A 39-years-old joiner, Donald Neilson, from near Bradford, was being charged today with the murder of Shropshire heiress Lesley Whittle, 17. Lesley was snatched from her home on the night of January 14 for a £50,000 ransom. Seven weeks later, after attempts by her brother Ronald to pay the ransom had failed, her body was found hanging from a length of wire 60ft. down a drainage shaft near Kidsgrove.

PARENTS, upset by Bolton's discordant arrangements for teaching children music, have formed their own music centre. Sixty children have been making music together in a nissen hut behind St Simon and St Jude's Church in Rishton Lane since October. The group's chairman, Mr Brian lddon, of Woburn Avenue, Bolton, said: 'Music teaching facilities -- particularly in primary schools -- have been chaotic since local government was reorganised last year.'

50 YEARS AGO

THOSE people who live in the villages to the north of Bolton are seldom envied in winter, by townsfolk. 'Very nice in summer', they remark, 'but in winter, ugh! Think of the inconvenience and the cold weather.' Villagers have learned of the many compensations there are. Where, for instance, except in a village, could an incident such as the following have occurred?

The driver of an early morning bus from Belmont noticed, when he had driven through the village, that several of his regular passengers were not on board, and that others had not seemed to expect him so early. He promptly turned round his bus, drove back through the village, and picked up those passengers he had left behind.

125 YEARS AGO

A SAD story has (says the Bristol Times) just been fittingly terminated by the death of the three persons who were its heroes. One of these actors was a man of high scientific attainments, an astronomer and a Fellow of the Royal Society; the second was a pretty, but illiterate woman; the third a miscreant, who has died in prison. The learned man was Mr Carrington, who lived for many years in a romantic spot, at which he had constructed an observatory, at Churt, near Farnham. One day Mr Carrington met in Regent-street, a good-looking and attractive young woman from Bristol, but of a much lower station than he was.

Unfortunately for the happiness of all three, she had had relations with a man named Rodway, but, although Mr Carrington knew partly her previous history, he married the fair and frail one, who, however, deceived her husband to this extent, that she represented Rodway as her brother.

This fellow kept Mrs Carrington in abject fear of him, and, by working on her fears, he continually received money from the frightened woman by threatening to reveal her deception to her husband. At length, desperate at losing his sweetheart, and being refused more money, and failing to induce Mrs Carrington to run off with him, he visited the lonely home at Churt, and so savagely assaulted her that she narrowly escaped death at his hands.

He was apprehended, sentenced to 20 years' penal servitude for attempted murder, and, shortly afterwards, died in gaol. About a fortnight ago, Mrs Carrington was found dead in bed by her husband, and a few days after the inquest in this case was concluded, the police, noticing an unusual quietness about the house, broke open the door, and found Mr Carrington lying dead upon the mattress. Thus ends a singular romance, the elements of which, if they had formed the foundations of a novel, would be regarded as impossible.