We take a look back at Isle of Wight news from previous decades for the week ending 21st October, including a giant octopus found in the River Medina 100 years ago.
30 years ago (1993)
PENSIONER BURIED IN BACK GARDEN
Yarmouth Senior Citizen Albert True was buried at the bottom of his garden because he could not bear the thought of sharing a cemetery with strangers. 82-year-old Albert had died a month previously and his family hired an excavator to dig his final resting place.
40 years ago (1983)
JUDGE CHARGED WITH SMUGGLING DRINK AND TOBACCO
Judge Keith Bruce Campbell and second-hand car dealer Alan Raphael Foreman were accused of jointly smuggling 126 bottles of spirits, 9,460 cigarettes and 500g of tobacco into the United Kingdom. The pair had left Cowes without valid clearance for their goods, which were subject to duty.
50 years ago (1973)
73-YEAR-OLD BRIGHSTONE SPINSTER WINS FOOTBALL POOLS
Miss Dorothy Heathcote, 73, of Heath Cottage Brighstone, won £255,122 from Vernon’s Pools. After winning the pools, Miss Heathcotte planned to sell her thatched cottage and move to the mainland.
70 years ago (1953)
FORMER KOREAN PRISONER OF WAR RETURNS TO BRADING
Korean ex-prisoner-of-war Phillip Wade returned to his home in Brading after some 2-and-a-half years’ captivity in Korea. The D-Day veteran had ‘returned from the dead’ after having been reported missing, following which his parents received a letter from him 6 months later from his POW camp.
His parents attempted to arrange for his German fiancee, Adellide Muller, to come to the Island to meet him but without success. Private Wade had met Miss Muller while serving in Germany. The pair planned to marry in a few months.
Private Wade had requested ‘no fuss’. However, he was greeted in the town with flags and a welcome home banner, and a dinner was provided for the returning soldier and his family at the Town Hall.
80 years ago (1943)
2 ISLE OF WIGHT ARMY OFFICERS ESCAPE FROM POW CAMP
Captain Cecil Thomas from Ryde and Lieut. Gerald Jones of Cowes made a dramatic escape from an Italian prison camp by scaling the wall with the aid of a ladder before joining up with elements of the British Army. Both had been serving with the Hampshire Regiment before being captured near Teboura in North Africa.
100 years ago (1923)
GIANT OCTOPUS CAUGHT IN MEDINA
An octopus measuring more than 5ft from the top of its head to the end of its tentacles was captured by fishermen in the River Medina 3 miles from Cowes.
110 years ago (1913)
BOTTLE-NOSED SHARK CAUGHT IN THE SOLENT
A party of Isle of Wight fishermen caught more than they had bargained for while attempting to catch mackerel off Spitbank Fort when a 9ft bottle-nosed shark became entangled in their nets. The shark was said to have put up a tremendous struggle, causing considerable damage to the net, and at one time it was feared that its capture would result in the overturning of the boat. However, after a game struggle, the fishermen beat it to death.
120 years ago (1903)
CLERGYMAN WARNS OF DANGERS OF TOBACCO
The Rev. T,B, Macnamara, rector of Kingston, gave a sermon on the deterioration of the English race, which he attributed to too early marriages and the abuse of tobacco. He claimed that a vast number of Englishmen were ‘abject slaves to the pipe’ and was unable to believe tobacco was ‘ever intended to be used for the purpose to which man has applied it’.
Claiming that ‘mere boys smoke now’, the rector asked whether the ‘very noticeable decrease of height in the humbler classes is traceable to the habit of smoking so freely indulged in’.
How lovely when the press were not gagged and people could voice their views without some twit poorly attempting to discredit it with an ‘isim’