50 years ago

25 years ago

Four council workers were suspended yesterday after a load of contaminated food went missing en route to a council incinerator at Hillhouse, Hamilton. Urgent warnings were sent out throughout Lanarkshire last night, alerting the public not to eat any of the food. A local baker had called in Hamilton District Council’s environmental health officers to destroy 500 puddings that had “gone off’’. But police were alerted when a number of the defrosted sweets turned up for sale at a nursing home.

Students occupying the common room of the David Hume Tower at Edinburgh University this weekend were given a special performance of a semi-nude play that was criticised when it was staged at a Birmingham University festival of drama. Requiem For Romeo And Juliet, by Les Treteaux Libres, was part of the programme of “entertainment and enlightenment” arranged for the sit-in by militant students continuing their demonstration against fines by the disciplinary committee last week.

100 years ago

The death has taken place in the Home Of The Little Sisters Of The Poor, Greenock, of Mrs Elizabeth Mccusker, who was reputed to be in her 109th year. She was a native of County Monaghan, Ireland, and came to Scotland when a young woman. She worked for more than 50 years in Birkmyre’s mill in Port Glasgow. Her husband, a sailor, was drowned at sea and a family of four children have all predeceased her. Up until about a year ago her memory and intelligence were remarkable.