From our Files: Speedboat accident...bus driver shortage...‘free sex alley’
75 YEARS AGO
THE Women Citizens’ Association, endowed as it is with an enquiring mind, paid a visit last week to New Milton Post Office to see His Majesty’s mails and his more fascinating telephone exchange in action.
Everybody was suitably awed by the maze of cables and fuses, and most of them learned, for the first time, that a telephone is an electrical instrument and that New Milton, although one of the smaller exchanges, is wired for 2,000 lines.
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DURLSTON Court School, Barton-on-Sea, two-thirds of which was destroyed by fire on May 18th, 1947, was re-opened on Friday afternoon in last week, the ceremony being performed by Admiral Sir Henry Pridham-Wippell, K.C.B., C.V.0. It is now practically fire-proof, the new building being of reinforced concrete, and woodwork is at the minimum. Class-rooms and dormitories are light and airy; floors and passages are of a special compound and central heating has been installed. It is estimated the re-building has cost approximately £20,000.
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NEW MILTON Rotary Club on Tuesday held a discussion on the abolition of hanging for murder at their weekly meeting on Tuesday, when there was a difference of opinion on the subject although no vote was taken.
Rotarian Dr Devereux thought that capital punishment was a great deterrent and that imprisonment for life, which was advocated by Sec. Reg Burton, would be an even greater punishment.
50 YEARS AGO
RESIDENTS had to be alerted to the imbalance of the population and to the need to stabilise it, Dr H. M. Tuddenham warned a meeting of New Milton Ratepayers’ Association last week.
He referred to the difficulty of finding professional and executive people to come into the area and spoke of the need for an overall plan for the community.
Another member suggested that tax relief should only be given on one home to discourage people from buying second homes in the area, which were occupied only for short periods each year.
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HANTS & Dorset Motor Services Ltd, who have an acute labour shortage problem at the Lymington depot, now have two women bus drivers, Lyndhurst Parish Council learned on Tuesday. “We have also trained conductors as drivers,” traffic manager Mr J. Wadsworth told the council in a letter.
He was explaining why the 5.20pm service 56 from Lymington to Southampton on May 1st, 2nd and 3rd could not be operated. The reason was the shortage of staff.
Council member Mr Max Wilson said: “If the bus company have problems, they should take down the time tables and not mislead the public.”
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A MILFORD licensee who fell out of a speedboat and was then run over by it twice as it circled, was lucky to escape with injuries no more severe than those which kept her in hospital a couple of days.
On Saturday, Mrs Beryl Tomlinson, licensee of the White Horse Inn, Milford, who owns a speedboat powered with a 40hp outboard, was towing two ski novices around Hurst Bay. Late in the afternoon one of them lost his balance when half-a-mile off shore.
Mrs Tomlinson told the A&T: “I then shut down the engine to tick over, sat on the side of the boat and gave him instructions on how to get back on his skis. When he was ready, I put the boat into full throttle. But I had forgotten to straighten the engine, so instead of shooting off in a straight line, I went into a tight circle, and the boat tipped me in the water still on full throttle.”
25 YEARS AGO
MILFORD Parish Council has agreed to support the newly formed football club with the necessary alterations which they need to carry out to their sports pavilion.
Club manager Don Emberson explained that in order to register with the Hampshire Football League, the team must have a separate shower room for referees to use. “Without separate shower facilities, women have had to change in their cars and then wait until they get home to have a shower,” he said. “We are trying to move with the times. As women’s football is growing, so are the number of women referees.”
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AFTER almost three hours’ deliberations, Brockenhurst parish councillors were feeling a trifle weary as tier meeting was drawing to a close on Tuesday night – until Mrs Moira Williamson made her fellow councillors sit up with a start: “I think the name of Angel Valley should be changed to Free Sex Alley. I’ve not been there myself – it’s only what I have been told by people. I suggested they should get on to the police.
“Things are going on there at lunchtimes, in the evenings, at all times of the day. The debris left behind is very annoying. It’s getting worse than ever.”
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IT is only a matter of time before there is a serious accident between a cyclist and a horse, a member of the New Forest Equestrian Society told the Verderers’ Court on Monday.
Chris Aldhous used his presentment to address this issue, saying: “The vast majority of cyclists in the Forest have little or no experience of animals and do not know how to behave.
“Horses and ponies will work quite happily with cycles, but even the most bombproof animals are liable to shy when, without warning, they suddenly hear the swish of tyres behind them.
“Many cyclists appear, in all innocence, to treat a horse as though it were another bike, not slowing down and passing very close.”
