'A CHAPTER of accidents' was the headline in the Gazette a century ago, showing the kind of everyday hazards our forebears had to put up with.

The story opened with the misfortune of Herbert Hall, a youth from St John's, Worcester, who was admitted to the Malvern Rural Hospital "having sustained a severe cut on the head through a fall on the Worcester Beacon".

"The wound was dressed and the boy was, later in the day, sent to his home."

The same day Gertrude Baggett, aged 16, of Cowleigh Road, appeared at the same hospital, with "wounds of the eyes, nose and side" caused by falling from a roundabout on the common.

"The girl was attended to by Dr C H East and is progressing favourably," said the paper.

A more serious case was that of Lily James, a domestic servant employed at Newland Grange.

While stretching to reach an article from a kitchen shelf, she "slipped and fell into a copper of boiling water, scalding her feet and legs badly".

A married woman called Alice Willis, of Hilton Road, Worcester, was knocked down by a cyclist.

While she was crossing the road just above the Malvern Link railway bridge, the cyclist, Henry Pritchard, also of Worcester, "dashed into her with considerable force".

Mrs Willis suffered a cut on the head and Pritchard had his face bruised.

"Dr Weir attended to the in- jured pair and the woman was subsequently conveyed home in a cab."