Manchester City Police courts were becoming overwhelmed by people who had been summoned before the magistrates for breaking the lighting restrictions order for failing to obscure lighted windows.
Over five hundred cases had so far come to court including a nurses home in Withington and the Whitworth Street military hospital.Colonel Westercroft of the latter told the authorities that he didn’t think that the hospital was subject to the order and the magistrates agreed to adjourn the case to look into the exemption.
Another case saw a defense that the defendant was out at a Red Cross function and forgot to draw the blinds in his bedroom.
Eat less meat was the plea put out by the authorities in an official,notice put out by the board of Trade that week.Imported meat formed fifty per cent of the country’s consumption and the government had requisitioned so much of it for the armed forces that there was now only a small surplus for domestic consumption.
The war office announced that it was abandoning the scheme to erect huts on Platt Filed’s Park for the accommodation of 2,000 injured troops.The cost of draining the ground had determined that the scheme should not go ahead.
Five teen women and girls were overcome by gas at a goods warehouse in Ancoats.The gas had escaped from an engine in the round box room.Ambulances were quickly on the spot and the girls were treated at the local hospital.
The death was reported of the distinguished Manchester Chemist Ivan Levinstein, born in Berlin who had first opened his chemical works at Blackley in 1865. “ I came to England,” he once said in an interview, “ so that I could be close to the Rae material. I had obstacles, many but I knew that success alone lay in overcoming them.”
At the time of his death Levensteins provided employment for a large amount of people across Manchester.Levenstein had also been instrumental in setting up the Society of Chemical manufacturers and in championing patent law.
It was reported from Mesopotamia that the 18th Lancashire Fusiliers (2nd Salford’s) had six of its officers put out of action. Colonel Abercrombie writing to the father of one of the men said that the regiment had come under intense bombardment which had ceased a long list of casualties.
“The Manchesters have apparently suffered severely in Mesopotamia-numerous casualties amongst local officers said the report.
On the Western front, most of the attention was being focused on the fighting at Verdun.The latest reports said that up to six German attacks had been filled on the French fort, the Evening News in its leader described the “Shambles at Verdun” and quoted the French General Petain who said he was certain of final success.
News was expected any day on the success or otherwise of Ernest Shackleton’s expedition to Antarctica. The party had set off in 1914 and were last heard of in November of that year in a despatch from South Georgia.
