100 years ago May 30 1908 o The Hampstead celebration of Empire Day takes place in the Great Hall and grounds of University College School at Frognal. A handsome marble tablet has been erected in the entrance hall commemorating the visit of the King and Q

100 years ago

May 30 1908

o The Hampstead celebration of Empire Day takes place in the Great Hall and grounds of University College School at Frognal. A handsome marble tablet has been erected in the entrance hall commemorating the visit of the King and Queen to open the new school buildings last July.

o A correspondent writes: As I walked down Haverstock Hill I saw a company of inmates in frowsy dressing gowns and wild hair streaming in the wind on a balcony of the Hampstead General Hospital. One was holding a loud-voiced conversation with a man below. May I suggest that if these female patients are well enough to be exposed to the public view, they should be decently dressed and have their hair confined within limits.

o At Hampstead Petty Sessions a neglectful husband is summoned for failing to maintain his wife and three children, so that they became chargeable to the Guardians. Prisoner's wife said they married in 1903 and he soon began to drink and knock her about, she was rarely without a black eye. She had never had a penny from him, having to work for herself. The Bench sentences the prisoner to three months' imprisonment with hard labour.

o A 74-year-old Fulham man is charged with begging at Hornsey. He would not go into the Workhouse because he wished to preserve his independence, but the magistrate told him he was losing his independence by begging quite as much as by accepting relief. He is discharged and advised to go into the Workhouse.

50 years ago

May 30 1958

o Hampstead's toll of road accident victims soared to grim proportions last month. Figures show that 71 people were maimed or injured in April, the highest monthly total in the history of the borough.

o Split into two rival factions, the Labour members of St Pancras council are faced with the problem of how the council is to be run. There are now 47 Labour members in the "official" group and 14 rebels. There are 23 Conservatives on the council. The split occurred after the leader was suspended from the Labour Party and an interim leader, Charles Ratchford, appointed in his place. The Conservatives welcomed the move and said the shedding of the Communist wing would lead to a better understanding between the two parties.

o Hampstead council's drive against selfish book borrowers - people who fail to return books to the libraries after repeated reminders - is having results. Over 70 "missing" books have come back.

o Is there any harm in those "little flutters" on the pools, at the races, even buying Premium Bonds? Yes, says the Hampstead Garden Suburb Free church minister in his newsletter. He says the amount spent last year on all forms of gambling implies an appalling unproductive expenditure of money and energy, a widespread 'gimme' philosophy of life.

o Hampstead council approves the setting up of a second smokeless zone in the borough, for a 109 acre area in Swiss Cottage and Primrose Hill.

25 years ago

27 May 1983

o Rising unemployment is a deliberate Tory plot designed to cow working people, declares Holborn and St Pancras Labour candidate Frank Dobson at a Somers Town school. He said Mrs Thatcher, in the tradition of Victorian mill owners, was the bosses' representative.

o Such is the apathy of the great British electorate that Mrs Thatcher's election manifesto proposals to scrap the GLC by 1986 will hardly cause any alarm bells to ring on polling day. Barely 40 per cent of the electorate bothers to vote in municipal elections, which often have a more direct bearing on people's lives than do general elections.

o Scores of elderly tenants in the Camden-owned Denton block in Kentish Town were left on the street when their problem-plagued heating and hot water system erupted again. When partial repairs at the 19-storey tower block were completed, a chain of leaks was set off in nearly 850 surrounding homes, causing widespread floods.

o Keats admirer John Stevenson, 33, has put his name down as Poet candidate for Hampstead and Highgate, which he describes as "one of the most deprived areas of the country... a highly materialistic place, full of miserable people".

o A new biography of Edward Elgar says that the composer wrote no significant music while living at Severn House in Netherhall Gardens, Hampstead, between 1912 and 1919, and that the mansion was a crippling financial burden for him.

10 years ago

May 29 1998

o Workers turning an 18th century dairy at Kenwood into a tea room will have to take particular care not to disturb a colony of bats roosting in the rafters. Up to 300 pipistrelle bats - believed to be the largest colony in London and one of the most important in the country - use the Grade II-listed buildings every summer to breed in. This means English Heritage will have to avoid doing any work between April and September.

o New traffic measures to improve safety at Whitestone Pond have turned the area into bedlam, say motorists. A £40,000 scheme by Camden Council at the junction of Heath Street and East Heath Road has been blamed for creating traffic chaos.

o The 15-storey University College London NHS Trust hospital to be built in Euston Road will cost £150million - £45million from the sale of the three hospitals it will replace, and another £115million from private investors through the so-called Private Finance Initiative (PFI). Sounds good, until we discover that the much-needed building will have to be leased back from the private investors at a cost of between £20million and £30million a year, for 30 years. That could mean a total bill of up to £900 million before we even talk about equipping and running the hospital. It means the private consortium putting up the £115 million will receive an astonishingly high return - which sounds like a licence to print money at the expense of NHS services.

Compiled by Anne Rowe