AN AMERICAN writer's plea in the BEN for help to trace two people featured in a famous Humphrey Spender snap of cotton-town Bolton has brought another request for help.

For Harwood's area librarian Ken Beevers is also seeking the names and whereabouts of the impish pair featured in the photo.

The picture is one of the celebrated collection of monochrome prints recording life in the Bolton area in 1937-38. They show work-town Bolton through the lens of American photographer Spender, who was later fiercely criticised for featuring only the "warts".

Ken, who used to work at Farnworth library, used the picture in an exhibition there in 1994 and was delighted when a man called in to say he was the boy pictured weeing into a puddle.

It was taken not in Bolton, like most of the Spender pictures, but in Farnworth near the Ellesmere Street Independent Methodist Church, which was demolished in 1974. Ken made a note of the man's name, but mislaid it when he transferred to Harwood.

The American journalist trying to locate the two photo subjects is Joanne Fowler of the magazine "People". The photo was used on the cover of an album by the group Everything But the Girl, and also on the front cover of the third volume of Bolton born playwright Bill Naughton's autobiography.

Ken said: "I just hope the man will get in touch again or that someone in Farnworth will know of him."

Ken can be contacted on Bolton 304565.

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