Food prices had gone up forty seven per cent since the beginning of the war, said the board of trade.However compared to our enemies this was a modest in trade with prices in Berlin up eighty three per cent and in Vienna one hundred and twelve per cent
The Annual meeting of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway was held.The chairman reported that seven thousand of its employees had joined the armed forces whilst another twelve thousand had attested under the Derby scheme.
Two hundred and four had so far list their lives in the conflict.The chairman explained that many of those who had joined job’s had been co ever by female Labour and the readjustment of certain duties. The previous year had seen a record amount of traffic on the network.
Thirty people were homeless after a fire in Knutsford that saw eleven thatched cottages burnt down.Sparks from a chimney started the fire on Tatton Street and spread to both sides of the road.The flames were fanned by the high winds with witnesses describing flames leaping from one cottage to the next.
Snow and gales swept through the region that day with chimney stacks blown off and trees damaged.A horse and lorry laden with packing cases was blown over in Albert Square but with no injuries.
In Blackpool hurricane force winds swept a sixty five year old lady to her death and two men were drowned when their boat was capsized in the Mersey.
Later that week, the heaviest snow of the winter fell, cutting off telegraph communication between Manchester and London for a while, disrupting rail and tram travel, with the Peak District essentially cut off with many cottages reportedly buried
A corporal in the 18th Manchester Battalion wrote to his friends in Crumpsall giving an idea of waiting for an expected attack across the trenches on the 27th Jan, the Kaiser’s birthday.
He talks of going for a wash in a nearby village when the Germans began bombarding it with shells and taking three hours to get back to the front line.He wrote of what he called weeping shells which send out gas and make the eyes smart, mentioning that he was supplied with goggles.His regiment was expecting an attack which however never came, standing in the second line of trenches into the night and the following three nights before being moved to the firing trenches.
“When we were relieved, you can imagine how delighted I was finding two parcels awaiting me just as I was starting four days rest in the trenches”
Over two thousand pamphlets were seized from a house in Stockport, headed ‘Unite against the British Prussians’, ‘Fight against Conscription’ and ‘ A general strike’. The defendant had been giving out the leaflets on trains and in the streets around Hazel Grove.The pamphlets were handed over to the police for destruction.
The Halle was playing a series of concerts that week at the after Trade Hall.The programme consisted of an old 18th century by Rameau, Sweet honeysuckling bees by Wilbye which dated back to the 16th century.
“The suite” reported the Evening News “was most daintily played by the Orchestra and the selection of sixty voices gave a capital rendering of the madrigal.”
In the theatres that week, The Marriage Market was playing at the Prince’s theatre, a new play ‘The Ant’ at the Gaiety which told the story of a hard working lady bringing up her children as she toiled in her bakery after her husband had left her. There was pantomime at the Metropole with Aladdin playing while Harold Raynor and Miss Ennis Lawson were appearing at the King’s theatre.
