THE ARCHIVES

100 years ago

Dundee Housing and Town Planning Committee desire a grant-in-aid of £287,550 for their three housing schemes. The committee was yesterday engaged framing their answers to the schedule received from the Local Government Board in regard to the housing of the working classes. The number of new houses estimated as being required to provide accommodation for the working classes was 6,000, and it was pointed out that there have also been 2,000 war marriages.

50 years ago

A 76-year-old woman successfully warded off four young assailants in a Dundee street. The woman, Martha Henderson, was walking in Carmichael Street, near Kinloch Street, when four boys followed her. One jostled her while another attempted to steal her handbag. She retained her grip on the bag but was spun round and fell to the ground. Her glasses broke and she sustained a cut above her right eye and bruising to her nose, shoulder and knee. The youths, aged between 12-14, ran off.

25 years ago

A woman escaped an attempted hijack by driving straight home to her husband – with her would-be abductor still in the back of the van. Mrs Andrea Wood stopped outside the Humberside house and jumped out of her van, screaming to her husband for help. David Hood, 28, who had been working on his car outside, tried to grapple the stranger but he escaped, police said. Mrs Hood’s van had been left unlocked in a car park while she returned a library book. She spotted the man in her mirror.

One year ago

Campaigners who have been battling to save and restore St Ninian’s Cathedral in Perth are on the brink of hitting their first, crucial fundraising target. They are within touching distance of the £750,000 which is needed to go ahead with the first phase of a project which will ultimately cost more than £3 million. It means that work to repair the roof and the leaking rainwater drainage system on one of Perth’s few A-listed buildings is expected to start early next year.