THE ARCHIVES

100 years ago

Patrick Gallagher, the well-known Celtic football player, who is employed as a carpenter in a Clydebank shipyard, was charged at Glasgow Munitions Tribunal yesterday with being absent from work without leave. Gallagher did not appear, but sent a letter stating that he had sustained an injury to his knee and he found that rest helped it. A representative from the Ministry, who was prosecuting, said this case could best be characterised as a slacker. Gallagher was fined the full penalty, £3.

50 years ago

Mr John Ross JP, who has run the Gloucestershire village of Horsley, near Stroud, single-handedly since July said last night: “I would do it again. It has been very peaceful.” It was his last full day in the role of chairman and one-man committee of Horsley Parish Council, thrown into disarray three months ago when eight parish councillors, including the chairman resigned. The trouble was over an “outsider” being elected to represent Horsley on Stroud Rural Council. Mr Ross did not join in the protest.

25 years ago

Dundee-born Karen Stiven has a problem weighing heavy on her hands with the latest addition to her “family”. Karen, whose parents now live in Dunfermline, is head keeper of the hoofstock at Edinburgh Zoo where she is helping look after a three-week-old pygmy hippo called Poppy. Karen said: “She is our seventh baby pygmyhippo to be born here at the zoo and she is thriving under the watchful eyre of mum and dad, Fred and Freda.” Pygmy hippos are native to West Africa.

One year ago

A Murthly man has told of his surprise at discovering he shared a record with his long-time friend. The Courier reported that Bernard McLuskey had claimed that he and his brother William could possibly be the heaviest twins born in Scotland. However, his friend Henry Neil has revealed that the McLuskeys only equalled a record he and his twin Adam had set more than 10 years previously, when they were born in Ayr in 1932. Like Bernard and William, one twin was 9lb while the other was 8lb 8oz.