WE TAKE a look at the stories making headlines in East Lothian 25, 50 and 100 years ago.

 

25 years ago...

‘BEEFING up energy at Cockenzie’ said the front page of the East Lothian Courier on July 19, 1996.

Cattle slaughtered in the scare over ‘mad cow disease’ may soon be fuelling Cockenzie Power Station.

“We have said we will look into it. The Government has asked us for help,” said a ScottishPower spokesman.

Energy experts are holding talks with Government and health officials and it is believed the first deliveries of animal waste could arrive at Cockenzie in a few months’ time.

The coal-fired station is one of three around the Firth of Forth being considered. The others are Longannet and Methil.

But the spokesman said that if the burning did go ahead, whole animals would not be brought to the stations.

Instead they would arrive as cubes of compressed waste parts, tallow, meat and bone, which had been processed into meal which could be fed into the furnaces with coal.

 

50 years ago

‘AT 81, MRS Cowan has five swimsuits’, reported The Haddingtonshire Courier on July 23, 1971.

Every day, an 81-year-old woman walks across the wide expanse of Belhaven Sands, Dunbar, and goes for a refreshing swim in the sea.

Widow Mrs Margaret Cowan, of 36 Doune Avenue, Dunbar, still looks very fit and youthful in her one-piece bathing costume and could afford many a modern miss a healthy challenge in the bathing beauty stakes.

Her favourite spot for a quick dip in the waves is Spike Island, just along the wet Belhaven shore, and she swims there regularly until the cold winds of October blow in.

 

100 years ago

“TOO much coal on the bing” was a headline in The Haddingtonshire Courier on July 22, 1921.

On Monday, in Haddington Sheriff Court, two married women pleaded guilty to having, on 6th July, stolen 1 1/2 cwt. of coal from a bing belonging to the Edinburgh Collieries Company.

An agent explained that the accused were respectably connected, and had taken the coal, not from the bing itself, but from an adjoining field. The coal had overflown from the bing, and had come through a hedge into the field. At the same time, the accused had done wrong in taking what did not belong to them, and he had advised them to plead guilty.

Sheriff Macleod said it was likely that the accused did not realise they were thieves, but when anyone took that which did not belong to them they were in this position. Thefts, however, varied very much in gravity, and he supposed they could regard accused as thieves on a small scale.

He would, therefore, reduce the fine in their case to one of 15s, the ordinary penalty being one of 30s.