A Gorton soldier wrote home from the trenches of the Western Front that week of lying in six inches of mud, wet through and waiting for German heads to pop up
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“We put seventeen bullets through a German sniper with our machine gun.He was perched up a tree dressed in civilian clothes and his head and hands were painted green.Heaven knows how many poor fellows he had done in before we spotted him.”
Enlistments in Manchester remained at a low level that week, around seventy men passing through, it was not said the authorities sufficient to maintain at full strength the battalions that the city had made itself responsible.
It was announced that the 25th,26th and 27th battalions would be leaving Heaton Park that week to commence training elsewhere.
In London and the South East fifty people were killed following Zepplin attacks .The writer Arthur Conan Doyke suggested in a letter to the Times that a small avenging squadron of British aeroplanes stationed in Eastern France should attack German towns as a reprisal.
A Heywood schoolmaster was jailed after refusing to lay a fine of £5 for failing to fill out his national registration form.He had claimed that he had filled it in in Liverpool but the bench heard that he had a consciences objection to signing the form and was imprisoned for 28 days.
That week the war office issued the list of the heaviest casualties of the war with 209 officers and 5126 men killed that week.
The price of butter was a topic of conversation with the whole of the Danish butter trade now under its government’s supervision, it’s price was approaching two shillings a pound.Manchester grocers were advising their customers to try the better classes of table margarine, which were retailing for about half the price.
Three people were knocked down in street accidents in one night in Manchester, a Mr and Mrs Lucy by a tram car crossing Rochdale Road, Peter Smith on the corner of Livesy street, also by a tram car and James King by a tram car on the corner of Palatine and Burton Road in Withington.
And an inquest heard of the death of a Pendleton contractor who who was knocked down by a taxi cab after leaving his home on Bolton Riad on the way to the theatre.The jury heard that the street lamp opposite the house was not alight at the time.
Strong comments were made by the Manchester Stipendary magistrate about children turning up to school dirty in Ardwick during a hearing on assault.A six year old was charged with assaulting a school nurse who was taking here to a cleaning station owning to her “verminous condition” and was struck by the child with a “violent blow to the ear”.
The finishing touches were being put to what was being claimed as the finest shopping emporium in the country.Lewis’ of Market Street said the Manchester Evening News
“No one can pass by that spacious and lofty building with its bold and striking exterior, it’s towering eminences and immense area of window space……even the most experienced shopper might well feel a measure of surprised interest.”
Entirely new throughout, the building of steel and concrete occupied tow and half times the area of the old store which opened in 1850.Shoppers were given a a grand restaurant, grill room and smoke room, hairdressing facilities for the ladies, a basement soda fountain, ten electric lifts and a pneumatic tube cash carrying system.
The Evening news described its interior as being like an Atlantic liner
A khaki clad crowd watching Manchester City play Southport that weekend, many were members of the Manchester regiment
