100 Years Ago:

AN inquest was held on Monday into the circumstances attending the death of Albert Brooks, a plumber and painter who was killed by falling from a ladder outside the Malvern Post Office on Saturday.

Mary Powell of Lower House Farm, Colwall, said she had her pony and trap outside the post office when a passing cart startled the animal and it backed into the ladder on which the deceased was working six feet up. He fell heavily on to the pavement.

Cecil Hall of North Malvern, who was working with the deceased for Messrs Broad Ltd, on the post office contract, said he saw Brooks fall head first and immediately ran over to him. Brooks did not move and appeared to be dead.

Dr Horton of Malvern Hospital said that when Brooks was brought in, life was extinct, death having been caused, probably instantaneously, by a severe compound fracture of the skull. The jury returned a verdict of accidental death but added the view that in all cases where men were at work on ladders, a second man should be stationed at the foot.

150 Years Ago: BEER house offence. John Bridge, landlord of the Live and Let Live beer house in the parish of Claines, was summonsed at Worcester County Petty Sessions for selling drink during the hours of divine service on Sunday.

Police Sergeant Booth said he saw two little girls go into the defendant's house about noon on the day in question and when they came out he inquired what they had got and found it to be half-a-gallon of beer.

The jar containing the beer was in a basket. Defendant told the court that he heard his wife tell the girls that she was not in the habit of selling on Sundays but as their mother had some friends at her house she would send her some. However, the bench found the case proved and fined the defendant £2 and 14s.6d costs and warned him for the future.

200 Years Ago: A person yesterday arrived in Worcester with intelligence that a man had been apprehended at Plymouth who is strongly suspected to be Richard Heming, the supposed murderer of the Rev Mr Parker of Oddingley in this county.

The information having been communicated to T Carden Esq, one of the magistrates of this city, he dispatched proper persons to Plymouth to ascertain the truth of this intelligence, and from all the circumstances there appears little doubt that the person confined is Heming.