THE first BEN was a perfect mirror of its town and times; adverts offered the rich £1 shares in the New Nantymwyn Mining Extension Company - and the poor were offered dogskin gloves at three-pence-halfpenny per pair.

Small advertisements on the front page publicised "penny readings" or "pleasant evenings for working people" when the illiterate could gather round a reader in a church hall or schoolroom and hear a story for a copper or two.

Those with more to spare could get themselves off to Weston's Theatre to witness "The Great Sensation Drama - Kathleen Mavourneen", which starred theatre owner Mr J Weston.

The "hard sell" was a long way off as firms shyly proffered their services. In their own ad, Tillotson and Son led the field in coyness with their restrained and charming "Tillotson and Son respectfully intimate that they are now prepared to execute all kinds of letterpress printing."

Readers were assured that the news was the latest per the electric International Telegraph Company and duly received the results of racing at Warwick and the state of the commercial markets; the Manchester market in yarn was "firm" and from Newcastle Cattle Market came the ambiguous little item: "Supply large. Sheep small".

The political news of the day brought columns of faithfully reported discussion on the Reform Bill (which, passed as the Reform Act later that year, gave the vote to nearly one million people by enfranchising most male urban ratepayers) to amend the representation of the people - even, as one speaker put it, "the lowest classes of the peasantry". Politicians were not in the habit of massaging the egos of the common folk.

And, years before Robert Tressell wrote his essay on the iniquities of life for the working classes, Bolton's "ragged-trousered philanthropists" were proving themselves to be no easy meat for their managers - plumbers were reported to be in the third week of their strike because master plumbers would not concede a uniform rate for the job irrespective of skill.

There were, however, to be no perks for Bolton's lower orders as evidenced by the public notice from the Borough of Bolton which informed: "The men employed in the Scavenging Department are prohibited from asking for or receiving any gratuities for emptying Privies or Ashpits". They would be sacked if they did, warned the quaintly titled Inspector of Nuisances.

Readers pursued court cases as avidly then as they do now. They were able to read how "a genteel-looking woman named Nancy Rowbotham" sought the protection of the Borough Court. Her husband had absconded shortly after their marriage, but returned when she had "become in a position to maintain herself by her own industry" - or, in short, had cash he might squander.

Fortunately, the court was prepared to help Nancy prevent the errant husband availing himself of her hard-won savings.

Social reports, probation orders and second chances were not matters the courts of the day had to bother about and retribution was swift and certain.

A Halliwell labourer charged with stealing two gill pots from the Waterloo Inn, Blackburn Road, got seven days' hard labour for his pot-purloining.

A 19-year-old received six months in jail for "burglariously entering a dwelling house" and a 37-year-old man who assaulted a woman "with great personal violence" got 12 years.

With Easter approaching (a regular feature of the festival, Chatterton's Monster Simnel, was already on display in Bolton Market Place), people studied the properties on offer should they decide on a spring move; a shop in Bury Old Road, Tonge-with-Haulgh, could be rented (along with yard and appurtenances) for £12 a year, and two dwelling houses on the same road could be had for an annual £21.13s.4d. the pair.

And that first BEN contained the first entry in the News' popular Lost and Found service when an honest soul advertised: "FOUND, in Folds Road, a Dark Hen, has a rosy comb. Apply Water Street, Little Bolton".

The four pages of closely-printed type (no illustrations), which was the Bolton Evening News' first edition, afforded us a little glimpse of its readers and those things which concerned them.

It was a tradition, as with most newspapers of the time, that the BEN always ran small advertisements on its front page.

On the first edition, some news was also included on page one, but this soon disappeared to make room for more advertisements.

This tradition was broken with a special Sunday edition to announce the outbreak of the Second World War on September 3, 1939.

The following day the ads were back in place but, on September 5, the practice which began in 1867 was discontinued and news assumed front page status in the BEN for good.