100 years ago April 11 1908 This week A Girl s Cross Roads is being given at the Camden Theatre. It is a parable of the evils of drink, and the results of alcoholism on the heroine are painted in lurid colours. Four acts and 13 scenes are necessary to m

100 years ago

April 11 1908

This week A Girl's Cross Roads is being given at the Camden Theatre. It is a parable of the evils of drink, and the results of alcoholism on the heroine are painted in lurid colours. Four acts and 13 scenes are necessary to mark the stages of her downfall.

The Master of the New End Workhouse asks that as usual each inmate and officer might have two buns on Good Friday. Chairman: what size? Master: Penny ones. A member: Do the inmates eat them? Master: Yes, one for breakfast and the other for tea. The order for the buns is given.

A correspondent complains of being pestered with street music in West Hampstead, where they get two piano organs in one afternoon, with singing thrown in. He suggests that organ grinding is equal to street begging and is forbidden.

Boatman Pikesley has been compelled to relinquish his duties as attendant at the Hampstead Heath bathing pond, where he has been stationed for 18 years, owing to injuries received in the course of his work. He has been transferred by the London County Council to lighter work in Clissold Park.

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50 years ago

April 11 1958

Diana, the beautiful milk horse, tossed her head proudly as she delivered the milk in Golders Green, displaying her medals and rosettes. For the second year Diana won first prize in her class in the Regent's Park van horse parade on Easter Monday. The 16-year-old chestnut is looked after at the United Dairies Depot in Finchley Road, Childs Hill, which stables another 25 horses.

Sentencing a Hampstead man with a private income of £4,000 a year to 12 months imprisonment on fraud charges, the Clerkenwell magistrates told him: "It's a shocking state of affairs. There ought to be some means of making you pay for your keep while you are in prison. With an income like yours you come out better off than you go in."

Hampstead Children's Cinema Council - enemy of cartoon favourites Tweetie Pie, Mr Magoo and Flash Gordon - has folded after six years, killed by the "general apathy of parents". Asked about Tweetie Pie, the secretary said: "All sorts of horrible things happened to that poor little canary. We considered it most unsuitable."

As for the shocking business of Mr Magoo, she said: "This was another cartoon we felt was unsuitable. After all, Mr Magoo has a physical disability, he is shortsighted. It's not a subject for comedy for children. But we passed the Three Stooges as suitable."

Hampstead Garden Suburb residents association complain of "hideous monstrosities" appearing in the Suburb, including a house painted "a horrible light mauve" and monstrosities of scaffold-like aerials on the chimney pots.

25 years ago

April 6 1983

One of Henry Moore's great sculptures, part of his personal gift to the nation, is now on show in a landscape setting on the edge of Hampstead Heath at Kenwood. His two-piece reclining figure in bronze, moved from outside the Tate Gallery, is at the top of the sloping meadow on the right-hand side of Kenwood House facing south towards the lake.

A group of doctors asked to review the future of the Whittington Hospital, Highgate, because of impending expenditure cuts, has called for the removal of 250 patients from one of its three blocks as part of a bid to save money. The closing of the Victoria Wing would save an estimated £800,000. Part of the plan is the building of either a bridge or tunnel across Highgate Hill linking the two wings at a cost of more than £1million. The total outlay would come to at least £4 million.

An estimated 1000 people, from babies to old campaigners, travelled from Camden on Good Friday to take their places in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament's human chain in Berkshire.

Swiss Cottage is to get another massive office block, with plans for a five-storey office development for the Swiss Terrace site opposite the Underground station.

Cromwell House, the Grade 1-listed Jacobean mansion on Highgate Hill, has been sold to a property company provided the house, which dates from 1637, can be converted for both office and residential use.

10 years ago

April 10 1998

Authors, broadcasters and actors have mobilised to resist the threatened closure of up to six libraries in Camden, including Melvyn Bragg, Fay Weldon, Margaret Forster, actor Roger Lloyd Pack and broadcaster Joan Bakewell .

The £75million project to modernise the West Country main line faces disruption because of bats roosting in a railway tunnel. The protected species are believed to be in the old Parkway tunnel in Camden Town. Railtrack will have to redesign and reschedule works to avoid disturbance during their breeding/roosting periods. "It is unbelievable," said a local resident, "They do not want to cause trouble to these bats but they have no problem in causing trouble for residents."

Campaigners fighting to save Hampstead's oldest coffee shop, the Coffee Cup in Hampstead High Street, from redevelopment warn that if permission is granted, they will seek a judicial review. A 7,000-signature petition urges developers to leave the place alone.

A woman who kept 28 diseased and howling dogs crammed inside her bedsit has been banned from keeping any animals for 12 months. The 28 Yorkshire terriers were kept in a squalid bedsit in Finchley Road, Hampstead, and allowed to scamper around freely inside or kept locked up in boxes to keep them quiet.

The ashes of the distinguished German film actor Conrad Veidt, who became a Hollywood star, are brought back to Golders Green Crematorium 55 years after his death.

Compiled by Anne Rowe