WILLIAM Newbould, of Hill Top, Bromsgrove, was fined five shillings for driving a wagon which he had no control over in High Street. PC Lloyd said at the Bromsgrove Petty Sessions he saw a dray loaded with manure coming down the road with the driver asleep. Mr Newbould said he had been up many hours and might have been ''on the doze.''

100 years ago

April 29, 1899

A JURY at the inquest of Susan Seymour, of All Saints Road, whose body was found hanging at her home, returned a verdict that she had committed suicide during a fit of temporary insanity. They heard that the 59-year-old's lodger, Mary Eden, found her with a handwritten note saying she had suffered pain in her head and had not had one night's sleep in three years.

THE Messenger reported a nightingale, which rarely visits the neighbourhood, had been heard in the grounds of Perry Hall, Kidderminster Road, during the evenings.

FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD labourer Chas Morris, of Mill Lane, had one of his fingers smashed while he was working at Bromsgrove School after a large piece of iron fell onto his hand. He was treated at the Cottage Hospital and released later the same day.

50 years ago

April 30, 1949

AUSTIN works tool setter Joseph Henry Preston, of Alfred's Well, Bromsgrove, died after being crushed by two tonnes of metal. Mr Henry, who had worked for the firm for 25 years, was fitting a die weighing nearly two tonnes into a press when it slipped from a chain and fell on him -- crushing the 39-year-old from the waist down. An inquest jury returned a verdict of accidental death.

AFTER only three years membership, Sir Hugh Chance, the representative for Bromsgrove South Division, was elected vice-chairman of Worcestershire County Council. He was the first Bromsgrove member to hold one of the council's chief positions.

WELL-KNOWN Barnt Green resident Francis Merry died at his home in Plymouth Road. The 67-year-old manager of Barnt Green Church of England School left behind a wife and two children. His ashes were interred at the family grave in Alvechurch.

BROMSGROVE boy Alan Cox, of Churchfields, who was spending a month at the Outward Bound Sea School, Aberdovey, was among a dozen boys from the school to meet the Duke of Edinburgh at an appeals dinner in London.

SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD George Brown, of Foxwalks Farm, Bromsgrove, was among a group of people who left the country on the SS Mooltan to seek a new career in Australia.

25 years ago

May 3, 1974

WELL-KNOWN artist Wallace Millard, aged 78, was found dead at his home in Ashmead Drive, Rednal. The discovery was made by a neighbour who called to see him.

HOPES that members of the Bromsgrove Royal British Legion would soon have a new £30,000 headquarters were raised at a meeting of the council's highways and planning committee. Conservative and Labour councillors forgot their political differences and overturned a recommendation that they should not allow the legion to build a temporary licensed club and car park in Bromsgrove's Gas Square.

SPEED along Barnt Green Road and litter were the main worries at Cofton Hackett's annual parish meeting. Concern was also expressed about the corner of Barnt Green Road near the junction with Cofton Church Lane where a number of accidents had occurred.