DRINKING was an extremely dangerous pastime 150 years ago, according to snippets published in the Darlington & Stockton Times, the Echo’s sister paper, of this week in 1874.
Under the headline “Cannibalism”, it tells how, in “Brownbridge’s public house” in Witton-le-Wear, John Wood, of the Victoria Colliery Brick Works, had pushed Thomas Moses to the floor “and getting on top of him got hold of his lip with his teeth and bit a piece completely out”.
Wood was sent to prison for two months.
In Bishop Auckland, John Durkin had gone into the Wear Hotel and demanded a puff on Chrisopher Neville’s pipe. Neville refused, so the two had a punch up in the pub kitchen.
It spilled onto the Batts – the low riverside land beneath the 11 arches railway bridge – where Neville appeared to have the upper hand until Durkin him on the temple. He “fell to the ground and was never seen to stir again”.
Durkin was committed for trial on a charge of manslaughter.

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Meanwhile, over in Guisborough, Hunter, 57, had been "found dead in her bedroom under circumstances of a peculiarly painful character". 
Alethea and her miner husband were members of the International Order of Good Templars which, founded in 1851, was a fraternal temperance organisation, promoting abstinence of alcohol and drugs.
Unfortunately, on the day in question, Alethea, her husband and another Good Templar went on a “spree” and became “thoroughly intoxicated”. Her husband fell asleep downstairs so Alethea retired to bed “in a drunken state”.
She “seems to have been at her prayers when, overcome by her inebriated condition, her head sank into the bedding, and in this way she must soon afterwards have died from suffocation”, said the D&S.
When her husband sobered up, he found her in her prayerful position “kneeling by the bedside quite stiff and cold”.

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