From the Evening News, January 13, 1993: A HUGE housing development almost as big as the controversial Birtenshaw Farm scheme is planned for Bromley Cross.

Outline planning application to build about 200 homes on land between Hospital Road and Hardmans Lane has been submitted by a Leeds company. The Barratt scheme a mile away at Birtenshaw has led to one of the biggest and longest running protest campaigns in Bolton's history. That will comprise 277 homes in phases. The new proposed development will mean the demolition of the sprawling former Markland Scowcroft steel works, and part of the earmarked site, near the Last Drop Village, is Green Belt land.

25 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, January 13, 1978

NEWS that the Government is soon to give local authorities powers to keep records of the colour of their housing tenants has split opinions in Bolton.

Chairman of the town's housing committee, Counc. Roland Carr, says he is strongly opposed to the plan, which is designed to help prevent coloured people being grouped together on council estates.

But the Bolton Community Relations Council chairman, Mr Vincent Simpson, said today he and his colleagues welcomed the move as a means of checking on possible race discrimination.

Counc. Carr said: "We would no more keep records of a person's colour than we would their political affiliations or their religion."

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, January 12, 1953

SIR,- Could anyone inform us of the reasons why so many married women fill vacancies in offices which a single girl is just as capable of doing?

All we hear in the office is "My husband this", "My husband that". They say they cannot work overtime because they have their husbands' teas to make. If the reason is that they are saving up to buy a house, why didn't they think of that before they got married, instead of doing a single girl out of a job. Yours,

Four Single Typists.

100 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, January 13, 1903

WHEN presiding as Recorder, the late Mr Samuel Pope occasionally took stock, as it were, of the criminality of the borough as viewed in the light of the calendar and his own wide experience as a distinguished member of the English Bar.

Similarly, yesterday, in his charge to the Grand Jury, Mr Taylor directed public attention to a painful fact -- the predominance of the offence of breaking and entering and stealing. Why this class of crime is prevalent, the Recorder confessed he was unable to explain. It is a very serious form of offence against then law and public safety.

A study of the character and conduct of Hooliganism affords an insight into the matter. The more aggressive of the troublesome city type prefer to stab a man in the dark and plunder him. But in the northern town, Bolton among the number, the popular method is to attack property

The criminal population constitute a perplexing human problem. Though many of them seem to lack every moral quality, they are amazingly skilful in their designs on what does not belong to them. Were they to divert their undoubted energy to wholesome channels, they might be a real service instead of a danger to the State.