100 years ago 15 August 1908 Five offers have been made from well-to-do persons anxious to adopt the three-year-old girl recently abandoned on Hampstead Heath and taken by the police to the Workhouse. The Master reports that a woman and her four childre

100 years ago

15 August 1908

Five offers have been made from well-to-do persons anxious to adopt the three-year-old girl recently abandoned on Hampstead Heath and taken by the police to the Workhouse.

The Master reports that a woman and her four children entered the Workhouse some time ago after their home had been sold. The husband was a hardworking man and the Guardians agreed to keep the woman and children until he found work. This he has done and the family have now left the Workhouse to join him.

Another correspondent complains that the enthusiastic crowds press so hard at cricket matches at Parliament Hill and Gospel Oak that it becomes difficult to play. Recently in the course of a match, two of the fieldsmen were so merged in the crowd as to be indistinguishable.

A 35-year-old Hampstead man charged with being drunk and disorderly and using obscene language in Hampstead High Street said he did not think he was drunk, but could not quite remember. He also said he was very excited and suffered a great deal from his nerves. Fined 7s 6d or seven days' imprisonment.

50 years ago

15 August 1958

Mr Henry Brooke, Minister of Housing and Local Government, draws attention to the Litter Act 1958 which empowers local authorities to prosecute people who drop litter.

If you asked residents who lived around the junction of Frognal Lane, Finchley Road and West End Lane what they needed most since the end of May, their answer would almost definitely have been "a post office". Now a sub-post office has been opened in a drapery shop in Finchley Road. Since the previous office closed, people have been walking distances of up to a mile to buy a stamp.

Hampstead council's libraries committee authorises legal proceedings to recover overdue books in 51 cases.

25 years ago

13 August 1983

Hampstead Tube station's £1.7 million automatic high-speed lifts have broken down seven times since they were installed in April. Last week 23 people were trapped for 20 minutes before being rescued. Passengers were told there were too many of them in the lift - although a notice on the wall

In Kentish Town tube station the first of the new escalators will be switched on next month - but passengers will still have to walk down the 1,000-odd emergency steps to the platforms for at least another year as the second escalator is taken out of service.

A refreshment break during a Health Education Council meeting was rudely interrupted when a health education officer went to eat a sandwich - and found a live cockroach inside. The owner of a sandwich bar in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, is fined £50 plus costs for selling contaminated food.

An estate agency finds a new way to protest at the plethora of boards advertising flats in two blocks in Finchley Road, Hampstead. The firm has added its own sign to the collection of 11 boards, announcing - for sale "assortment of estate agent boards".

10 years ago

14 August 1998

An undercover TV crew filming a Candid Camera-style sketch for Channel 4 in Belsize Park sparked a major armed police operations when officers suspected they were about to stage a bank robbery at the National Westminster Bank in Haverstock Hill.

Gospel Oak residents celebrate the end of a five-year campaign for a drug-ridden open space at the centre of their estate to be transformed. Work has begun to turn the derelict land at Kiln Place into a new landscaped park with trees and flowers.

Plans for London Zoo's new conservation centre are unveiled by Ken Livingstone MP, who pledges free entry to the zoo if he is elected Mayor.

Compiled by Anne Rowe