From the archives
25 YEARS AGO STRATHCLYDE Region is to sponsor the commissioning of the 10 concertos that Sir Peter Maxwell Davies will write for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, at a cost of £37,500.
Sir Peter, who is the associate composer conductor of the SCO, is among the most prolific of leading composers. He will write two concertos a year for the soloists of the orchestra and the region’s commitment will extend over a five-year period at a cost of around £7500 a year. The 10 works will be known collectively as The Strathclyde Concertos and will receive their world premieres in Glasgow, beginning with an oboe concerto in April next year. Each concerto will be published and almost certainly eventually recorded. 50 YEARS AGO THE press publicity given to stage and screen stars, and people in “high society,” living “indecent and immoral lives” was criticised yesterday by Lord Wheatley when he addressed Roman Catholic boys attending a Training in Citizenship course at Middleton Residential School Camp, Midlothian.
In the world of “topsy turvy” standards in which we lived, he said it was often the wrong people who were glamourised and glorified. We did not hear nearly enough of the good, decent people living respectable lives and working for the good of their fellow men. The same attitude applied to infringements of the law. 100 YEARS AGO IT was discovered early yesterday morning by the beadle of Dunoon Parish Church that the Sunday School collection and a quantity of wine, left over from the last Sacrament, had been stolen.
He informed the police, and Superintendent Macarthur had the matter investigated.
From the evidence left by the thief the conclusion was come to that he must have attended the evening service and allowed himself to be locked in after the other members of the congregation had gone.
He had made his exit by taking a ventilator out of one of the windows. The ventilator was lying on the grass outside the church. The police have as yet no clue. 150 YEARS AGO ON Monday forenoon, John Rush, labourer, residing at Ferry Road Head, Yoker, fell into a cistern of warm pot ale at the Yoker Distillery, whereby he was so severely scalded that he died this morning about half-past two o’clock.
It is not exactly known how the accident happened, as he had scrambled out of the cistern, and was trying to remove his clothes, when first noticed; but it is supposed that he had ascended to the mouth of the vat for some purpose, when, the steam being very dense, he stepped upon a place where there is normally a plank, but which had been removed, and thus fell into the scalding liquid. The deceased has left a widow and five orphans. 200 YEARS AGO WE understand that Mr Robert Kelly, gardener, at the High Church, practises a very ingenious mode of destroying caterpillars, which he discovered by accident.
A pieces of woollen rag had been blown by the wind into a currant bush; and when taken out was found covered by the leaf-devouring insects.
He immediately placed pieces of woollen cloth in every bush in his garden, and found next day that the caterpillars had universally taken to them for shelter. In this way he destroys many thousand caterpillars every morning.