WILLIAM Parkes, aged 46, said to be an "old offender" appeared at the Quarter Sessions in Worcester charged with stealing a potato fork valued at 2/6 (12.5p) - the property of William Walters, of North Bromsgrove. It was his seventh conviction - a fact that helped the jury find him guilty and a sentence of nine months' hard labour.

TOWNSFOLK were eagerly looking forward to an Easter Monday visit by Ginnet's world famous circus. The proprietor was offering a guinea to anyone who could tell him the exact date in 1839 when it last visited the town. Prices for the three performances were 2/- (10p) to 3d (1p). A grand parade around the town was planned before the shows started.

THE Messenger had got hold of a photograph of an eight-pint teapot bearing the words Archdeacon Club, Bromsgrove, dating, it was thought, from 1780 to 1800. Extensive inquiries had failed to throw any light on the club. It may have been one of the many women's clubs which proliferated at that time, the paper said, possibly named after the Hon St Andrew St John Archdeacon of Worcester and one time vicar of St John's Church, in Bromsgrove.

THE authorities were hoping that the smallpox case in Bromsgrove would be an isolated one. Mary Evans, a 55-year-old tramp from Lancashire, had been diagnosed with a severe case of the dreaded disease and had been admitted to the workhouse infirmary after falling sick. She had since been transferred to the wood and iron temporary isolation hospital at Woodgate, which had latterly been taken there from Falsham Pits in Droitwich.

A SERIOUS accident happened as a nurse was being conveyed in a hansom cab loaned by Mr Gilman, of the Dolphin pub in Bromsgrove, to look after the smallpox patient Mary Evans at the hospital. The cab driver, instead of following the road, drove across fields unaware it had deep furrows. The vehicle toppled over and was smashed beyond repair. The nurse suffered a deep head wound, which needed treatment at the Cottage Hospital.