Peeps into the Past - Protest outside primary school

25 years ago

A GOLFER who would go on to have a stellar career won her first LPGA title, reported the East Lothian Courier on February 23, 2001.

A long-held dream for North Berwick international golfer Catriona Matthew became reality when she won the Cup Noodles Hawaiian Classic – her first LPGA title – at Kapolei on Saturday.

Matthew, 31, was absolutely delighted with her victory and now joins fellow Scots Janice Moodie and Kathryn Marshall in the record books as the only Scottish winners on the LPGA circuit.

Playing in very rough, windy conditions, Catriona led the contingent of internationalists from start to finish and secured a three-shot victory, starting with a first round of 67 followed by rounds of 71 and 72 for a 210 total.

50 years ago

A PROTEST outside a village primary school made front page of the East Lothian Courier on February 27, 1976.

A group of angry Longniddry parents staged a “token protest” outside the village primary school on Monday morning as a new intake of five-year-olds arrived for their first day at school.

The parents are angered over the lack of accommodation at the school which has meant that a class of six-year-olds has been split between three classes at the school. In a statement issued by association chairman, Dr Harold Millburn, on Wednesday, the association claimed they had been promised a mobile classroom by East Lothian Education Department and this was to be installed in February of this year. It was learned in January that no provision has been made by the Region for such accommodation.

100 years ago

A NOT guilty verdict in the case of a grandson accused of his grandmother’s murder was revealed in The Haddingtonshire Courier on February 26, 1926.

The trial took place, in the High Court of Justiciary, at Edinburgh, on Monday, before Lord Anderson and a jury, of Thomas Aitken, the young farm-worker, who is only 17 years of age next month and who was charged with the murder of his grandmother, at Harperdean Cottages, near Haddington.

At a pleading diet, held in Edinburgh Sheriff Court ten days previously, Aitken pleaded not guilty to the charge which was to the effect that, on 4th December 1925, in the house at Harperdean, occupied by Margaret Collin Clements or Cunningham, his grandmother, he did assault her, strike her on the head with an iron poker, or other instrument, did seize her, knock her down, jump upon or kneel upon her body, stab her repeatedly on the left side of her head and on her left-cheek with the point of an iron poker, or with some other pointed instrument, and did fracture her ribs and sternum, rupture her spleen and left kidney, and did thus murder her.

Considerable interest was taken in the case, and fully half an hour before the Court sat, a queue of men and women had lined up outside awaiting admission.