100 YEARS AGO:

AN inquiry was held at Worcester Police Court on Tuesday touching the death of Edith Mary Josephine Hall, a 10 year-old child of Lansdowne Square, whose death occurred early on Saturday morning at the fruit fields of Mount Pleasant Hall. The jury were strongly of the opinion that there had been a certain amount of negligence on the part of the parents, and severely censured them.

Joseph Henry Hall, the father, said he walked to the fruit picking fields but sent his wife and four children by train to Pershore. He took the family there thinking it would do them some good.

They slept in a barn with 18 more people. The second afternoon, the deceased child went with other children and apparently ate strawberries and gooseberries. She later complained of being sick and was treated with salt and water and some brandy and also liquorice powder, but became much worse and was delirious. She died the following morning. Dr John Rusher said a post-mortem examination revealed much inflammation of the intestines, accentuated by eating green fruit. The body had been washed by some kind friend but the head was in a most filthy state. Death was, in his opinion, due to gastro-enteritis, and the jury returned a verdict in accordance with the medical evidence. The coroner censured the parents for having thoroughly neglected the child and said poverty was no excuse for uncleanness. He advised them to be very careful with their other children.

150 YEARS AGO:

ELISA Cotton, a girl from Dolday, blind in one eye, was brought up by PC Hill for being drunk at the circus on Friday night last and making a row, together with her mother and father. She was discharged with a reprimand but her mother Elizabeth Cotton was charged with being drunk and using obscene language in St Nicholas Street and was fined five shillings or, in default, seven days’ in gaol.

200 YEARS AGO:

ON Saturday, a boy about seven years of age, whose parents live in Sidbury, being left in the house by himself and in attempting to reach a tea kettle off the fire, set fire to his pinbefore, [sic] which communicated the flames to other parts of his dress and burnt him in so dreadful a manner that he now lies at our infirmary with little hopes of recovery.

250 YEARS AGO:

LAST Saturday night, as Edward Jenks, a publican and shopkeeper at Bishampton, near Pershore, was returning home from our market at Worcester, he was stopped by two footpads near the county gallows at Battenhall, who knocked him off his horse, robbed him of all his money and a wallet containing several things he had bought, then left him bleeding on the ground, almost senseless. A person soon after coming along the road took him up and brought him back to town to be taken care of and he is in a fair way to recovery. The wallet was found last Tuesday near where the robbery was committed but part of the things were taken out and in their place was left a pair of stockings belonging to one of the rogues.