25 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, October 7, 1972

A BOLTON Labour alderman, who yesterday won an appeal on a £400 slander damages award against him, said today: 'This is absolutely wonderful.' Ald Peter Lowe, aged 68, a retired shopkeeper, added: 'Justice has been done'.

Mr Robert Horrocks, a former Conservative councillor and a prominent Bolton businessman, to whom the damages were awarded originally, said in a statement today: 'In the two courts, it was supported that Ald Lowe's attack upon me was badly founded. That I have won and yet lost is an appalling indictment of the law'.

Yesterday's Court of Appeal refused Mr Horrocks leave to appeal to the house of Lords. It also refused application for a new trial. In a High Court case in July last year, Ald Lowe had been held to have slandered Mr Horrocks at a Bolton Council meeting in 1969.

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, October 8, 1947

A HUSBAND surprised the Superior Court in Los Angeles when, in applying for a divorce, he also asked that arrangements should be made for him to hand over his pay cheque to his wife each week for safe keeping.

'She's much better at money matters than I am,' he said. The court arranged for this to be done on condition that his ex-wife would allow him five dollars a week for tobacco, movies, and fare money, together with free use of one room in their house.

The wife agreed to continue cooking his meals, doing his laundry, and to pay all the household expenses.

125 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, October 8, 1872

AT the Borough Court on Thursday, a middle-aged woman named Catherine Morris, of Mill-street, applied for a magistrates' order to commit her son, aged eight years - an intelligent looking lad - to the Industrial School. She stated that the lad was an illegitimate child, and she received 2s 6d from his father towards his maintenance; but, having to go out to work during the day, she could not see that the lad attended school. She lived alone with the lad, and had no-one to look after him. He was in the habit of spending his school-pence, but she had not given him any for about two months. On some days he would be out of the house until ten o'clock in the evening, and she did not know where he was. He had attended the Parish Church and All Saints' Sunday Schools occasionally, but she had never taken him herself - she had sent him with other children. The bench refused the order, Dr Livy, presiding magistrate, remarking that she ought to be able to look after him, or go into lodgings and pay someone to take care of him.

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