slight grass-grown covering of an unused and unprotected shaft, and fell through to the bottom, a depth of 84 feet. Next day his cries were heard, and he was rescued.


At Beckington, Mr. Richard Sutton, aged 35, has killed himself by drinking. He drank excessively of ale from Thursday to Wednesday - in fact he drank night and day, and emptied an 18-gallon barrel in five days; he also drank a pint of pure brandy on the Thursday.


Friday, February 17, 1860.

A son of Mrs. Fanny Scott's, Beckwithshay, Yorkshire, named Mark Scott, drowned himself recently because his father found fault with his marriage.


Whilst Lieutenant and Adjutant Lambert, of the 84th regiment, was on parade ground at Sheffield, on Friday, he broke a blood vessel, fell down, and expired. He had risen from the ranks.


A youth, sixteen years of age, was last week fatally poisoned at Yeadon, through taking strychnine, which was given him as medicine by a grocer, who - the lad having recently come from Wales, and being unable to speak English perfectly - understood him to ask for vermin powder.


Friday, February 24, 1860.

A Lincolnshire paper records the deaths of fifteen persons averaging 77 years of age. This reflects chiefly to the more level districts of the county, formerly the much-dreaded fens.


A Dublin pickpocket, in trying to escape from the police, ran into a house, went upstairs, and threw himself from a third-floor window. Although he fell on a skylight and went smashing through it, he escaped any injury except a very slight scratch on one of his fingers.


At an inquest at Coleshill on the body of an old woman who had been accidently burned, one of the jurymen, Mr. Thompson, an old and infirm person, was so overcome by the painful sight that the body presented that he fell down dead after he had walked a few yards from the cottage where lay the remains of the poor old woman.


News of the Week
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